Cheap 3D Home Architect Deluxe 4.0 (Software) (Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows 2000) Price

Designing a house with 3D Home Architect is fun. Users can start from scratch or modify one of dozens of included plans into a dream house. Thanks to a snappy drawing interface, scratching out a floor plan is almost as simple as sketching a doodle in Microsoft Paint. Detail work, like laying out doors, creating complex staircases, and restructuring already plotted walls, is a little more tricky, but 3D Home Architect's friendly help system supplies thorough explanations of even the most complex features.

3D Home Architect not only helps users lay down floor plans, but it also tries to deal with the less obvious tribulations of home building. For example, it keeps a running spreadsheet listing the building materials required to construct a design, which can be edited as needed. It will look over a design for common code violations and other technical problems, but warns that it's unaware of local housing codes.

Having hashed out a basic floor plan, users can populate it with furniture, counters, plumbing fixtures, landscaping, and other household items through a cool drag-and-drop browser. It's also possible to run electric wiring and a plumbing system, although those facets aren't quite as simple.

The program becomes clumsy when you leave the 2-D floor plan module and go vertical. Some folks may wish for the simple interface of the floor plan workspace when they try to, for instance, adjust the heights of doorways, counters, and windows. And, although it allows users to see a 3-D-rendered representation of a design and create walkthroughs of a house, applying colors and textures to floors, walls, doors, furniture, and other items is tedious.

Even worse, the 3-D engine is incredibly slow, taking several seconds to render each frame--even on a fast PC. That's utterly inexcusable, considering that Broderbund could have licensed a simple 3-D game engine, or even used one of many public domain 3-D engines capable of fluidly rendering dynamic 3-D environments.

Despite its more clumsy aspects, 3D Home Architect Deluxe 4.0 makes home design easy and enjoyable with a minimal learning curve. If you're thinking of building a new home, it's worth spending some time with this program to visualize your ideas. --Joel Durham Jr.