Rating: 
Summary: don't bother buying this software
Review: (Note: the title is from a Monks song from the 80s)Effectively, I'm saying that the software does some fundamental things ok ie. it is seemingly easy to setup a house plan. However, there are so many flaws in the software that it is very, very frustrating to prepare a house design. The error messages are vague and cryptic and do not provide any helpful information. Strange artefacts will appear on the design and there is no way to remove them. After rotating a staircase, the staircase unrotates itself at a later time. In fact, I am unable to rotate any staircase an arbitrary rotation. Rotations are only permitted by 90 degrees. This completely prevents me from designing my dream home, since I wanted to angle my staircase 45 degrees. Overall, although the software is cheap, it is not worthwhile to purchase since there are far too many frustrations. I wasted my money buying it and I can not recommend the product to anyone else. I did email the company through their support line to ask them about the staircase rotation bit, but the company has not responded to me.
Rating:
Summary: Not really quick or easy
Review: Good things:
It is cheap. The 3D visuals are good (when they working). There are lot's of photos and samples. Horrible things:
It crashes a lot. The furniture and cabinets floats even though it is suppose to be on the floor. Exterior options for the roofs are limited and difficult to control. Error messages poor. My experience:
If I use this software for anything "tricky" it crashes. The manual dimension lines are working only in one direction and the auto dimensions are hard to ready and not include for interior rooms. Curves and angles are difficult to deal with. I need to save after every few changes and the auto backup is poor. I sometimes get a message the say "a wall is invalid" and figuring which one is usually a 20 minute or more task -- if you are lucky. Usually it is easier to start from a previous saved version. The
dimension sometimes change by a couple of inches when changing from the space plan to the floor plan. I tried doing a second and stairs once but I gave up since it cause a lot of trouble. Sometimes you want to move a wall a couple of inches but you can't do it due to unknown constraints. Getting a "scaled print out" is
impossible and controlling the "zoom" in a print out is also difficult. I wish it would calculate square footage of each floor and each room. If you are using this software (seriously) to assist in architecting a new build, I would try the more expensive 3D total home first (or other software). If you are just playing with ideas, this software is okay (and cheap).
Rating: 
Summary: Not perfect software -- but pretty darn good!
Review: Home Design Quick & Easy, Version 2.0, is not perfect software, but it's pretty darn good -- especially for the price! OK, so it doesn't contain some of the bells and whistles that packages like Punch have. And to be honest, I would really love to be able to print out a ready-made kit for constructing my own model of a home. And it would be great to have sophisticated tallying of materials, and totalling of their costs, and be able to flesh out the framing of the house, heating, plumbing, etc. But after reading disappointing reviews on the Punch! software (with many complaints along the lines of "This would be great software if it actually worked"), I'm glad for now at least that I went with this package instead. I'm not saying there aren't better packages out there, but at under $20, it fit my budget nicely. And if you've read enough reviews, you'll know that easy-to-use home design software that actually does what it's supposed to is nowhere near as common as one would hope. HDQ&E actually IS both (relatively) quick and easy to use. In a matter of hours, I had converted a 2-story home plan I saw online into my own customized version. Start with the short tutorial but be aware that you can do a lot more with this program than that. Once you're done designing, you can decorate the home and fill it with furniture. Give it a brick face. Change wallpaper and carpet. Add a table and chairs. And anything you can see on the screen -- floor plans with dimensions, aerial views, walkthroughs, a view of your dining room filled with furniture -- ALL of these you can print. It takes practice and thought to create odd shaped rooms with angles, but it CAN be done. Hint: Create a bigger room first, then overlay that with a small room on top. The program will automatically cut the angles out for you. It's not bug free. Save your work, especially before doing anything particularly taxing (like rendering). Several times the whole program has just vanished from my computer (266 MHz Pentium running Windows 2000). Once the walls stuck up through the roof (fixed by a bit of tweaking the settings). The aerial view printed with a bit of the back of the house chopped off. And I've had trouble with the roof on a porch. However, all of these are (in my opinion) relatively minor (and mostly fixable or work-aroundable) problems. All in all, it's easy to use, does a decent job of producing what you want it to, and at under $20 (I found it for $18 including shipping from Gateway) the price is DEFINITELY right. I give it 4 stars out of 5!
