Rating: 
Summary: GARBAGE... I WAS SHOCKED BY THE NEW INTERFACE...
Review: NOT EVEN WORTH THE $10 BUCKS I PAID FOR IT. I HAVE VERSION 4.0 SO MUCH EASIER TO USE. VERSION 5 PRO AND DELUXE ARE NOT WORTH THE TIME,EFFORT, OR MONEY. BRODERBUND HAS CHANGED TO A COMPANY CALLED CADSOFT TO DESIGN THESE PROGRAMS. I SUGGEST HIGHLY USING INDIVIDUAL SOFTWARE ( TOTAL 3D HOME DELUXE 6.0 OR 7) THEY ARE VERY EASY TO LEARN AND THE INTERIOR DESIGNING PART OF IT IS REALLY FUN.
Rating:
Summary: 1 Star or less
Review: Strong "don't buy" of this product... less than 1 star.I ordered it online at Amazon.com (through J&R Music and Computer World). Both of these companies delivered as promised... 5 stars for them. I was very pleased with past versions of 3D Architect, unfortunately version 5.0 (and 5.1) has problems, the same problems as other users have noted. When I ran into these problems on day 1 of using ver 5.0 I went to the Broderbund website and upgraded the system to 5.1 (available online for free). 5.1 has same problems of being booted out or locked up. I was able to make some progress by setting the "auto save" feature to 4 minutes. This way WHEN (not if) it locks up you only loose a few minutes of work. Lock ups are very frequent (SEVERAL PER HOUR) and it is not RAM, PC Speed or HD space related. I am in the process of returning the software to Broderbund since both Amazon and J&R Music and Computer World have no refund policies on opened software. Hopefully they will offer a refund. Better Homes and Gardens is releasing "Home Designer" for $99. It is a bit pricey but appears to be more in line with older versions of 3D ARCHITECT. Keith Landry
Houston, Texas
Rating:
Summary: 1 Star or less
Review: Strong "don't buy" of this product... less than 1 star. I ordered it online at Amazon.com (through J&R Music and Computer World). Both of these companies delivered as promised... 5 stars for them. I was very pleased with past versions of 3D Architect, unfortunately version 5.0 (and 5.1) has problems, the same problems as other users have noted. When I ran into these problems on day 1 of using ver 5.0 I went to the Broderbund website and upgraded the system to 5.1 (available online for free). 5.1 has same problems of being booted out or locked up. I was able to make some progress by setting the "auto save" feature to 4 minutes. This way WHEN (not if) it locks up you only loose a few minutes of work. Lock ups are very frequent (SEVERAL PER HOUR) and it is not RAM, PC Speed or HD space related. I am in the process of returning the software to Broderbund since both Amazon and J&R Music and Computer World have no refund policies on opened software. Hopefully they will offer a refund. Better Homes and Gardens is releasing "Home Designer" for $99. It is a bit pricey but appears to be more in line with older versions of 3D ARCHITECT. Keith Landry
Houston, Texas
Rating: 
Summary: Upgrade Warning!
Review: The fact that 3D Home Architect v.5.0 is not compatible with 3D Home Architect v.4.0 drawings is the single worst upgrade mistake you could make - and I paid the price (see Broderbund: Technical Note ID: 31665). Who's bright idea was that? Find them and tell them they should sell shoes - not technology products. You can give them my name and I'll be glad to them directly. Broderbund should know better. Even if the formats are different they should have created a migration tool. No excuses - they should have. The fact that I now must REDRAW all my work in order to take advantage of 5.0 features is insane. For their protection, other potential Broderbund customers should know about this total lack of customer support perpetrated by their company. Too bad. I really thought Broderbund had it together.
Rating: 
Summary: Close but No Cigar
Review: The program has loads of excellent features objects, and very good rendering capability BUT...
You cannot output this to a standard dxf or dwg format. (If you try the current "dxf" ouput option, you get a file that autocad (the primary software that uses and created dxf) cannot display.
When asked about this I was told by Broderbund tech support that they don't intend to provide a capability to produce blueprint quality / compatible outputs. If you plan on trying to print out and paste together a large design - forget it! You can't be sure you have the same scale or orientation on the paper. Not a pro-quality package.
Window sizes are wacky - they don't match the way builders talk in terms of a "Three O by Four O window. (3 feet by 4 feet) Windows in this software come out with labels like - 2'11 11/15" by 3'11 15/16"
Less critical but very annoying is the pain of moving around in in 3d or 2d - not an easy thing to do. Nobody does 3D movement all that well but this one.... needs work. In 2D it's really ugly to move from one corner of a large drawing to another.
Bottom line - it's a fun program to play with but don't try to use it for a real home design. You will wind up having to hire a architect to create real usable drawings.
