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Better Homes and Gardens Architectural Home Designer [OLD VERSION] | ![Better Homes and Gardens Architectural Home Designer [OLD VERSION]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61roOD%2Bv4wL._SL160_.jpg)
| From: Chief Architect Category: Software
List Price: $199.99 Buy New: $150.00 as of 11/21/2009 14:17 CST details You Save: $49.99 (25%)
New (2) from $150.00
Seller: CAQB Rating: 10 reviews
Format: CD-ROM Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows, Windows XP Media: DVD-ROM Operating System: Windows Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1 Dimensions (in): 13 x 10.1 x 2
Model: AD80MN0AZ1 UPC: 750839061047 EAN: 0750839061009
Release Date: January 15, 2008 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | Powerful software for Home Design, Remodeling, Interiors, Kitchens & Baths, Landscaping, Site Planning and more | | • | Powerful Automatic Building and Design Tools like One-Click Automatic Roofs and Automatic Dormers, Material Painter, Color Chooser, Deck Designer tools and more | | • | Better Homes and Gardens Design Inspiration Gallery organized by room type; Exclusive Design Planning Center with Expert "how-to" Design Advice | | • | Create Accurately Scaled Floor Plans with 3D Design Tools and Virtual Walk Thru Tools | | • | Choose from over 7,000 built-in Library Items or import your own for unlimited possibilities; Over 3,200 realistic landscaping plants--with plant encyclopedia data |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description Create Your Dream Home... Better Homes and Gardens Architectural Home Designer provides an advanced yet easy to use set of tools for Home Design, Remodeling, Interior Design, Kitchens, Baths, Decks, Landscaping, Site Planning and Cost Estimation.
Amazon.com Create Your Dream Home... Better Homes and Gardens Architectural Home Designer provides an advanced yet easy to use set of tools for Home Design, Remodeling, Interior Design, Kitchens, Baths, Decks, Landscaping, Site Planning and Cost Estimation. Create your dream home today.
View Product Demo. | Use the Pathway tool to design curb-appealing landscaping using stone, pavers, or sidewalks--line with trees, shrubs, flowers and more. | Design your ideal kitchen--move walls, create new cabinets, add appliances, and more. | Exclusive All-in-One Home Design Solution - Exclusive Better Homes and Gardens Design Planning Center for expert design advice
- Choose from over 2,500 Sample Plans
- Design Inspiration Galley contains photos by type for design and inspiration design ideas
- Choose from built-in home style templates or create your own custom home design, or use the House Wizard
- Powerful building tools like automatic roof generation, dormers, stairs, framing and foundations
Get Started Quickly and Easily - The Quick Startup Options Guide will help you begin with "How-To" tutorials based on the type of your project
- Use the House Wizard for quick and easy layout of your rooms
- Select from the pre-designed Home Design and Landscaping Style Templates complete with colors, cabinets, decks and more
- Exclusive Design Planning Center for up-to-date How-To and Design Tips from the experts to help in your design process
- Includes Step-by-Step Tutorial DVD Packed with over 40 easy "step-by-step" tutorial training videos that will quickly get you started on your next home design project
Kitchen and Bath Design - Design the Kitchen of your dreams--move walls, create new cabinets, add appliances. Design your perfect workspace!
- Plan the new layout of your bathroom with custom cabinets, sinks, showers and garden tubs. It's easy to visualize your ideas in 3D.
- Create custom cabinets in minutes by choosing your own colors, countertops, door styles and more
- Design your new kitchen or bath with using the Cabinet Designer Tools
- Use the Cabinet Designer tools to create unlimited of cabinet styles. Choose your own colors, countertops and door styles.
