3D Home Architect Home & Landscape Deluxe Suite Version 9 Reviews
3D Home Architect Home & Landscape Deluxe Suite Version 9
- The ultimate easy-to-use home and landscape design solution that will ensure your dream home becomes a reality
- An intuitive user interface makes for a quick and pleasurable design experience
- Home and landscape design tools will allow you to modify every detail of your home and landscape project
- Create blueprints that include every detail of your home design
- Templates and libraries help you design your ideal home, room, patio, and more to your specifications
3D Home Architect Home & Landscape Design Suite 9 does a lot more than lay out your home and landscape designs. It gives you the ability to fine-tune every element of your home design or landscaping project. The wide range of tools & wizards will help you achieve your goals fast. Easy to use, yet powerful enough to generate buildable blueprint-style plans, it’s the only design program you’ll need. Accurate top-down representations of furnishings and other design elements in 2D designer’s view en
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(out of 22 reviews)
List Price: $ 39.99
Price: $ 17.93
Punch! Home Design Studio Pro (Mac)
- All the tools you need to design your house inside and out, right out of the box
- Draw your design in 2D; take a 3D Hollywood-style walk through as your 2D creative changes auto-update in the 3D view
- Assistants for cabinets, roofs, etc., editable room & deck templates, plus an extensive drag & drop library
- PhotoView lets you personalize your design with imported photos; add ambient realism with Precision Lighting Planner
- Includes a massive plant library along with our popular automatic growth tool, so you can plan spacing and see what your landscape will look like a few years down the road
HOME DESIGN STUDIO PROPunch! Home Design Studio Pro, for the Mac, makes your home design experience more powerful than ever. Written from the ground-up, for Mac users by Mac users. All the tools you need–work smarter and faster with simple tools that make designing as fun as it is powerful! All the tools you need to design your house inside and out, right out of the box. Start designing right out of the box with the intuitive interface, assistants for cabinets, roof
Rating: 
(out of 15 reviews)
List Price: $ 249.00
Price: $ 197.87
Home Accents Metal Easels / Plate Stands New 2 Designs Brass Silver or Black
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Review by Aaron M. Busch for 3D Home Architect Home & Landscape Deluxe Suite Version 9
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I liked Home Architect Version 8, but then I tried Version 9 because I thought it would be better. After 10 minutes of this program, I wanted to toss it out the door. See, this program isn’t owned by the original company anymore, they’re owned by Punch! Software.
- Any means to customize objects such as Counters or Appliances have been removed. You can Scale them, but you cannot increase or decrease the width.
- If you have knowledge with 3DS Max, you could create a 3D Object, but otherwise you need to use the Objects that Punch! provides. Sacrifices will be made because many vital 3D Objects won’t be available.
Want to rotate your Object? No problem! Each time you want to do it, just click on Edit, click on Rotate, type in the Number of Degrees to Rotate, click on the “Degrees” button, then click Okay. In the previous version, each Object would have a Square and a Triangle. You’d just click on the Triangle on the Object, then Rotate. That’s been removed.
The Generate Project has been removed. Want to know what you have used? What the project will cost? Too bad.
They removed the Design Wizard completely. The reason I liked 3D Home Architect was because it was different than AutoCAD or DeltaCAD. Those who weren’t too knowledgable with those two programs could try 3D Home Architect because the Easy-to-Use Software was more driven towards people who just wanted to make up a quick Floor Plan.
It took me over an Hour just to build the Kitchen. The counters just would not align themselves properly. Objects seemed incomplete, or improperly designed.
Remember the Grid Lock, Object Lock, or Alignment Lock? They’ve been removed.
Getting a specific Camera View on your House no longer exists. You’re just given a 3D Model of your home that you can walk around with the Mouse. You could do that in the previous version too, but they stripped out all the other Features in 3D Mode.
Sure, you can purchase this product, you could download it at their website but there’s no Trial Software, No Refunds, No Exchanges… It says there’s Refunds or Exchanges on the website, but they don’t tell you which ones. EVEN with the Proof of Purchase, tough luck.
If the developers happen to read this, 3D Home Architect WAS a GREAT program. This is just incomplete. It’s like you’ve released it way too early.
