Broderbund 3D Home Architect Design Suite Deluxe 6 [OLD VERSION]

I found this software to be absolutely faultless. It does have the same drag around interfaces as before, which allows houses to be designed at lightning speed; only your menu choices are not put into two menu systems which allow more comprehensive choices. Once you figure out to click the top row as before, and then choose your comprehensive choice on the right, as not before, then you are off and running.The programmers for this software are much better than the instruction book writers. For example, you can eliminate 98% of the problems with this product by "opening up" outside walls and then "closing" them again to make floors that have disappeared reappear, and to make walls that aren't attached all the way up to the cathedral ceilings, all of a sudden attach themselves.The only drag around interface that seems to have been lost is that you can no longer resize windows in 3D mode by grabbing their edges, however, you can still click into them while in 3D mode and resize them, which is not quite as convenient as before. However, in return, you now have more options. You can now add skylights, curved walls, curved staircases and irregular windows.The program has also been enhanced to allow true construction details. If you want a beveled footing and an actual buildable foundation set to various heights, you can now have it.Furthermore, one of the most annoying features of the previous releases, which was having to set "invisible" walls to get staircase openings to appear in the second story floors (which always crashed the plans) has been revised and you can now simply draw in an opening into your floors.The 3D walk through is an absolute joy to use with the product and you can zip your view height up and down and walk around and zoom in and out with perfect ease.Having the ability to do true rendering, wherein the sun shines through the windows is my favorite new feature, as all good designs take into the account where the sun shines. For example, an awning over a south facing window will allow the sun to shine into the room in the winter when the sun is lower in the sky but block the sun in the summer when it is hot.I don't much care if older plans cannot be imported, as I am busy on new plans with curved staircases and skylights which were not possible before.Any roof can be made with this product. But you have to draw the roof on first, before you put in the interior partition walls, otherwise it will distort the automatic roof centerpoints, which are needed to change roof types which is annoying. But this is all due to their not well documented feature in which the roofs and floors automatically attach themselves to everything, which saves a lot of time. And you do have the option to draw your roofs "out in space" and then drag them into place to eliminate this automatic attachment feature. Therefore, just about any roof can be created, and easily at that.I suspect that the people experiencing crashes do not have updated computers. It works perfectly on a Pentium 4 - 3.00 GHz with 512K RAM.

3D Home Design is simply horrendous...no other gentle way to put it. One bumps into flaws everywhere one turns. This software really brought me back to the early Broderbund Apple IIe and PC/XT offerings...it's that primitive! First problem is the non-standard user interface that Broderbund insists on using that unnecessarily complicates the learning curve. Then there are the countless display glitches, the worst of which erratically redraws your work just when you are trying to make a crucial modification or measurement. Perhaps worst of all is the limited and error prone output, which makes it virtually impossible to produce a quality print approaching anything like that on the screen. I tried to use the export function to get my 2d plan into a "well behaved" format, but the resolution is so limited that the resultant jaggy image is next to useless. Whereas the program itself properly uses vector graphics for most of the drawing (this makes the drawing appear nice and crisp no matter the zoom or maginification), apparently the output simply bitmaps the display, sort of like a crude screen copy function. Last, but not least, this program is virtually unsupported, especially if you bought this retail. The best that the makers can do is refer you to a chat room, in which multiple agonized users seem to confirm that most of the flaws have no easy remedy (or indeed no fix at all).On the positive side, I found the 3D rendering capabilities quite useful, and the preparation of straightforward designs is relative simple. In addition, it's instructive to use the building materials catalog....it gives one a good idea of the possibilities for color and design.However, I suspect that most users are like me in that they wish to produce a quality 2D plan that will pass muster for permits at the local building department. In this application, 3D Home Architect is certain to reduce users most to a sweaty, swearing lump.