Interior Design - Use the Better Homes and Gardens Design Planning Center to help guide your designs with guidelines, tips and expert advice
- Design Inspiration Gallery--Our gallery of photos will help you to jump start your design and decorating style ideas with inspirational photos by rooms
- Material Painter lets you apply colors and materials quickly and easily
- Choose from thousands of colors and textures or create your own materials using a digital photograph
- Design for your lifestyle and personality--change colors, add lighting and choose furniture to accent your new room
Glass House View provides a full translucent view of your design. | Choose from over 3,200 plants with the Plant Chooser. | Decks and Landscaping - Powerful deck and patio tools allow you to design and visualize your new deck with 3D models and can help you estimate the costs
- Design single or multi-level decks complete with automatic deck framing
- Quickly lay out your deck with stairs and arrange furniture
- Deck foundations automatically generate to match sloped lots
- Exclusive Better Homes and Gardens Plant Encyclopedia
- Choose from over 3,200 plants with the Plant Chooser
- Plant Hardiness Zone reference maps
- See what your plants will look like in 0-20 years
- Pathways--Use the Pathway tool to design curb-appealing landscaping using stone, pavers, or sidewalks--line with trees, shrubs, flowers and more
3D Models and Virtual Tours - Design in 2D and 3D. 3D Views are automatic with a point-and-click of the camera tool.
- Glass House View provides a full translucent view of your design
- Doll House View, a 3D overview without the roof, is an effective tool for space planning of furniture placement and traffic flow
- Create a Virtual Tour--draw your record line to Automatically Generate; or record your camera movements
- Visualize your home with day and night views
- Assemble a scale model of your design with Model Maker
- Generate shadows from the sun for realistic 3D views
- Point-and-click to remove wall surfaces, or use 3D Cross-Section Elevation Slider to quickly create a 3D slice of your desired view
Site Planning & Estimating - Use Automatic Build Terrain and Terrain Perimeter tools to create flat, irregular shaped, or sloped lots--use a GPS to import or enter elevation data
- Create plot and perimeter plans; automatically generate a 3D model of your actual terrain
- Make your backyard design come alive using several easy-to-use terrain and landscaping tools. Add a pool or pond and visualize in 3D.
- Sprinkler Designer tools to easily layout sprinkler zones
- Fences and Driveways--With the Fencing tools you can choose a variety fencing styles and custom gates. You will also find driveway, sidewalk and curbing tools
- Hill and Valley tools make it easy to add gardens, beds and slopes that automatically appear in 3D views. Choose from landscaping style templates or create your own.
- Cost Estimating--Don't be surprised by the cost of your project. Automatically generate a complete spreadsheet for your project costs, broken down by category. Calculate the amount of lumber for your deck or concrete required for that new patio.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 10
Great for remodeling, landscaping, interior design concepts, but... September 8, 2009 S. Mager (Glens Falls, NY USA) I trialed this software in hopes that I could create drawings that could be provided to a draftsman to review, or to work with drafters that work in the "big brother" - Chief Architect. After working in Chief Architect and Softplan demo packages, I found the BH&G Architectural Home Designer software was relatively easy to navigate and begin to create basic house & garage layouts.
In starting to spend more time in the details that are important to contractors, drafters, etc., I found the software was limited in its capabilities (not a surprise for spending less than $[...]). An example of a shortcoming is the software's inability to provide dimensions to exterior wall framing (exterior dimensions are to the exterior surface of the siding (e.g. vinyl/brick). While this may be useful for someone making an addition/modification to an existing house, it creates issues with contractors in properly locating walls, etc..
I also found that the 3D rendering would create some oddities, but can't blame that entirely on the software, as it could have been my PC's video card, as the oddities would appear/disappear as I move about in the 3D screen.
I think for $[...] it provides a lot of bang for the buck and you can produce layouts of different plans very quickly, giving you a good idea of different concepts, but if you're thinking that you'll be able to develop working drawings that you can provide to subcontractors using this software, I'd skip this version and step up at least to the BH&G Home Designer Pro ($[...]) - which can produce drawings on C-Size paper, or if your design is complex enough, you may need to step up to Chief Architech's true "Professional" software - "Chief Architect - X2 Lite" ($[...]) or full blown X2 ($[...]) ([...]). I am a believer in Chief's product after thoroughly working my way through the demos, and depending on your needs, you'll likely find one of their packages meets your needs.
Unstable, not so easy to use. May 20, 2009 Carol (Chatsworth, CA United States) I really had my hopes up when I spent $200 on this product. Getting the basic wall design is pretty straight forward, but when you try to more in and get to the details I found that the screen wouldn't redraw, or the image reduced in size to nearly nothing and finally would crash my computer. I do a lot of video and photo editing and my computer doesn't crash very often, except with this software.
