Even if you don’t want to tackle a construction job, or even major remodeling, during the winter, it’s an ideal time to plan. You can use your PC to help you dream, design and even visualize a new or improved home.
Design programs start with basic computer-drafting abilities: drawing straight and precise lines, inserting windows within walls and placing cabinets and furniture within a house schematic. Almost all add sample designs you can customize.
Most design programs can show the design in 3-D, often letting you choose the viewpoint and angle, even letting you move step-by-step toward, around and through a 3-D image of the design for a “walk-through” or “fly-by” effect.
Some design programs will also generate a materials list for shopping, derived from your drawings.
A fair warning: Home-design software won’t make you an expert in architecture, design, construction or drafting. It is still hard and slow. All they do is make it possible, at a reasonably low price on a computer you can afford at home. That’s pretty impressive, anyway.
Here are my impressions:
– Visual Home (Books That Work, 800-242-4546, www.btw.com, on CD for Windows, $60) is my favorite, in part because it recognizes the importance of interior design. It comes with 3-D models of beds, paintings, fixtures, plants, sinks, cabinets, people and actual appliances from companies such as GE, Thermador, Delta (faucets) and Hot Spring Spas.
There are textures from tile to carpet, not to mention a fire that flickers in the 3-D view. And there are exterior design touches for siding, roofing and trim, as well as basic landscape and scenery.
The 2-D designs can automatically generate a shopping list. You can save the 3-D views as snapshots or walk-through movies on disk.
More important than those frills, though, are the “wizards” and “building blocks” that step you through a design with narrated explanations of the steps. All of the program’s realism takes computing time.
The company makes related tools that you can use to fill out your designs, including 3-D Kitchen, 3-D Deck and 3-D Landscape. Each costs $50 to $60 and runs on Windows.
– 3D Home Architect (Broderbund, 800-521-6263, www.broderbund.com, on floppy for Windows at $60 or on CD for $70) is probably the best known of the choices mentioned here.
Along with the 2-D design, 3-D viewing, symbol collections, materials list and other features from the first version, the new Edition 2 adds multiple-story design, more interior options including color choices, more furniture and fixture symbols, more sample homes and an automatic “roof generator” for creating a variety of house tops.
The CD has video tips and articles from American Homestyle magazine, an Internet home page for more symbols and tips, exporting of plans to the standard DXF format that most professional programs recognize and a Plan Check feature to seek out obvious code violations.
The “SmartParts” feature is worthwhile, attaching a memory of size, shape, style and even a materials list standard number to each furniture and cabinet symbol.
– myHouse (SoftKey, 800-523-3520, www.softkey.com, on floppy or CD for Windows, $50) is a reasonable competitor to 3-D Home Architect. It too has 2-D and 3-D views, and I find the 2-D drawing here easier.
And it has unusual added features in 3-D, such as several graphical backgrounds (for instance, woods and mountains) to put your design into some kind of context. You can save your walks through a 3-D view as a replayable movie on disk. However, the 3-D views take longer to appear than in Architect.
There’s a materials-list feature and collections of symbols, but it won’t check code violations and doesn’t have building tutorial videos or an Internet connection.
– Complete HomeDesigner (Alpha Software, 800-451-1018, www.alphasoftware.com, on CD for Windows, $60) has great furniture–a collection of chairs, toilets, cabinets and even home-office stuff, plus textures including marble, linoleum, and wood that make them realistic beyond most competition.
If you have a scanner, you can apply your own textures of wallpaper, carpet or whatever to your 3-D design.
The company’s Web site has more textures you can download. There are more options for setting and changing the lighting than in competing programs.
Naturally, the program also has wall and roof design tools for putting a house around them, in 2-D and 3-D. And you can walk through the designs, often at a faster pace than in competing programs.
The clinker? It isn’t easy to place and move all these various things.
