Format:DVD-ROM Platforms:Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows XP Media:DVD-ROM Edition:Home Batteries Included:No Operating System:Windows 7 Shipping Weight (lbs):1.2 Dimensions (in):7.6 x 5.4 x 2.6
Easy!! Exclusive "nexGen Smart Room" technology, create a house in 59 seconds!
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Building Green we not only include tips on eco-friendly building but materials as well.
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Integrated Features! Tutorials, instructional videos, shop for materials, find a contractor, import from Google Sketch Up and more with out having to leave your design.
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Change Your Living Space, Inside & Out - Complete room makeovers; add outdoor kitchens & cabinets, decks, fireplaces, and much more!
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Technology that thinks as you draw ¿ We have enhanced our Logicursor technology to provide automatic snapping to endpoints, object centers, midpoints, and intersections for all types of drawing tools and shapes.
Editorial Reviews:
Product Description Home Design Just Got Better.The leaders in Home Design Software 11 years in a row and counting find out why!Designing Made Easier! Updated and enhanced features along with our NexGen Technology make designing a house fun and easy bringing your ideas to life within minutes! Need ideas? No problem. Several new sample house plans have been added to help get you started! Need help? We ve got you covered! Our new centralized training center provides instructional videos tutorials and sample drawings so professional advice is just a click away.Indoor and Outdoor - Customize Your Design! NEW furniture groupings allow you to drag & drop an entire furniture arrangement into your room. Move individual pieces around to fit your design vision. Global Sun Positioning takes the guesswork out of setting lighting conditions. Set the sun angle for your plan based on your geographical location. NEW updated cabinet and outdoor living objects make your outdoor entertainment ideas a reality! Create outdoor kitchens decks seating areas fireplaces fountains and so much more!! Save Money and Energy! Save money and energy with our Going Green function! Choose from a library of eco-friendly building materials and get advice from our integrated building green design tips! Control material and project costs with our Estimator . Easily edit your material list and print it out! Order blueprints or shop on-line without leaving your design. System Requirements: Windows 7 Certified - Runs on Windows 7 Vista & XP. Format: WIN XPVISTA Genre: PRODUCTIVITY Age: 664446328007 UPC: 664446328007 Manufacturer No: 32800
Customer Reviews: Pleasantly surprised amateurMarch 18, 2010 matthew bauer(PERRIS, CA, US) 13 out of 16 found this review helpful
I purchased this software in order to visualize changes I wanted to make to my home. I was apprehensive at first because I thought it would be difficult. I have tried using this type of program years ago and never could figure it out. I'm so glad I gave it another shot! The instructional videos answered all my questions before I even got started and walked me through how to utilize the features. I found it so easy to drag each room and just drop it where I wanted it to go. I also was able to change the paint, flooring, and even add my furniture with the click of my mouse so that I could see how my home would look when it was finished. I also liked the green features the program provided. Being able to save money and help the environment is very important to my wife. We were able to click on an icon and see where we could save energy and even got some ideas on materials to use. There was even a feature that kept track of the building materials I was going to need so that I ensured I stayed within my budget. I had so much fun doing the inside that I decided to try and play around with my outdoors. Although I was not intending to redo any landscaping, I have ideas for the future. I live in the desert and have a hard time keeping plants alive in the summer. The program has a tool that helped me find the types of plants that work best for where I live.
Another Good OneApril 21, 2010 LW(KETCHUM, ID, US) 11 out of 15 found this review helpful
I have been a punch user for the past several years. This new version is a wonderful improvement and includes a lot of additional features, but the basics for manipulating the objects and navigating the interface are the same. Great, since I didn't want to invest a ton of time learning something completely new. The interface is very intuitive and there is a new training center that provides instructional videos, tutorials, and sample drawings to give you ideas.
I purchased the software because I wanted to reproduce my existing house. I very quickly created my property boundaries and correctly placed my house on the defined terrain. After just a few minutes, I had a rough draft of my home. Within an hour, I had all the doors, windows, and fixtures in placed with accurate dimensions. I did take measurements prior to starting. This is an excellent tool for planning, remodeling, and visualizing new ideas for your home. Changing walls, door placement, fixtures, etc. takes just seconds of pointing and clicking. While you can get things to the point where you can either get very accurate materials lists or enough information to save time and money with a contractor, it does take a bit of time. There are dozens of included object libraries and instant web access allows you to shop for building products, accessories, and decorating items. You also have the ability to customize all of the properties of a particular object such as countertops, cabinets, and so on for color, texture, grain, etc. As always,online support is also available to answer questions.
