Product Description

Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer Suite 7.0 is software developed by Chief Architect for home enthusiast remodeling and home design projects. This software helps you design the home of your dreams with 3D models, virtual tours, even more library items, easy to use building templates, a new Plant Encyclopedia and landscaping features with over 1,000 plant terrain and outdoor items. Combining the leading-edge home design software with the consumer design editorial expertise of Better Homes and Gardens, we have produced the best software tool for home and remodeling design.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2643 in Software
• Brand: Chief Architect
• Model: 045-501-7-M
• Released on: 2006-09-01
• Platforms: Windows 98, Windows XP, Windows Me, Windows 2000, Windows Vista
• Format: CD-ROM

Features

• Expert design tips from the editors of Better Homes and Gardens magazines
• Create a virtual look and feel of the design with actual colors, wallpaper, flooring, furniture, windows and window treatments
• Easily design kitchens and baths with plans and 3D layouts
• Choose from a library of over 6,000 items for your designs
• Automatically validates the design against standard building principles

Amazon.com
Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer Suite 7.0 is software developed by Chief Architect for home enthusiast remodeling and home design projects. This software helps you design the home of your dreams with 3D models, virtual tours, even more library items, easy to use building templates, a new Plant Encyclopedia and landscaping features with over 1,000 plant terrain and outdoor items. Combining the leading-edge home design software with the consumer design editorial expertise of Better Homes and Gardens, Home Designer Suite 7.0 is the best software tool you will find anywhere for home and remodeling design.

No matter your level of design expertise, Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer Suite 7.0 will get you moving toward a stunning visualized design of your dream home. The Getting Started Tutorial will guide you through basic design projects. Watch more than 30 videos for step-by-step instructions. Select from over 1,500 sample home plans or use the House Wizard to design your house. You can create your dream home today with the look and feel before it is built with styles, colors, wallpaper, flooring, and materials. Plus, you can quickly place and arrange walls, windows, doors, cabinets, and architectural objects from a library of over 4,300 items to create a 3D Model in minutes. Use the Library content to size your rooms, evaluate traffic flow, and create a visual model of your design.

Create your Dream Home Design your dream home today with Home Designer. Quickly place and arrange walls, windows, doors, cabinets, choose colors, place furniture, create decks and landscaping. Design and visualize your home with 3D Models and Virtual Tours.
Choose from Design Templates With Home Designer, you can quickly place and arrange walls, windows, doors, cabinets, choose colors, place furniture, create decks and landscaping.
Powerful Home Design Software Enjoy the same building and design tools the professionals use--Home Designer is made for the home enthusiasts. Powerful building tools like automatic roof generation, stairs, decks, framing, CAD, dimensioning, realistic 3D models, and Plan Check makes it easy for anyone to use.
Create Floor Plans Select from over 1,500 sample home plans or use the House Wizard to design your house.
Design Tools With the program's Planning Center, you can use Material Painter to create a virtual look and feel of the design before it is built. You can test your design with actual colors, wallpaper, flooring, furniture, windows, and even window treatments.
Building Tools You'll have complete automatic building tools for roof generation, framing, dimensioning, foundations, and more at your fingertips. You can even automatically generate a materials list for project cost estimating. The software includes a complete set of CAD (Computer Aided Design) tools to detail designs and Plan Check, which automatically validates the design against the most current building standards.

Customer Reviews

Some Suggested Improvements...
I recently had the onerous job of drawing several plans for an addition to my home. I had the option of hiring an architect ($$$), or doing the drawings myself--and I selected this software to do the later.

