Product Description

TOTAL 3D™ Home & Landscape is designed for you, the homeowner, rather than an architect or contractor. Whether you are designing your dream home, remodeling a kitchen or bathroom, or creating the ideal outdoor living space, you’ll have all the tools and inspiration you need.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4791 in Software
• Brand: Individual Software, Inc.
• Model: PRM-HL9
• Released on: 2006-04-20
• Platforms: Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Me, Windows 98
• Format: CD-ROM
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds

Features

• Home and landscape design software created specifically for homeowners
• Easily decorate a room, landscape a garden, or design a dream home
• Design both home and yard without having to switch programs or interfaces
• Simply drag and drop to create complete floor plans; drag-n-drop SmartBlocks
• Design center with color board; Real-Photo Dynamic Imaging; single interface

From the Manufacturer
Experience home and landscape design software designed specifically for homeowners. Whether you are decorating a room, landscaping your garden, or designing your dream home, you'll have all the tools you need. Total 3D Home and Landscape Design Suite Version 9 comes equipped with Home and Landscape Design, Kitchen and Bath Remodel, Landscape and Decks, and Interior Design. It's the easiest way to design the home and landscape of your dreams!

Features:

• Fully integrated, single-interface design--design your home and yard at the same time without switching programs or interfaces.
• Quick FloorPlan designer--simply drag and drop to create complete floor plans.
• Design center with color board.
• Real-Photo Dynamic Imaging.
• Drag-n-drop SmartBlocks.

Customer Reviews

Zippy but pinheaded
I gave up on 3D Home Architect (look for my other review; hereinafter called 3D HA) and decided to try out one or two others. Next up is Total 3D Home. As expected from other reviewers' comments, it won't work for me but I'll try to give a bit more detail on what you'll find. Unfortunately the "professional" reviewers at Consumer Reports and the PC magazines won't tell you what you'd really like to know.

The good news with this one: it's a heckuva lot faster than 3D HA. You can click and drag things around much more speedily, and it doesn't hog your processor and memory anywhere near as much.

Now the bad news. Plenty of that, starting with a rather piggish software installation (it says on the box you need 1.8 gigs, and it really isn't kidding. You'll save a modest amount by telling it not to load all of the 3rd CD but still...)

Let me back up by pointing out the overall workflow flaw found in ALL of these home-design programs: they don't work with you the way an actual architect would. What's the first question that a professional (whether it's the guy at the Home Depot kitchen department, or the Martha Stewart's personal designer) going to ask? Well, it all starts with measurements. Generally, a guy will come out to your house and measure everything down to the inch, in all three dimensions. The professional will start with a mockup (be it in pencil or in a CAD system) with the precise details of your existing structure, and if they're really good, they'll come back through your home on a second visit to double-check all measurements. Only then will changes to your home be proposed.

Well, that's not how these programs work. Total 3D is really different from the others so I'll try to describe the data-entry process; this procedure will be helpful whether or not you buy this package because the embedded help is no help at all. When you start the program, you'll see 7 tabs across the bottom of the screen. Three of them are relevant for creating a sketch of your existing structure: "Space Plan", "Design Plan", and "Walk Through". If you have used other programs, the "Design Plan" screen looks pretty much like the others. With Total 3D, you're expected to input your floor plan in the "Space Plan". The first thing you'll notice is that the proposed rooms (Kitchen, Hall, Bedroom, Closet, etc) are all rectangles. And you'll walk around your own house and conclude that most rooms resemble rectangles but aren't quite...so how do you get this program to recognize your reality?

Here is a key hint not mentioned in this program's help: if you overlap two rooms (a real one and a fake one) in the Space Plan, then momentarily click on the Design Plan tab, then go back to the Space Plan and delete the fake room, you can generate a real room with a corner taken out of it. You can chop multiple corners out if you use multiple "fake" rooms by this technique. No need to be precise with dimensions at the outset: I'd recommend starting out with the "Wall and Room Snapping" pref set to 6 inches, getting the whole floor plan roughed in, and then setting the snap spacing down to 1 inch before clicking and dragging walls (in either view) to match your measurements.

That allows you to get the basic layout entered; if your home is all 90- and/or 45-degree angles, on a single floor, and the floors/ceilings are level, you should be able to develop a decent model of your structure. If you're trying to model complex walls, or have multiple floor levels, there are features in 3D Home Architect which go well beyond what you'll find in Total 3D. (I made a very precise model--with difficulty--of my home in 3D HA but quickly concluded that I can't do the same with Total 3D.)

As luck would have it, I helped a friend move last Sunday and I decided to throw together a sketch of his new kitchen. With Total 3D, I ran into the following problems:

* I couldn't get a couple of the cabinets to stay in place. When I switched from Space Plan to Walk Through and back, the cabinets snapped to a different position along the wall. (Exiting and restarting the program doesn't clear this condition.)

* The program doesn't remember what directory you keep your files in. To open an existing plan anywhere other than a subfolder of My Documents, you have to re-navigate to your directory every time. VERY annoying.

* Cabinets snap to a side wall even if you don't want them to. I can't figure out how to turn this off.

* In the Design view, if you want to modify/move an item, you have to go into Select mode (one of a half-dozen small tabs at the upper right). OK, fine: but sometimes instead of selecting an item it switches to Add or Measure mode, and then if you click again it'll do something completely different from what you intended.

* The font sizes in Annotate are hilariously oversized. I really can't add notes to my diagrams.

* If you add manual dimensions to a room, good luck trying to figure out how to move or delete them. At least (unlike the vexacious 3D HA) the dimensions are dynamically updated if you move the item (such as a wall) at one end.

