Home Design Software - Product Reviews
I can only make comparisons of products I've used or attempted to use. The home design software I have knowledge of includes: 3D Home Architect (3DHA versions: 1.0, 2.1, 3.0) by Broderbund, Planix by Autodesk, FloorPlan 3D (v5.0) by IMSI, and Chief Architect 6.0 (demo version) by Advanced Relational Technologies (ART).
The Most Powerful - Chief Architect
By far, the most powerful of these products is Chief Architect (CA). With this program, you will be able to create plans acceptable to your local building department. But this program is really targeted at the professional home designer and it's cost are more in line with that level of interest. (approx. $900.00) If you are a professional designer, I urge you to check it out. A free demo version is available from their website. The demo works like the real thing, but will not allow printing or file saving. And the help screens work, so you can answer any questions you may have about the attributes of CA. CA will read files created in 3DHA and then allow you to take your designs much farther. It has a similar interface as 3DHA and is almost as easy to use. But it's power goes well beyond 3HDA. The demo includes a Screen-Cam tutorial that is well done and very informative about the capabilities of the product. And priced under $1000, it competes favorably with it's rival, SoftPlan, which is priced at about $2800.
The Best Value/Choice - 3D Home Architect Deluxe 3.0
The best value for the money is 3D Home Architect Deluxe 3.0. It can be had on E-Bay for about $10.00. This is why I use this product and why this site is providing information on how to use 3DHA. You can see a short description about the differences between the different versions of 3DHA under the Main Menu->General->Version Comparisons. This software will give you the ability to create plans for 90% of most home designs. Roof designs include: Hips, Gables, Shed, Salt Box, Gambrel, Gull Wing, Half Hips, and Mansard roofs. Window styles include: double hung, single/double/triple casement, standard/triple awning, fixed over awning, left/right/triple sliding, standard/triple hopper, fixed over hopper, and fixed glass windows. You can add muntins to create divided lites in four different patterns: normal, diamond, prairie, and craftsman. You choose the number of lites across and down for both windows and doors with glass. Door styles include: doorways, swinging, sliding, pocket, bi-fold, and garage. You can modify many attributes of both doors and windows. Trim width, frame width/depth/bottom width, color, material, and movable size for windows. All of these user choices make it possible for you to create the look and feel of the design you want. The biggest drawback to this product is it's poor Rendered View and it's lack of an Object Designer. In 3D view, your structure will look sort of like a cartoon. The quality is actually pretty good, but it does not look true to life. From there, you can choose to see the current view as an "Applied Material View", which is 3DHA's rendered view. This is where 3HDA lacks quality. In fact, I prefer the standard 3D view to this one. So if you want to do Interior Decorating, use another program. But for good, accurate, and easy to create plans, 3D Home Architect is the best program out there. 3DHA's latest version is 4.0 and it costs about $35.00 - $40.00. But read the Version Comparisons before buying 3DHA.
The Prettiest 3D View - Punch! Software (the following is based on Punch! 7-in-1 Super Home Suite)
If Interior Decorating is where your interests lay, then Punch! Software has the best program for you. They use only one 3D look. Really good! Their colors and textures are much better and the shading is much more realistic. Also, adding different colors or textures to different walls is as easy as dragging a color/texture from the pallet and dropping it on the wall of your choice. Whenever you view your model in 3D mode, you are either in "Fly-By" (outside of the model and up in the air) or "Walk-Thru" mode. You can walk thru your model very quickly and you will get a very high quality image as you do. Stop walking and the quality improves a little. Choose to increase the quality and the program will take a little time to create an even more improved quality. (for good printouts)
So why not say this is the best program out there. "Pretty is only skin deep!" Making the walls snap together correctly and then breaking them apart when you need to is not always an easy task. The program has a tendency to CRASH often...so save your work on a regular basis. Some walls get created that are so small you can't easily grab hold of them to delete them. Only two styles of roofs, Hip and Gable, and they are not actually built for your model. You add them as an object and they don't always align as you would expect. You have a very limited number of windows and doors and you can't modify much of either. It has a framing mode, but it's not accurate at all. However, it may be able to fool a layman. You can print out the entire plan directly to the printer, but not individual areas. You can't print a 3D view directly to the printer. You must save it to a bitmap image and then print that from some other program.
You can create the walls of your model with this software after some agonizing sessions, and then save, save, save. Then you can go in and do a good job with the look and feel. Another GREAT component to this software is the Furniture Workshop. This is a CAD-like sub-program (included) that allows you to create almost any object not included in the standard library of objects. As CAD goes, it's pretty easy to learn and use. NOT "Any child can do it." easy, but much easier than most CAD programs. And this component gives you the ability to create just about any look you want. This software also includes a Model Builder, where it will print out a scaled model of each of the walls in your design. It's pretty accurate, but with a little work, you can do the equivalent with 3DHA. Punch! is well supported on the web with two different user created sites. Punch! software is marketed at different prices. The more you pay, the more you get. The more popular ones are titled 5-in-1, 7-in-1, Professional, and Professional Platinum. You can usually get 7-in-1 for around $40.00 (after mfg. rebate) and they give you a "Customer Satisfaction Guarantee". If you don't like it, return it. Punch! Professional Platinum retails on their site for $120.00.
Just Another Home Design Software Package
FloorPlan 3D by IMSI fits into this category quite nicely. It is more stable than Punch! during the model creation stage, but it's 3D view is just as bad as 3DHA's Applied Material View. And FloorPlan does not have a simple view. There is one person on the web that feels that this is, by far, the best package and that the 3D views are wonderful. I have attempted to load this software on three different machines and the graphics were terrible on all three. Once in 3D view, FloorPlan has a rendered view that they refer to as Photo-Realistic. Every time I've tried that view using a high level of quality, the program took anywhere from 1 hour to 1-1/2 hours to complete (450 mhz - 128m RAM). And I still didn't get good results. Only a few library objects are provided with the software and you are expected to create any variations of those objects if you want a different size. (Examples: walls, doors, cabinets, etc.) And it takes a lot of time. Since my experience with this program is that it's graphics are not quite as good as 3DHA and it's user interface is not quite as friendly, then why buy it. You can download a 15 day free trial version from IMSI's web site if you are so inclined. If you want to talk to someone that has much more knowledge on this product than myself, go to http://forums.about.com/designsoftware and start a discussion under Floorplan - IMSI with the forum host, Larry Z.