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Leaves much to be desired

- by Reviewer: C. Raff "curtis_r"

A few years ago, when designing 2 rooms at my office, I became fluent in most
of the off-the-shelf, under $100 design programs. I recall switching between 2
applications that each had great features, and would have made a perfect product
if merged. One was 3D Home Architect 3, the other (which I can't recall the
name) had some similarities to Home Designer 6. Having just tried 3D Home
Architect 5 & Home Designer 6, I still have the same feeling: each has very
strong & very weak points.

Having now sampled both applications, I can't seem to figure how so many
people posted hate for 3DHA. I think it's a tie between the two.

My big criticism w/ HD6 is that you cannot manually change wall dimensions.
It was incredibly tedious to recreate rooms based on the dimensions I had.
Apparently, the pro version ($500) allows this function, but I wasn't going to
pay that for my little project. When you click a wall you've created in 3DHA, it
displays measurements to every other nearby wall. You then can click any of
those measurements to resize it manually. This is the absolute most logical way
to get exact measurements.

In HD6, the library of items is pretty skimpy compared to 3DHA. 3DHA easily
allows custom items to show in the 'library' so it's easy to reuse them.

As for the 3D rendering, 3DHA really sucks. It is incredibly difficult to get
the camera view into custom positions. This is where HD6 is best. You can
arrange multiple cameras in your layout, each corresponding to another rendered
window. You can also double-click the camera in the layout & it brings up other
view settings such as height & field of vision angle.

As for working w/ your layout, 3DHA allows you to drag a selection tool over
multiple items, creating a multiple selection. You can then move all of those
items at once, or select their properties. For changing the color of multiple
items, this is great. HD6 does not allow you to select multiple items & then
change characteristics of them. Imagine having a room you want to change the
color of all of the cabinets. According to my findings, in HD6 you'd have to
change each cabinet one by one. In 3DHA you would just hold the shift key &
select all of the cabinets, then make your changes.

Maybe I'm asking for too much from <$100 programs, but it sure seems both
programs make it much harder to do things then they have to.

Featured Article: Leaves much to be desired by Reviewer: C. Raff "curtis_r" .

Excellent and Easy - I am thinking about converting part of a room into a bathroom, then adding another room to my home. I was able to install this software, fire it up and then essentially diagram out my entire home in about 3 hours. You can be as detailed as you want by adding accessories, furniture, etc.

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