Product Description

Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer Deluxe is home design software developed by Chief Architect® that makes home design easy. The software is based on the top-rated Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer and provides even more tools for design projects including: Home Design, Remodeling, Interior Design, Decks, Landscaping, Site Planning and Cost Estimating. Quickly place and arrange walls, windows, doors, and cabinets, choose colors, place furniture, create decks and landscaping. Enjoy turning you Dream home into a reality.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2417 in Software
• Brand: Chief Architect
• Model: 045-400L
• Released on: 2005-06-10
• Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows Me, Windows 2000, Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows XP
• Format: CD-ROM
• Dimensions: 2.25 pounds

Features

• All-in-one design solution based on the top-rated Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer; for interior, exterior and landscape design projects
• Choose from over 1,500 sample floor plans; design and visualize with 3D Models and Virtual Tours
• Features powerful building tools like automatic roof generation, dormers, stairs, framing, foundations, and Plan Check; import photos for realistic background views
• Deck Designer lets you design single or multi-level decks; deck foundations automatically generate to match sloped lots
• Choose from over 1,200 plants with the Plant Chooser; use Sprinkler Designer to lay out sprinkler zones quickly and easily

Amazon.com Product Description
Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer Deluxe is the premium all-in-one Home Design software developed by Chief Architect. Based on the top-rated Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer, this software provides feature-rich tools for design projects that include remodeling,

See the home of your dreams from all angles.

Design a detailed floorplan. View larger.

And don't forget the landscaping and outdoor details. View larger.

home design, interior design, decks, landscaping, site planning, cost estimating, and more. With it you can quickly place and arrange walls, windows, doors, and cabinets, choose colors, place furniture, create decks and landscaping in a matter of a few clicks.

Home Designer Deluxe gives you the option of choosing from built-in home style templates and over 1,500 sample plans, creating your own custom home design, or using the House Wizard to design your projects. Powerful building tools such as automatic roof generation, dormers, stairs, framing, foundations, and plan check make it easier than ever to design your own projects.

When you're ready to plan your bathroom or kitchen, you can customize your cabinets, sinks, cabinets, and fixtures. It's never been easier to design your dream kitchen; Designer Deluxe lets you move walls, place cabinets and add fixtures and appliances with a sweep of your mouse. You can also choose from a library of more than 7,000 items for your projects, including windows, doors, lighting, furniture, cabinets, and more. The software features Advanced 3D Models and Virtual Tours that give you a full view of your designs every step of the way.

When it's time to move outdoors, Design Deluxe includes a Deck Designer feature that lets you create single or multi-level decks, complete with automatic deck framing tools. If you're planning your garden features, you're in good hands. Landscape features include fence, garden, driveway, path and other terrain tools. And the Better Homes and Gardens Plant Encyclopedia is included with the software to help you pick out which plants will be ideal for your setting. The software's Plant Chooser feature offers over 1,200 plants to choose from. You'll also have Plant Hardiness Zone reference maps at your disposal, so you can choose the right plants for your climate, and special visualization features will let you see what your plants will look like over the next 20 years.

Of course, you'll need to keep your landscape watered. Sprinkler Designer will help you do just that, offering you the optimal plans for laying out your sprinkler system. You'll also have exclusive access to the Better Homes and Gardens Design Planning Center for expert design advice. And when your project is finally complete, Design Deluxe automatically generates a materials list that lets you easily estimate your costs.

Included with the software are Better Homes and Garden How-To Tutorial CDs that will guide you through the processes step by step. In short, with Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer Deluxe, you will be able to design the home of your dreams yourself, without having to rely exclusively on expensive architects or designers.

Customer Reviews

Good for Basic Planning
I am not an architect, but I enjoy designing houses for fun. For my purposes, this software is good enough (better than I expected, actually) and I have spent happy hours laying out floor plans for various designs.

It is true that it is not entirely customizable, by which I mean (as another reviewer pointed out) you cannot customize wall heights easily, have a limited range of roof options, etc., and this can be frustrating. You can still do quite a bit with the specifications dialogues for each object and by fiddling around, and I have been able to do most of what I want, if not perfectly. There are more expensive products out there that give you more flexibilty. However, I am not planning to build from these designs myself, and am not so interested in getting all the specific details into the designs that I develop--probably because I know what I have in mind and can make a note with the text tool on the plan to remind me.

