Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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76 of 83 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
So much promise, so much frustration, September 3, 2004
I have come so very close to getting this program to work for me, and have even gotten exploratory value out of it, but you should know that the database is often corrupted by the tool, and requires program re-installation and design recreation.
In the words of the help file (on line at ...):
MBuilder Has Encountered a Problem...
When using the program, the following message appears:
"MBuilder has encountered problem." There are several possible causes for
this issue. The remainder of this note describes how to proceed.
Determine If the Plan Is Corrupt
1. Launch 3D Home Architect® and create a new plan.
2. Add a basic structure to the plan.
3. Save the plan and close 3D Home Architect®.
4. Launch 3D Home Architect® and open the plan created in Steps 1 & 2 above.
5. Choose from the following:
* If the error message does not reoccur when working with the new plan,
the previous plan is most likely corrupt. Recreate the plan or restore
a backup copy of the plan.
* If the same error reoccurs, continue with the following procedures.
These suggestions will help to prevent corruption in future plans
-- Further instructions tell you to turn off large displays, accelerations, etc.
As long as you have separate backups every 15 minutes or so (not just saving the file, but saving to a set of many different files) then you may be able to recover some of your work.
The problem is, you may work for a long time with the program working, but with save files written by the program that are corrupt. Once written out, it can't be read back in.
I have worked with their on-line help system, and have been referred to the instructions: just reinstall and recreate what you did.
My question to them was, "How do I know what to avoid?"
Part of the problem is that the design may be OK in memory, but when it gets written out, it is corrupt. There is a "repair database" command that sometimes works, but only if the file is still in memory, and not always then.
Identifying what caused the problem has eluded me so far (50+ hours of use, design not finished)
A hint for you if you do use the program: you should know that small pieces of walls can be left behind as remnants. When walls start to act funny, expand the area, pull all of the walls back out of the intersections, and delete the little pieces that are left. You can then rejoin the wall segments and continue. (you will need to redo roofs ceilings and floors, but you will be used to that by then.
Try it, many parts work extremely well, but make all your decisions up front, because changing is tedious.
Just a few things would enhance the utility of the program tremendously: a copy/paste that works between files, a robust database, and a format painter that can work on trim.
Good luck.
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66 of 75 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Only got to the roof, May 15, 2004
I had purchased "Punch! Professional Home Design" and found it too indepth for what I needed. "3D Home Architect Design Suite 6" seemed a bit more for the lay designer. I built the outside layout of my tri-level easy enough and was impressed by the ease of setting the different levels of floor height for different areas of my home. I found colors and textures for my home's exterior that closely matched my actual home. All was well until I tried to put a roof on. It wasn't the different levels that threw off the software but the fact my home isn't rectangular. My home has a bit of character. The software has an auto 'roof by perimeter' option and a manual 'roof by picking points' option. Do not be fooled, there is no manual option. As soon as the edges of your roofs get close enough together the software merges them as it pleases. It resets angles and/or creates new and/or deletes existing edges as it sees fit, no matter how many times you reset them using the 'custom' option. Another undocumented feature is somtimes when you change the settings on a wall another wall on the other side of your project will disappear or may elongate through the boundaries of your project and off the screen. When drawing internal walls if one wall intersects a second it divides the existing wall into two and resets the both wall behavior values (i.e. 'elevation' or 'extend to roof') to defaults forcing you to go back through and redo all your settings. I run an AthlonXP 2200 1.8 GHz machine w/ 512 ram and a GeForce4 Ti 4600 w/128mb ram, well above the system requirements listed on Broderbund's website. The program crashes about every hour and a half which, by the way, is covered in the t-shooting guide. It says turn off hardware acceleration. This will then slow down 3D rendering to a painfully slow pace. Maybe this is because NVidia is such a small-time chipset manufactuer. If something happens often enough to be covered in the user-guide maybe it should be fixed? I rated two stars vice one because there are features in the software I didn't get to see and can't judge because the disc now protects my coffee table (along with a plethora of discs from AOL) from water rings and no longer is in use on my PC. I am disappointed in this Broderbund title and it will be some time before I purchase another. If you want to design a square house, this software has all you need. If your home has any character at all, do not buy this software.
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25 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
GREAT UPGRADE TO PREVIOUS VERSIONS, July 2, 2004
I've seen some of the reviews on this forum. They range from very bad ones to excellent remarks. The last one from "A Software used from Seattle" is exagerated and obviously he did not take the time to read the manual. When you render a 3D image with the 3DTrueView option, the BMP file with this image is saved in the "Samples" Directory under "Program Files/3D Home Architect/Design Suite Deluxe6/Samples". Also, if all you want is a snapshot of the 3D image on the screen, you can press the Alt key, hold it and press "Print Screen" on your keyboard, then you simply "Edit-Paste" the image into Word, excel, etc.Now to the review part: RESULTING IMAGE
I've used Punch AS3000 extensively, and while the rendering of shadows is much faster than with 3D Home Architect, AS3000 lacks the ray-tracing engine therefore cannot render surfaces that reflect such as mirrors, glossy marble, etc.
The resulting images from 3DHA Design Suite are VERY, VERY close to a photograph. The ones from AS3000 tend to look Dull because of the lack of reflective surface support. Also, 3DHA allows for many different views, 2D with textures, 3D from top view, real-time editing in 3D of the location of objects, etc. FLEXIBILITY OF THE TOOLS
First of all, Punch's software is VERY limited in the configuration of items such as Doors, Windows, Kitchen Cabinets, Fences, Stairs, and all pre-loaded objects in general.
3DHA has all the dimensions and features of each object available for change. Punch AS3000 offers a built-in 3D object editor but cannot import popular industry-standard formats such as 3DS files, whereas 3DHA does, giving access to thousands of free objects available on the WEB. Textures are all pre-defined on Punch AS3000, meaning you cannot easily (without messing with file sizes, pixel counts, directories, etc.) add textures. On 3DHA you can add a texture from a BMP file with a few clicks and apply to object on the screen. Also, Objects have their surface groupings defined so you can for example, change the color of the wood of a Sofa without going leg-by-leg. 3DHA can also export to DXF AND 3DS, allowing your design to be used / rendered on industrial / professional level software. Punch AS3000 can only export to VRLM in 3D and to DXF on 2D. I sincerily believe 3DHA is a more professional software (actually it is a down-sized version of a professional package from CADSOFT). This is to me the best VALUE for the $99 retail price. Marco.
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