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Home Design Quick And Easy

Home Design Quick And Easy

List Price: $19.99
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The best floor planner for features vs ease of use.
Review: I'm having a new home built by a major builder and wanted software that would allow me to easily recreate the floor plan to scale then walk through it in 3D and add furniture, lighting, window dressings, shelfs, plumbing, etc.. I tried three programs before I came across this one, and Home Design Quick & Easy is by far the best! It's so easy it doesn't come with a printed manual and it doesn't need one! The video tutorial gets you started and from there you can drag and drop a basic floor plan, then go in and knock out alls, add angled walls, add doors, etc. The user interface is incredibly intuitive, it's nothing like traditional CAD software. In fact, it took me only four hours to create a virtual, to scale mock up of my floor plan and I was learning to use the software during that period. The program does exactly what I wanted it to, but it also has many other features: It includes a huge library of prebuilt floor plans (all of which have blueprints available for purchase), most of the fabric textures can be purchased (supplier information is includedd with web links), and you can even scan in your own textures for carpet,wallpaper, paint, etc. It allows you to export a floor plan that can be taken to a professional architect and turned into a blueprint. Highly recommended

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: 3D Home Architect
Review: It looks like a great program . Lots of features, I think it is more for an architect or seasoned computer user. I am not that seasoned, and at an age that new things need to be more "old lady" friendly. I would like to have used this program, I spent 3hrs trying to set it up and just got lost in it multi-featured menu.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: You get what you pay for
Review: Not a great product in my opinion. I was able to create a basic design easily and quickly (and even add doors and windows), but then could not subsequently delete a wall I no longer wanted. Also, copy-n-paste was not an option where I needed it......making identical copies of certain rooms. I had to recreate each from scratch. Aligning items is a manual operation, although the snap-to-grid feature does at least make the task doable. Starting the program requires having the original CD in the CD drive.....a royal pain. The makers of this program seemed to have concentrated on things I consider fluff.....decorating your virtual home, and paid little attention to things I consider to be very important: allowing the user to create a good floor plan. My recommendation: buy something else.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: It's Alright
Review: This is a good product for someone who just wants to play around with the simple, basic idea of putting rooms together and looking at a house in 3D. Unfortunatly, the work area is small, while the menu on the right takes up almost half of the screen. You can resize the rooms, but that's it. And after awhile, the program itself becomes testy and crashes.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Excellent Value for $20
Review: This is an excellent purchase.

I am remodeling a newly purchased home and received floor plans from a structural engineer. I punched in the floor plans with the software, added wall colors and floor textures (carpet, hardwood floors, furniture, kitchen, bath fixtures, etc. etc.), and the 3D walkthrough looks just like my home!

The tutorial was okay, but I could've jumped right in and done this in 30 minutes.

The 3D walkthrough is invaluable, because you can visualize plans before you finalize them. I will definitely change the proposed plans, window locations, doors, room additions, lighting, etc. based on what I see from this software. This software also helps to visualize matching color schemes for rugs, wall paint, carpets, furniture, etc.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Excellent Value for $20
Review: This is an excellent purchase.

I am remodeling a newly purchased home and received floor plans from a structural engineer. I punched in the floor plans with the software, added wall colors and floor textures (carpet, hardwood floors, furniture, kitchen, bath fixtures, etc. etc.), and the 3D walkthrough looks just like my home!

The tutorial was okay, but I could've jumped right in and done this in 30 minutes.

The 3D walkthrough is invaluable, because you can visualize plans before you finalize them. I will definitely change the proposed plans, window locations, doors, room additions, lighting, etc. based on what I see from this software. This software also helps to visualize matching color schemes for rugs, wall paint, carpets, furniture, etc.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Okay for Very Basic Use
Review: This product is okay if you only want to do very basic things with your home plan, and if you only need a general plan. I had trouble getting it to fine-tune, however, and that was very frustrating. For example, when making walls shorter & longer, it's a drag system that automatically "jumps" to preset lengths. You can have a wall 7'4" or 7' 8", but not 7' 7", which is what I was trying to get. There is no way to manually set an exact wall length.

I also had trouble getting the program to actually DO some of the things the instructions say it will do. It says that if you want to delete a wall, you simply select the wall and hit delete (or go to Edit/Delete). It sure wouldn't delete for me.

So, if you want something to do very general work, and you want to get started quickly & easily, and don't care that the finished product is precise, then this is a great product for you. If you want something that will allow you to create a duplicate of your home, with exact sizes and dimensions, try another product.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Not Quick or Easy
Review: Truly, this is not quick or easy, mainly frustrating. Unless you're doing a VERY basic square room, forget it. Agree with the reviewer who said that error messages are frequent and inexplicable, and that work can disappear at any time. I'll add to that list that the software also freezes frequently, so save often. I fiddled with it for 2 hours in attempts to lay out our finished basement, which is one large U-shaped room with a smaller laundry room and stairs in the middle. Software froze twice, lost my edits several times, measurements inexplicably disappeared, and I finally resorted to good ol' pen and paper. I think this is a case where if you want software to do what you need it to do, you have to spend the big(ger) bucks.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Many faults, impossible unless simple
Review: Will work for simple square designs. Fun to do until it matters. Work will disappear anytime. Moving or changing walls can be impossible. Error massages are frequent but useless and stop progress completely. Figuring out the problem can be impossible and the plan has to be abandoned. Makes you want to run to an architect. Maybe that's the real plan. I have designed homes before the good old-fashioned way.


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