First of all, I was successful drawing 5 or 6 floor plans for my existing home and the addition. However there were some "hiccups" and problems along the way. Here is what I found:
- I gave up trying to create a roof that would look anything like what I needed to draw. This was true for my existing home as well as the roof for the addition. This was by far the biggest problem with this software--I watched various on-line "videos," looked for help in forums, etc. but I was unable to render it correctly. Big problem because I was unable to get a good 3D or elevation drawing and actually was forced to draw these views by hand (well, a ruler and pencil). The auto-generated roof function is totally useless unless you have a very simple roof structure.
- My home has walls of various thicknesses--while the software provides preselected wall types, it doesn't allow you to customize the thickness (which was a problem). So I had to use a "canned" masonry type wall (12" thick I recall) to represent a wall I have that's not masonry and about 18" thick (don't ask!). If you have a newer home with "standard" walls, then you probably won't have this problem. In my case, I don't think I have any "standard" walls (home is relatively old).
- Button layout is confusing--they would be better off following typical "Windows" layout. Easy to forget what the icons represent.
- I tried to use this software to lay out a garden--however I literally couldn't find any of the plants I'm growing in their library. I understand there's an optional product can purchase (which I didn't), but they really should provide a better "basic" choice of plants.
- Very difficult to add dimension lines--it's difficult to explain unless you try to use it. For example, you "drag" across an area you want to add a dimension line...it invariably sets one of the points to the middle of a wall--which isn't what you want if you want the interior dimension of a room. They don't provide a simple way to click on two "spots" and produce a dimension line. If a dimension line sits inside of a wall, it's very difficult to select it...on several occasions I was forced to delete the wall because I couldn't select and move the dimension line out of the way. There's an alt-click (I recall) method to select overlapping objects, but it sometimes just doesn't work.
- Sometimes, no matter what I did, I could not get a precisely sized object (like a wall's length). They have a "nudge" tool for precise sizing that doesn't work on all objects. Software has a propensity to "snap" to grids or other objects which can be really annoying. You can disable it, but it's hidden in some menu somewhere.
And so on-- there were many other minor irritations that I worked through. The bottom line (sic) is that I was able to get most of the layouts done (except anything that would show a roof)--but I had to "fight" the software in order to do it.

Know What the Program is NOT Before You Buy
I think this can be a fun suite of programs if you like to speculate about how a new project in your house or yard might turn out. A reasonable library of materials and a relatively simple design process allow you to create rough approximations.

There are software limitations, however, that will frustrate perfectionists. Design angles are limited to 7.5 degree increments, for instance, so getting the exact angle of your hedge, angled sidewalk, or slanted driveway may not be possible if that angle isn't divisible by 7.5 degrees.

Another example of limitations is that the roofing application makes no provision for certain circumstances in which two sections of roof have different slopes. The result is that you can't really recreate the roof on an L-shaped house unless the two branches of the L are the same width. I thought this was a user error until I found that the tech support solution was to widen the thinner section of the house to get the roof to line up right.

In short, the program is not going to provide architectural specs for a house or a reliable blueprint for landscaping your yard. Perfectionists will have to just "let it go" after a certain point. That having been said, the software IS fun if you are the sort of person who enjoys design software.

Fantastic for amateur home designers
I bought Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer Suite 7.0 because we were planning to remodel our house.

When I installed the software, the first thing I did was run around for ten minutes with a tape measure and sketchpad so I could set up the initial floor plan in the software. After another ten minutes I had the floor plan in the computer.

Over the next three evenings, my wife and I experimented with tearing out walls, moving walls, adding walls, extending the size of the house, adding rooms etc etc. The software allowed us to put in all fixtures and fittings - showers, tub, kitchen sink, fridge, stove and more. There are several camera view options too, so you can explore how the home will look with the changes you make. Fantastic!

The software cost less than $100, but we think it saved us thousands by allowing us to experiment with design decisions without having to go build them to discover they would not work - from positioning the toilet and shower in one bathroom, to the need to add an extra 5 feet to the laundry room.

Once the builders started the work, we were able to tweak the design as we went to take into account necessary changes - supporting walls we missed in our ignorance, changind door widths, locations, new colours for the walls, different floor coverings etc. Changes never took more than a few minutes.

Soon we plan to build a whole new house from the ground up. We will be able to use this software to make our own plans and designs before handing them over to an architect or draftsman to create a blueprint and fix the rough edges.

If you are experienced using any sort of design or drawing software, this package will be easy for you to use. For the inexperienced, there are helpful tutorials and videos. With a little patience, anyone should be able to use this software.

My best software purchase in YEARS!