I'm really sorry I wasted my money. I wish I would have purchased the least expensive product and see how it worked, before investing so much money on a product that does not work for me at all.
Amazing still! January 14, 2009 D. Seskey (Pittsburgh, PA) 0 out of 1 found this review helpful
In high school I used a higher end program made by the same company. I was expecting this to not be nearly as nice or have the same abilities, I was wrong. I am now in college as a pre-med/computer engineering major who is doing the courses to get the undergraduate certification for architecture (then to my masters) and this program is great!
The university wanted us to buy a program through them for $500+ more and this is better than the program.
One thing I like thought, whether you are an architect, home design enthusiast or just want to have fun, this program is great.
The walk through is a tad different from older versions but it gets easy as you do it more.
An excellent tool to create MOST floor plans and visualize projects December 31, 2008 GraBird (Cumming, GA United States) 2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I'm an amateur architect (never pursued a degree but have been designing and have helped build renovations, additions, custom furniture, etc.), so I was eager to finally get myself a good, cheap CAD design tool. I was very pleased by this program, and it does MOST of what you'll need it to do.
The only frustrating parts were the floor limitation (1 basement and 2 other floors max, it auto-generates a plain open "attic" for you), and the roof concepts (to create 2nd floor dormers, extend a roof from the 1st floor, put your knee-wall in the right position and it will automatically take of its height). You'll also need to be creative with the use of invisible walls to solve a lot of issues.
It is extremely important to play around with simple test models. I had a difficult multi-angle roof additiona that I wanted to do and it always auto-generated the roof in the wrong ways. So I built a dummy version with just that room and a dummy box for the main house, and it became a lot easier to understand what the roof parameters meant.
For visualizing additions, it's great. There are a lot of items in the library, and online you can get a lot more free bonus content (note that the bulk of the bonus content is in the first "Download Now" link -- easy to overlook). And never forget that you can always select geometric shapes from the library and texture them as needed -- great to manually create single steps vs. using the stair tool.
Some things like huge half-round windows are provided too, but they aren't entirely flexible and the library selection is limited to some basic types. You need to upgrade to the Pro version to get full control over fancier windows, but most standard windows are easily generated in this version.
The terrain editor can also be a little frustrating, especially if your yard is sloped and tiered like mine. Play around with Flat Regions and Elevation Lines. (Pro gets you Elevation Splines which auto-curve.) And the way to create stairs will take some experimentation (clicking between 2 sets of stair to generate a landing, definitely see the tutorial about this).
But it's a great tool for visualizing rooms, trying different paint colors, etc. For MOST purposes, this version will be just fine.
For about $300 more, the Pro version gets you a lot more flexibility with editing windows (any configuration possible and editable), better terrain control, and the ability to manually generate and connect roof surfaces, and no limit on how many floors your house can have (great if you have a finished attic).
The tutorials are good, but sometimes they are version-specific and refer to things you can only do in the Pro version! THAT is frustrating and I should really take away a star for it.
Overall, it's a well made product, easy to navigate, and relatively quick to learn. For most home projects and visualizations, it will serve you well.
But if you're an aspiring or amateur architect, you WILL want to upgrade to the Pro version very quickly. So just expect that expense will be coming soon afterwards. (BTW, they do offer occassional special deals for upgrading, so just watch for them.)
Have fun!
Best for the price September 24, 2008 C. Ricketts (Nashville, TN) 0 out of 2 found this review helpful
For the price- this is the best program available. I do find it a bit tempermental when adjusting location of windows and doors- especially if you are setting it up in order to do a remodle or redocoration of an existing room/house. Does have a lot more options than others in the price range- but is frustrating if you want to be exact. So- don't plan on making it that way- it does give you the 3D- but the walk thru option isn't as great as the box says. It helped me do what I wanted to do- add an extension onto our house & also consider a remodle of our master bath- but if you are serious about building more than once- it might be better to invest in the next level.
I haven't used the landscape portion yet- plan on that next.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 10
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