I have an idea… Go back to Schhol for Programming & Design because Version 9 is just a headache. It’s incomplete, and much more inaccessible, difficult, and frustrating than Version 8. A Trial Version really needs to be offered, otherwise you’re just conning people out of $40.00+ per product sold.
To everyone else, I’ve said my piece. You’re welcome to purchase it, but I guarantee that once you’ve seen just how bad this program is, you’ll want your money back.
Review by Salim Al Amri for 3D Home Architect Home & Landscape Deluxe Suite Version 9
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I have purchased this software based on the Review “Home Design Software Reviews 2007″ and this software is rated as second. I have been using “3D Home Architect Home Design 6″ before which I find it by far much better then this. For me buying this software was really a waste of time and money:
- 3D rendering takes a lot of my machine resource and time; untill you get fustrated;
- 2 door styles only are provided;
- 2 types of 3D rendering only are provided. No option to add additional camera;
- you cannot edit any object in 3D view.
- objects have no or limited properties to play with…
After wasting this money I am now only looking to upgrade my old software with landscaping which I have been unable to get any upgrate…
Review by D. Fulfer for 3D Home Architect Home & Landscape Deluxe Suite Version 9
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I got this program because on another site i was surveyed as the second best of all design programs of its size. This program pretty much sucks. I have version 6.0 and thought that was nice, although lacking in many aspects. In it you can view the frame work and print out a pseudo-blueprint. I have experience in framing and manually drawing framing plans so the frame generation on 6.0 was pretty close. Close enough to pass code. Also, 6.0 allows for FAST circular rooms. I build Southwest style homes and circular rooms are a must.
I got version 9.0 thinking it had value adding features. Realized after a few hours that they actually took away most of the features away. No circular rooms, no frame view, hell, no ceiling tool! I can’t figure out how to put a ceiling in there!
On the bright side, it does allow to design some Santa Fe style houses…custom roof pitches, and vigas. nice….
This program is an overall dissapointment. Would have been nice if i could design some elements in 6.0 then import it into 9.0 for other elements then reimport it into 6.0 for the frame view…but it’s basically a fresh, new program. Should be called 1.0. Seems like i’ll have to pay $2500 for a home design program like Chief Architect or SoftPlan.
Review by Office Wizard for 3D Home Architect Home & Landscape Deluxe Suite Version 9
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I was disappointed in how hard it was, working in 2D, to control the dimensions of rooms, and how little flexibility the program offered the user in changing the properties of individual walls without changing the characteristics of other walls. Perhaps there are ways of doing things buried in the software, but they were not apparent or intuitive if they are in fact there. This package appears to be a fairly limited version of more capable software by Punch, and I would not have bought it if there had been a free trial period.
Review by K. Krueger for 3D Home Architect Home & Landscape Deluxe Suite Version 9
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This is one of the worst programs I’ve ever used. Period. I am a programmer, and I am really annoyed by bad, poorly thought-out software. My first indication was when I went to register, and they required a company name for HOME Architect. This is just plain sloppiness, and it gave me a bad feeling. Second, when I started the software, it dumped me to a blank screen, ready to go. No tour, no starting point. I went to the help, and the help file was useless. I went to the site, and they said there was a PDF manual. The manual is abysmal. By page 17, it tells you how to view in 2D and 3D. What good is that, when pages 1-17 say nothing about how to start a drawing?!
Sample/demo files? I can’t find any, and I’m pretty sure there are none. I saw on the Punch! website that the homes on their box covers were purchased from stock photography, not made with the software. This is utterly dishonest!
More idiocy: The scrollbars let you leave the drawing area completely. In software design, this is considered malpractice. I accidentally got off the drawing area, and in trying to find my way back, I got lost, and the window started to flash wildly. Could the program get any more awful?
Really, this software crosses the line from bad into the fraud territory.
Review by Patrick G. Vaughan Jr. for Punch! Home Design Studio Pro (Mac)
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I am sorely disappointed. Let me first say that I am a graphics professional, with image, video, and 3D modeling and animation background. So I did not expect incredible quality or even an easy to use program. But this thing is ridiculous.
First off YOU CANNOT IMPORT YOUR OWN TEXTURES. We are doing our kitchen and I was hoping to visualize materials, but even with a pretty extensive library of materials (I found the granite we wanted to use for counters), I could not import our tile options for the backsplash, and other things. Don’t get me wrong you can import image files…as image planes, but not as textures!