What I am interested in is laying out floor plans and seeing how they work. This I can do with this software. You can draw the floorplan by using the house wizard, which has preprogrammed rooms (that can be resized by clicking and dragging) that you select and simply place, like jigsaw puzzle pieces, into your design. Or you can draw walls with your mouse and build your design that way, as if you were drawing it on paper (which is what I prefer).

Once you have drawn your floor plan, you can see it in various views. The dollhouse view lets me see a 3D image of any floor of the whole house with the "roof off", as it were, which I really like. There are also glass house and floor camera views. The way it works is you select one of these, click on the floor plan, and draw a line of perspective. The program then converts this view into 3D to give you a view from the inside of that perpective.

The glass house view, though not a walk-through per se, gives a pretty good sense of what rooms look like from the inside from one to the next (imagine an Xray image in grey tones of a 3d house design--and like an Xray, from one perspective). The floor camera view gives you a 3D close up of a room interior from the inside. This is also from one perspective, as if you took a photo, but you can use the "camera orbit" or "mouse camera" tools in either view to move from the wall in front of you to your left, right, up and down, and can move forward and back.

This works to a point in the glass house view, but is less successful in the floor camera view. The problem is that the software is not smart enough to let you select a specific room and view it as if you were inside it turning around. While you can do this with careful mouse actions, often you will find youself pulling the point of perspective backwards as you try to control the panning view, in effect moving the "camera" into the next room (which can you give you the disconcerting sense of not being sure where you are or how you got there, particularly if you have not decorated the rooms with materials or objects that distinguish one from the next). So, it's often simpler, if more time comsuming, to readjust the placement of the "camera" on your floor plan (which means switching back to the floor plan window)--at least until you get your panning skills down.

One nice thing, though, is that you can change the dimensions of objects such as doors, windows, etc., from within this 3D room view. To do this, click on the "select" arrow (on the left side of your toolbar across the top )and then click on the object. You can then drag and click to change its size or placement in the wall (I use this, for example, to make transom windows). You can also specify dimensions to a point by double clicking on objects to bring up that object's specification dialogue, or can change dimensions on the floor plan by clicking and dragging a door, window, etc., to a different size.

You can also use the 3D tools to see the whole house with (or without) the roof from outside (and you can "spin" the whole house design to see it from all angles). It does have a walkthrough feature, but it is not a true walkthrough and basically requires that you take "snapshots" of each room in 3D and and then play them back as a movie--too much trouble for me, and I have not done it.

The graphics are as one would expect. What you "build" is a bit cartoonish (by which I mean, not photorealistic). The library of objects is large, but the selection within each category is not huge, but has been enough for me (i.e, 6 styles of queen beds, but if you want a canopy bed, for example, you're out of luck). For me--since I am not interior designing with this, per se, it's fine as I have enough objects to generally get an idea of what something would look like-which is what I am after. You do have a reasonable range of materials and colors for walls and floors and such--the greater limitation is in the options for the objects design/style.

However, the bottom line for me is that I was not willing to pay $300+ for the Pro version and even less willing to pay $1400+ for Chief Architect (though if anyone from the company is reading and wants to give me a copy of CA to review from the general consumer perspective, do get in touch). What I wanted, as I said earlier, was software to help me design and envision buildings for fun--and for the price, am really happy enough.

Great Product for someone looking to remodel their home
I was using Punch software to help me remodel my house but the graphics weren't that good and I was having a hard time getting exact measurements.
With BHG the graphics are great and getting accurate measurements it a snap. The amount of objects is outstanding plus you can make your own. I took a picture of the brick and roofing on my house and put it into BHG and now I have an exact replica of my house.
Definately well worth the money.

should be called home daydreamer rather than designer
i purchased this product with the intention of designing a small home for myself. while the 3d views are helpful visualization tools this program seems best suited to design of the "what would my living room look like painted green" or "what would the front yard look like with some juniper" variety. sure there are some cool features, but in the end you can't produce a plan to work off of or modify the framing to suit specific design needs. the most obvious drawback for me was the inability to easily modify wall height for a simple one and a half story structure. that said, the dimensioning and the library of common household objects help to plan space usage. however, if you want to do anything besides computer assisted daydreaming you'll probably want to kick down the cash for pro, since it supposedly allows you to manually edit framing and produce dimensioned blue prints.