Rating:
Summary: Good for one room, bad for entire house
Review: I designed my new kitchen using this software. While the "one room" design worked rather well, I am yet able to complete an entire house layout. The program has several flaws, almost all involving its ability to "share" walls (i.e. living room's south wall is dining room's north wall). Like another reviewer mentioned, the wall problems cause vague error messages to pop-up that do not specifically tell you the exact location of the problem. At this point, you must exit without saving or your whole design will become corrupted. This is a fun program if you like decorating, or if you don't mind building each room in your home as an individual design. However, if you're looking for a program strong enough to do extensive remodeling or new home construction, you're better off looking elsewhere.
Rating: 
Summary: Bad News
Review: I don't know the quality of this program. It has been well reviewed by others, but one of the CDs I was sent would not install (a CD with the wrong serial number was sent), the CD container did not hold the CD's so they kept falling out, and when I called the "free" technical support line for help, well, I was put on hold for ever. I decided to return the software, rather than get a replacement, because I felt that I was unlikely to get help from the manufacturer (Individual Software) with their endless telephone "hold" time.
Rating:
Summary: Inadequate for anything but the simplest design
Review: I found this program inadequate for my needs. I could not figure out how to add a dormer to the house nor could I find any delivered plans that have a dormer. The search engine for the delivered plans is inadequate. It should allow you to specify number of bedrooms and bathrooms in your search criteria whereas it only allows you to specify 1 or 2 story.
Rating: 
Summary: easy for beginners, adaptable for pros
Review: I have tried several home design programs over the last few years. This one was the easiest, provided the most, was the most adaptable, and was the cheapest! I couldn't believe it!
It is so easy to use, but offers many, many features. Lots of choices of furniture, windows, walls, colors; and most of them can be changed to your exact dimensions.
This program offers a 3-D walk-through, floor plans, and everything you need to design your own special house from scratch, or to decorate just one room.
The 3-D shows the room so well--it will save lots of furniture moving! You can see how things fit and look. And the custom colors on the walls and furniture are great! Really lets you see how the room will turn out.
The dimensions of the flat floor plans can be changed easily. There are sample home plans and room plans for folks with less creativity, or make a floor plan that matches your own home, or design your dream home. Almost everything works with point, click, and drag, or you can put in numerical dimensions and the program does it for you.
I am no artist, and have no CAD abilities, but I was able to do a layout of our whole house quickly and easily. Next I will do our dream home!
I can't say enough good things about this program. Wish I had found it before I wasted my money on the others.
Rating:
Summary: Simple and Easy to use...
Review: I love this program! I have spent hundreds of dollars on other programs and this tops them all for only $20 bucks. The rendering is good, lots of objects to choose from. Excellent tutorial Video/Audio feature. I recommend this to anyone interested in visualizing your new home,addition, or just want to have fun as a hobby designing rooms and homes!
Rating:
Summary: don't bother buying this software
Review: I went ahead and bought this program based on the reviews and its price. I must say that if you have used any other CAD program or the Visio building stencils, this will be an easy program to learn. I opened the my first drawing and started putting together my new house right away. Creating the rooms were very simple. There were a few times I had to search for an answer (like how to use a jogged wall to create an entry way), but for the most part it was pretty simple. The main gripe I have with this program is the lack of objects. One area that is totally missing is electrical. You can place where lights belong in the house, but there is no objects for electrical outlets, light switches, phone jacks, or cable/Internet connections. I was surprised because I consider these to be major features. The other issue I have with the program is that when you print your layout there is alot of whitespace surrounding your drawing. If you try to increase the image size then your drawing gets placed on multiple pages. Other than these issues I think the program is great. If you are looking for an easy to learn program that will give you the ability to layout your furniture, this program is for you.
Rating:
Summary: Easy to use, but not perfect
Review: I went ahead and bought this program based on the reviews and its price. I must say that if you have used any other CAD program or the Visio building stencils, this will be an easy program to learn. I opened the my first drawing and started putting together my new house right away. Creating the rooms were very simple. There were a few times I had to search for an answer (like how to use a jogged wall to create an entry way), but for the most part it was pretty simple. The main gripe I have with this program is the lack of objects. One area that is totally missing is electrical. You can place where lights belong in the house, but there is no objects for electrical outlets, light switches, phone jacks, or cable/Internet connections. I was surprised because I consider these to be major features. The other issue I have with the program is that when you print your layout there is alot of whitespace surrounding your drawing. If you try to increase the image size then your drawing gets placed on multiple pages. Other than these issues I think the program is great. If you are looking for an easy to learn program that will give you the ability to layout your furniture, this program is for you.
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