Object library is stupid. 3 types of cabinets, categorized under lt cabinets and dk cabinets. Funny though not all cabinet shapes and sizes are there in all 3 colors. For example there may be a dark raised panel base cabinet, but not a light colored one. So then I use the custom workshop pro, where you can place any material on any object, and I think cool I can just texture each size and shape I need as needed. Yeah if you want to manually drag the texture to each shape (about 30) that make up each cabinet. Then I try the cabinet assistant, this should work for me right…wrong. The assistant has 4 steps, 1 pick cabinet type, 2 pick the direction the cabinet should face, 3 pick sizes and door style (shaker or raised panel) and your done! What about wood type and color? What about the other 10-20 styles of cabinet doors? Sure I can manually “paint” each cabinet but it seems to me that you should be able to layout the basic cabinets in your layout, and then globally choose a style/color for the entire kitchen.
moving in 3d “live view” is difficult at best.
you cannot move objects in a 3d view, only over head
measuring is by default done by measuring to the center of walls, not how I would measure my real space (wall to wall)
lighting and shadowing in rendered scenes is not even close to accurate (based on how objects are drawn from what I can tell)
I haven’t even began to try and use any of the other “features” but I’m sure most of the program is as obtuse as the features I did try.
perhaps the pc version is better but overall this product sucks
Review by Steven W. Smith for Punch! Home Design Studio Pro (Mac)
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i had read many reviews about this software before deciding to purchase it, and honestly i was a bit reluctant to do so. however, given that it was the only software out there that was reasonably priced i ignored all the negativity i had encountered about it and threw the money down like i was at caesar’s. when it arrived i was actually quite shocked by the amount of instruction that it was apparently going to take before actually dabbing in the programs. after about two hours of reviewing the overall functions, terms, familiarizing myself with the icons, and just simply reading instruction i said to hell with it. i loaded the software and simply began a ‘project’. it was then when i realized that the best way to learn the software is to actually use it, while keeping the manual along side the applications for reference. because truth be told, everything i reviewed or read didn’t make any sense until i was implementing it within the program. i think i can safely suggest that after about an hour of actually using the software i was already familiar with its format, etc. how would i rate it? personally, i love it, and i think it’s actually very versatile. though, there are some things that i will admit i don’t like about it (certain limitations), just as there are things that one would expect to dislike about any type of software. however, i think the more i work with the software the more i will find ways around my issues. all in all, i gave it four stars because it’s functional, practical, and versatile… and for the money you really can’t do better. still, i don’t believe that this is intended for the professional. it’s rather limited when it comes to ‘details’. i’ve noticed some suggesting that the hvac, or estimator, or electrical, or even the measurements are inaccurate. but really, these are aspects of the program that you really have to lend attention to and learn thoroughly. yes, it’s an inconvenience, while expecting that the program should just do the work for you. nonetheless, it’s still a good program to use for the non-professional (once you’ve gotten past the novice stage).
Review by S. Hughes for Punch! Home Design Studio Pro (Mac)
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Home Design Studio Pro is a very complex design package. It has a steep up-front learning curve that will take hours and hours to get over. Once you’re past that curve, you can create some really good designs. However, be aware that the curve for novices might be too steep. Even for the seasoned computer user, the learning curve to create your first design will be tough. I still have not gotten to the vast majority of the features but I have confidence that once I learn how to do some of the more complex steps, the package will be everything I wanted. Check back in several months to see if I made it over the curve!
Review by Josh T. Adams for Punch! Home Design Studio Pro (Mac)
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The ease of use is phenomenal! It is incredibly easy to get started, design, and see the final product. I wish the Pro Series had more features and tools. It does take a little longer to learn more intricate functions, but all around it’s very simple.
The CAD tools that come with it are BS. If they added a few more features this would be a slam dunk!!
Review by Jon A. Erickson for Punch! Home Design Studio Pro (Mac)
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Punch Home Design Studio Pro for the Mac is not Mac software, it is amateurish PC software that has been written to operate on a Mac. If you have used graphics software on a Mac, you will be disappointed. The product is not intuitive and the instruction manual and help functions are woefully inadequate. As a consequence, the learning curve is lengthy and requires a lot of trial and error. Jon Erickson, Liberty, MO