* Upper cabinets are hung at ceiling level. There's a box where you can enter a new hang height but it beeps angrily if you enter anything.

* In fact the program seems to insist that a whole variety of things remain fixed at the ceiling. With 3D HA you have the freedom to raise/lower lighting fixtures and other objects but this doesn't.

* There is no ceiling design utility which would allow you to create soffits, trays, or angled sections. The world is flat, or at least the ceilings that you create for it with this program.

* The materials paintbrush operates in a truly bizarre way. You select an item, then you get a few options at the upper right and a series of color palettes beneath those. Choose the option (like Tile or Hardwood), then the palette. Then you get a too-limited set of choices. This part of the program simply needs to be yanked out and started over, in my opinion; the palette's broad variety should be the LAST option rather than the 2nd option you'd choose.

* You can't do a real electrical plan with this program. This is a SERIOUS omission. If you place a lightswitch on your diagram, it prints out as a barely-visible faceplate rectangle on the floor plan. It should print out as a large industry-standard dollar sign. An outlet should print out with its standard symbol, and so on. If you're redesigning a kitchen, you have to be able to see the electrical items on the floor plan, not just in 3D views.

* There is a "Product Catalog" in this program. Do not confuse it with anything useful! If you thought that a company like Merillat might have included accurate 3D renditions of its merchandise catalog to include here, you'd be disappointed (especially considering that some rival products actually do have this feature). Here, the product catalog just takes you to a separate screen showing pictures of products that can't be copied into your diagram.

* Copy/Paste is hobbled. You can't select multiple items or regions to move or copy. This is a serious handicap. (3D HA v8 has a similar limitation, alas. An older version was fine.)

* Like 3D HA, there are no options available for printing. It's a WYSIWYG editor so the only thing you can do is enable/disable on-screen view of various design elements before making hardcopy.

* Unlike its rivals, this program has almost no ability to change default options, or user generated libraries, for items to be added. Want your walls 4.5" thick instead of the program's hardwired 4"? Want to always use a certain style of kitchen cabinet? You'll find only a handful of settings available.

My overall impression of this software is very negative. It feels like version 2 rather than version 9. Clearly the developers have fixed some of the bugs (it only crashed once on me) that were reported by other reviewers, but it lacks polish and it lacks the ability to generate precise renditions of your existing home, let alone a polished presentation of what you'd like your renovation to look like.

I'll continue roaming the earth for a home-design suite that actually does what I like. Meanwhile it's possible that some of the engineers and marketeers working for one of these companies will actually listen to what we users have to say, and come out with a future version that does what we want, minus all the sluggish code bloat.

Specifically, I want to be able to enter a four-column spreadsheet of wall and cabinet dimensions (location, direction, length, height) into a program, have the program turn it into a proposed room layout, let me click/drag the rooms and walls to match my sketch. (Actually, I'd like to have a $100 electronic device that works with a $50 software package that I can walk through the rooms of the house to generate the entire diagram for me automatically.) Then I want to be able to save the whole existing-structure design as a template, and use that file to create a series of what-if scenarios at varying levels of detail (first an overall sketch to show the concept, and then a refined sketch of the final design). It shouldn't be *too* painful in either 2D or 3D mode to apply the finishes that I want.

The refined 2D sketch should be presentable to a general contractor and a building inspector to secure bids and permits. I'm not sure how much I care about the 3D views so many developers are wrongly obsessed with.

Thanks for listening!

Biggest Waste of Money
I bought this software to help design my lanscaping. Before I could start that, I had to build my house room by room on the program. Tedious and frustrating! You can use a sample house, but good luck finding one that looks like your house. While I was building my house, the program froze several times, and I had to start over. Finally, the house was built - sort of. I have a cape cod with dormers, couldn't figure out how to make the roof look right. I called tech support. After calling several times and hearing a recording saying no one could take my call, I finally reached a tech support rep. He clearly hated his job and didn't want to help. When I complained about walls and windows disappearing and the program freezing, he said "Yeah, that happens alot." I emailed him my design and he said he would work on it. That was a week ago. No response. I am computer literate, so this is not a case of the program being too advanced. It is poorly designed. I would reccommend a pencil and graph paper over this program.

Crash, Crash, Crash
I wish I would have read reviews of this product before purchasing it. I bought it from Target for $30. I knew it was not going to be top of the line software, but all I really wanted to was build a model of my home, import pictures of my furniture (which it says you can do), and try out different paint and decorating schemes. Unfortunately, this program is incapable of doing even the simplest tasks.

I have tried to create a model of my home multiple times. The problem is, once I encounter an error in the program and it shuts down (this happens pretty much every time I go from Space or Design Plan view to Walk Through view) my files are corrupted. I have done hours of work getting the measurements of rooms just right, but once the program has crashed, I am no longer able to open my file. I thought perhaps I was asking too much of the program, so I scaled back the house to one floor, then to one room. I finally tried to use one of their sample room plans. As soon as I went to Walk Through view and tried to change paint or fabric colors, the program crashed.

I do not have a wimpy computer. I have an Intel Pentium D 950 (3.4GHz), 2GB of system memory and 256MB of video memory on my NVIDIA GeForce 7800GTX. I can run Adobe Premiere and 3DS Max without encountering problems. I just can't seem to get this software to work.

The only positive thing I have to say is that I enjoyed messing around in the Idea Gallery. There are 20+ pictures of rooms that you can redecorate by selecting a wall, comforter, or window covering and try out different colors and patterns. Unfortunately, even though it told me I was successful in importing my photos and custom textures, I was never able to apply or even view them in the program.

Overall, I'd have say that this software sucks. I strongly advise anyone considering purchasing it to look at other home design programs.