Custom Home 3D Design 4.0 (Win)

The learning curve is gentle, especially if you've worked with graphics programs before. The tutorial is not the first thing you'll lay eyes on, but it's worth finding. It tells you what you need to know simply and thoroughly. The manual covers more ground, but like most software manuals, it's dull and ugly. Use it as a last resort.

The main Home Architect program is dedicated to a split-screen layout of your design. The left half of your screen is a 2-D overhead view that lets you drag and drop walls, doors, windows, and furniture into your design. The right half is a 3-D rendered view where you look at what you're doing as if you were standing in the room.

Custom Home includes a photo library of home designs, the kind that you see in magazines and can't actually imagine people living in. It also features interior design collections featuring current decorator trends in furniture and décor.

After you've doodled with the graphics part of the program, look at the design guide, which contains useful information for remodeling and upgrading a home. It has practical information like how to choose a contractor, and stylistic tips about color, texture, and composition in interior design.

Custom Home can handle curve balls such as oddly shaped rooms, but it doesn't do fine detail. And, of course, no program can simulate every weird thing you actually put in your house. It approximates pretty well though, allowing you to import photos of your current home to design around, and you can build your own furniture out of basic geometric shapes if you can't find what you want in the supplied furniture types.

Be prepared to spend a fair bit of time with this. If you plan to do a whole apartment or house, it will take several hours getting everything set up like you want it. And have a tape measure handy--you'll be jumping up a lot to measure objects around you. However, if you're willing to make the investment, Custom Home can save you head- and backaches when you want to rethink the space you live in. --Jeff Quick

Amazon.com Product Description
Custom Home 3D Design 4.0 is a suite of five software programs designed to help the user design, budget, visualize, and share ideas for the home. Users will learn design techniques from the Home Design Guide, glean ideas from thousands of showcase homes from the Street of Dreams Collection, modify photos of their homes with new decor ideas, and design photo-realistic 3-D renderings of their dream living space. Users can also share 3-D home plans and take a real-time virtual walk through their designs with friends and family over theInternet.

One of the elements of the suite, Sierra Home Architect 4.0, includes an all-new tutorial that walks beginners through the design process from start to finish. Users can begin with one of more than 250 professional floor plans and designer rooms, or replicate rooms from their own home and remodel on screen. The improved interface guides users through the process of planning the layout in 2-D, while a split screen displays the 3-D rendering simultaneously. Every detail of the home can be customized to try out new looks, with enhanced 3-D imaging and more than 4,000 3-D objects, including furnishings, brand name appliances, and home accessories. Users can also change the lighting in their computer-designed dream home to visualize the look in morning, afternoon, and night, with lights on or off. More than 1,000 paint, wood, wallpaper, and stone textures are available to help users visualize flooring, upholstery, window treatments, and more.