Rating:
Summary: So far, A complete Disaster!
Review: The program has now caused my Dell Computer (which exceeds all requirements for this program) to crash twelve times! Broderbund support on the telephone requires 20 minute waits & closes at 3pm Pacific Time. I'm still attempting to just get this program to run - very frustrating!!!
Rating:
Summary: The wrong upgrade path. This is not a compatible upgrade!
Review: This is not an upgrade of 3D Home Architect 4.0. It is a different product made by a different OEM manufacturer for Broderbund. If you want to upgrade the older versions of this product then you need to buy Chief Architect Home Edition 5.0 from the people who made 3D Home Architect for Broderbund. It is completely compatible with 3D Home Architect.
Rating:
Summary: "Upgrade?" - NOT
Review: This is not an upgrade, but a new and incompatible product. Broderbund is the publisher, but not the actual company that writes the software. They have switched to a different company and the program is completely different. Gone is the easy and intuitive interface. The program is now difficult to use, and on top of that, it crashed my computer every time it ran. Stick with 4.0 or buy the REAL upgrade from Chief Architect, the maker of the previos versions of 3D Home.
Rating:
Summary: Newer is not always better
Review: We are a modular home manufacturer with approximately 140 builders using 3D Deluxe ver 4. We provide a cd to them with all of our 70 models predrawn. The builders can then make changes, etc. as their customers request. We started this service to our builders when version 2 was new. The builders wanted a program that was user-friendly & did not require a big learning curve. Versions 3 & 4 were improvements, but version 5 is NOT!! Version 5 is a totally different program.
Version 5 does not have many of the version 4 features. The biggest is that it does not open any previous version files. It is a much more complicated program for the novice user. There is no means of recording a walk-through, walls can not be cross hatched or shaded, dimension lines must be individually constructed, several steps are required to display 3D interior views, etc. It appears to me that Broderbund has taken a page from some of the other software companies business plan manuals. Replace a working program with something that has many missing features .. charge a higher price for it, then charge even more for upgrades that include the features that were left out of version 5.
Rating:
Summary: One step forward ??? steps backward.
Review: Yesterday I installed 3D Home Architect 5.0 Professional (upgraded from 3D Home Arch. 4.0 Deluxe). It's a misnomer to call it an upgrade as it's a brand new, totally different, never-released-to-the-general-public program (tech support said it's been in beta testing for the last year). I found the following 4.0 features missing in 5.0 (verified this morning with Broderbund phone support). 1. Cannot read v4.0 plans. 2. No wizard room boxes (great feature when beginning new plans). 3. Lacks 'Import Bitmap' feature (handy to import a topo map or site plan). 4. No display of the floor's area. 5. Cannot place window in roof gables. I experienced no installation problems (Win2k SP2). The program crashed at least once big time; I was positioning a window one second and the next second I see the desktop with no remaining traces of the program (no error messages, nothing). Tech support assured me that they have seen no problems that upgrading the video driver hasn't fixed (I was running with an older driver). No performance issues on a 1.3G AMD, 512MB RAM, Elsa Gladiac 920. I was able to export .dxf and .3ds files from 3DHA 5.0 and import them into AutoCAD LT 97 and LightWave 3D 7.5, respectively (though LightWave didn't get any of the surface information); that was impressive. I haven't yet exported a VRML file. While following a tutorial, I was unable to start with an element from the Master Catalog, modify it, and save it in my user defined catalog. Aside from this glitch, the library implementation is more flexible than in v4.0. I successfully imported a .3ds file of a Fender Strat (a guitar) into a user defined library and inserted it into a plan; impressive. 3D rendering looks good. Performance is better than v4.0. Upgraders should note that the user interface is totally different than v4.0. The program has lots of potential, I expect the next release to be dynamite (that's why I gave it 3 stars). In all fairness to the consumer, I think the product name should be 3D Home Architect II v1.0 (beta?). Update 4/11/03 When trying to use advanced features of the program it continually and predictably crashed. I reproduced the crash on 3 different hardware platforms running 3 different OSs (Win98, Win2k and WinXP). Corresponding with technical support was very frustrating as well as fruitless; I even sent the machine instruction address where the memory fault occurred (the same on all 3 machines) along with samples demonstrating the problem. It wasn't until I mentioned returning the product that I received E-mail from "The Office of the President" (I assume president of Broderbund). They reproduced the problem I was reporting and said they'd pass the information on so the problem could be corrected. Since the program was unusable for me, I returned it (within 30 days of receipt). I purchased the full version of Chief Architect v8.0 and today ordered an upgrade to v9.0. I've downgraded the rating to 1 star (and that's charity). I don't recommend this product.
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