Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer Suite 8.0

Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer Suite 8.0 [OLD VERSION] I have used 3D Home Architect 3 for several years and began to look for a replacement that included a landscape feature. After working with… BH&G Design 8.0 for a couple of weeks, I find it harder to use than 3DH 3.0 and I cannot get landscape walkways and steps to match my house elevations. The landscape feature works OK if I don't try and tie it to the house plan. I found an inexpensive 3D Home Architect 10 to try and found it very lacking, unfriendly and almost useless. I will continue to use BH&G 8.0 because it has several nice features that 3DH3 lacks.

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I am about to embark upon a full kitchen remodel, which includes the removal of a wall. My brother turned me onto the BH&G Home Designer software and I could not be happier. Although I have used CAD-based… programs before, it was purely at a novice level becuase of the steep learning curve required to create plans.However,I was able to get at least a 2-dimensional perspective. With BH&G I used the camera tool and got a true 3-D feel of what the room will be like after the remodel. I also found giant mistakes in my original concept which might not have stood out with a standard CAD program. I would highly recommend this to anyone about to remodel. Its relatively easy, fun, and has probably saved me thousands in design errors.

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I purchased this program to communicate our thoughts to our architect accurately. To that end it served us well. Our architect used AutoCAD so I had to redraw the plan into Home Designer Suite 8.0, which… turned out to be less difficult than I had expected based on other reviews. The program does have some shortcomings, such as difficult to change roof plan, not able to create a sitting area for stair landing, etc. Worse of all, the program would not allow you to change the template once you had drawn your plan with one. (However, there is a way to change template without having to redraw the whole plan but they don't tell you that.) But over all, the program was easy to use. It was particularly useful to be able to visualize the spaces in 3D, with the desired colors, materials, furniture, appliances, etc. It was also very useful for experimenting with the floor plan to get to the layout and flow that we want in our house. It helped us save some architectural design fees since we could show our architect precisely what we want done and not having to wait for their interpretations and deign iterations. We purchased the older version 8.0 because it cost half as much and we didn't need the extra capabilities, which our architect would provide.

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I'm using verion 7.0, but there's no upgrade to 8.0 for 7.0 users, so ... I've tried to model my own house half a dozen times with this thing, and it's just beyond frustrating. All the defaults make no… sense (why would I want to measure walls from the center of the wall, rather than the surface? Why would I care about measuring to roof lines??), it constantly moves walls as you add new ones, forcing me to re-measure and re-adjust where walls are supposed to be. And constant bugs, where it won't let me do what I want, loses data (I saved a file I spent two hours on, and when I went back to it, it was blank), I had it suddently think all walls were only 20 inches high, and was NEVER able to fix it, no matter what settings I altered.... It's an exercise in pure frustration. It's horribly difficult to use for this purpose. I cannot recommend it for anyone, and wish to god I could get my money back. Do NOT buy this if you're hoping to model your existing home in hopes of having it help you redecorate or remodel.

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