Although I was interested in some interior work, the first priority was to make changes and updates to my landscaping. My yard and has a variety of elevations and grading. I am currently working with the topography and elevation tools so that I can create an accurate template to map out exactly what I want. The most difficult part of this process was getting good measurements of the variations in my yard so that I would have an accurate starting point to transfer to the program. If you are starting from scratch, it is a lot easier.
I recommend taking advantage of the quick start tool and video tutorials when getting started. It makes the process easy! Overall a great product for the money. Lots of features and easy to use. Highly recommended.
A Ruler has more capability than this programAugust 29, 2010 John Zornes(Campbell, CA USA) 4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Rarely do I feel like I have been ripped off when I purchase software but this makes me regret ever purchasing the software. I had an older version and it was quirky and difficult but you could get most things done. I decided to upgrade based on the "new interface" and powerful new features. WHAT A JOKE.
- The auto roof generating does what it wants. Yes, you can create your own roof but it will generate it's roof over yours and even if you delete generated roof the program puts it back. You had better want the roof they picked or you are out of luck.
- The garage has a perimeter foundation not a slab and it is difficult/impossible to change. You would think that a garage is a slab but apparently most people park indoors
- Garage is part of livable area and no way to change the behavior
- Rooms randomly change name
- Exterior walls end up segmented in odd ways so there is no way to easily generate a gabled house end and let's not discuss stupid stuff like the gables point the opposite direction of the style, etc.
- They removed most of the items from the library so your choices are VERY limited
- The FAQ says you cannot import library items so you had better like what is left of spend a ton of time drawing your own. There is no way to expand or leverage other work.
- There is only about 6 door styles left so you had better want one of those. AND you had better not want sliding doors on a closet unless it is a sliding glass door (yes clear and can't be painted).
- The grid randomly locks things to specific sizes and index steps. Never mind how you set up the grid parameters.
- There are no scroll bars so you can't zoom in to work on an area and move to another area. You have to zoom out and zoom in again.
- You have to paint doors, etc. from both sides and casings from both sides if you want them to change color completely. That is a lot of clicks to get a white door. Plus, you can't do it from anywhere you can see them, you have to be inside the room. That means you have to get inside of a closet if you want the door to be painted; given the narrow view angle the small space is tricky.
- If a casing is 0" wide it leaves the inside edge of a door wood grain even if the doors are painted AND there is no way to change the color.
- No full height cabinets and no ability to change door styles unless you go design your own cabinet library.
The list of issues goes on but I finally gave up because you can't even draw the most simple floorplan. I am sure that there are even more problems when you start with landscaping, electrical, plumbing, cabinets.
There is no value in this product and I regret having given money to this company. I feel as if it is falsely advertised and that my money was essentially stolen. Purchase this product at your own peril.
Download Demo First - see what you think before you buyAugust 29, 2010 T. F. Kelly(Tampa, FL) 3 out of 3 found this review helpful
There was only two reviews, so I had to ad mine.
BACKGROUND
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I am a Sr Software Engineer with 25+ years of designing software in over 18 programming languages and compensated accordingly. So a program has to be pretty bad for me to say this... I have years in CAD as well as programs like Visio... This program is challenged, complex does not apply, instead poor user interface, basically antiquated.
Usage
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Installing was a snap, with no unexpected messages etc. Went right in. I installed it in both Win7 x64 & WinXP SP3 wiht out issue. Now to the fun part. I went over the videos which were really clean and straight to the point. The problem was I could not get the software to work the way the videos showed it.
Mouse Issues
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The main problem was that the tool bar has some dropdown options, when you click on the icon, well it did not work at all in Win7 x64. Under XP I was able to actually get them to work, but just barely.
Overall
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The walls kept snapping no matter what I turned off. I could not put accurate dimensions in. I tried painting the walls in a room and walking inside, it was extremely difficult. I could go on and on with the detailed problems. The interface was very dated, looks like a late 1990's program which has been patched and patched to get it to run in modern OS's. So it was hard to navigate in the drawing.
Support
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Looks good, but no updates or comments about the problems I am having on two separate computers. I wish I had downloaded the demo first. Maybe I got a really bad copy, all I know is I am out $$ dollars as I bought it months ago and did not get a chance to try it. No ones fault, but mine.
Download Demo First
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Each person has different level of acceptance, I was very disappointed, for me it was a waste of time to install it, not once, but twice. No matter. Please follow the link below to download a demo version. I am assuming it works, since I found it, but did not try it first etc...
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VERY DIFFICULT - not intuitive at allSeptember 3, 2010 Bing Fan(CT United States) What a frustrating piece of software. Limited tutorials, not intuitive at all, help sucks. Save your money. I've used many CAD packages (and I'm even a software engineer). I don't know who wrote this POS, but I'm thinking China (and now they're laughing at us).
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