Cheap Total 3D Home & Landscape Design Suite Version 9 (Software) (Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows XP, Windows 2000) Price

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Customer Reviews of Total 3D Home & Landscape Design Suite Version 9

Zippy but pinheaded
I gave up on 3D Home Architect (look for my other review; hereinafter called 3D HA) and decided to try out one or two others. Next up is Total 3D Home. As expected from other reviewers' comments, it won't work for me but I'll try to give a bit more detail on what you'll find. Unfortunately the "professional" reviewers at Consumer Reports and the PC magazines won't tell you what you'd really like to know.<
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>The good news with this one: it's a heckuva lot faster than 3D HA. You can click and drag things around much more speedily, and it doesn't hog your processor and memory anywhere near as much.<
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>Now the bad news. Plenty of that, starting with a rather piggish software installation (it says on the box you need 1.8 gigs, and it really isn't kidding. You'll save a modest amount by telling it not to load all of the 3rd CD but still...)<
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>Let me back up by pointing out the overall workflow flaw found in ALL of these home-design programs: they don't work with you the way an actual architect would. What's the first question that a professional (whether it's the guy at the Home Depot kitchen department, or the Martha Stewart's personal designer) going to ask? Well, it all starts with measurements. Generally, a guy will come out to your house and measure everything down to the inch, in all three dimensions. The professional will start with a mockup (be it in pencil or in a CAD system) with the precise details of your existing structure, and if they're really good, they'll come back through your home on a second visit to double-check all measurements. Only then will changes to your home be proposed.<
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>Well, that's not how these programs work. Total 3D is really different from the others so I'll try to describe the data-entry process; this procedure will be helpful whether or not you buy this package because the embedded help is no help at all. When you start the program, you'll see 7 tabs across the bottom of the screen. Three of them are relevant for creating a sketch of your existing structure: "Space Plan", "Design Plan", and "Walk Through". If you have used other programs, the "Design Plan" screen looks pretty much like the others. With Total 3D, you're expected to input your floor plan in the "Space Plan". The first thing you'll notice is that the proposed rooms (Kitchen, Hall, Bedroom, Closet, etc) are all rectangles. And you'll walk around your own house and conclude that most rooms resemble rectangles but aren't quite...so how do you get this program to recognize your reality? <
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>Here is a key hint not mentioned in this program's help: if you overlap two rooms (a real one and a fake one) in the Space Plan, then momentarily click on the Design Plan tab, then go back to the Space Plan and delete the fake room, you can generate a real room with a corner taken out of it. You can chop multiple corners out if you use multiple "fake" rooms by this technique. No need to be precise with dimensions at the outset: I'd recommend starting out with the "Wall and Room Snapping" pref set to 6 inches, getting the whole floor plan roughed in, and then setting the snap spacing down to 1 inch before clicking and dragging walls (in either view) to match your measurements.<
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>That allows you to get the basic layout entered; if your home is all 90- and/or 45-degree angles, on a single floor, and the floors/ceilings are level, you should be able to develop a decent model of your structure. If you're trying to model complex walls, or have multiple floor levels, there are features in 3D Home Architect which go well beyond what you'll find in Total 3D. (I made a very precise model--with difficulty--of my home in 3D HA but quickly concluded that I can't do the same with Total 3D.)<
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>As luck would have it, I helped a friend move last Sunday and I decided to throw together a sketch of his new kitchen. With Total 3D, I ran into the following problems:<
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>* I couldn't get a couple of the cabinets to stay in place. When I switched from Space Plan to Walk Through and back, the cabinets snapped to a different position along the wall. (Exiting and restarting the program doesn't clear this condition.)<
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>* The program doesn't remember what directory you keep your files in. To open an existing plan anywhere other than a subfolder of My Documents, you have to re-navigate to your directory every time. VERY annoying.<
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>* Cabinets snap to a side wall even if you don't want them to. I can't figure out how to turn this off.<
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>* In the Design view, if you want to modify/move an item, you have to go into Select mode (one of a half-dozen small tabs at the upper right). OK, fine: but sometimes instead of selecting an item it switches to Add or Measure mode, and then if you click again it'll do something completely different from what you intended.<
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>* The font sizes in Annotate are hilariously oversized. I really can't add notes to my diagrams.<
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>* If you add manual dimensions to a room, good luck trying to figure out how to move or delete them. At least (unlike the vexacious 3D HA) the dimensions are dynamically updated if you move the item (such as a wall) at one end.<
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>* Upper cabinets are hung at ceiling level. There's a box where you can enter a new hang height but it beeps angrily if you enter anything.<
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>* In fact the program seems to insist that a whole variety of things remain fixed at the ceiling. With 3D HA you have the freedom to raise/lower lighting fixtures and other objects but this doesn't.<
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>* There is no ceiling design utility which would allow you to create soffits, trays, or angled sections. The world is flat, or at least the ceilings that you create for it with this program.<
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>* The materials paintbrush operates in a truly bizarre way. You select an item, then you get a few options at the upper right and a series of color palettes beneath those. Choose the option (like Tile or Hardwood), then the palette. Then you get a too-limited set of choices. This part of the program simply needs to be yanked out and started over, in my opinion; the palette's broad variety should be the LAST option rather than the 2nd option you'd choose.<
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>* You can't do a real electrical plan with this program. This is a SERIOUS omission. If you place a lightswitch on your diagram, it prints out as a barely-visible faceplate rectangle on the floor plan. It should print out as a large industry-standard dollar sign. An outlet should print out with its standard symbol, and so on. If you're redesigning a kitchen, you have to be able to see the electrical items on the floor plan, not just in 3D views.<
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>* There is a "Product Catalog" in this program. Do not confuse it with anything useful! If you thought that a company like Merillat might have included accurate 3D renditions of its merchandise catalog to include here, you'd be disappointed (especially considering that some rival products actually do have this feature). Here, the product catalog just takes you to a separate screen showing pictures of products that can't be copied into your diagram.<
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>* Copy/Paste is hobbled. You can't select multiple items or regions to move or copy. This is a serious handicap. (3D HA v8 has a similar limitation, alas. An older version was fine.)<
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>* Like 3D HA, there are no options available for printing. It's a WYSIWYG editor so the only thing you can do is enable/disable on-screen view of various design elements before making hardcopy.<
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>* Unlike its rivals, this program has almost no ability to change default options, or user generated libraries, for items to be added. Want your walls 4.5" thick instead of the program's hardwired 4"? Want to always use a certain style of kitchen cabinet? You'll find only a handful of settings available.<
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>My overall impression of this software is very negative. It feels like version 2 rather than version 9. Clearly the developers have fixed some of the bugs (it only crashed once on me) that were reported by other reviewers, but it lacks polish and it lacks the ability to generate precise renditions of your existing home, let alone a polished presentation of what you'd like your renovation to look like.<
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>I'll continue roaming the earth for a home-design suite that actually does what I like. Meanwhile it's possible that some of the engineers and marketeers working for one of these companies will actually listen to what we users have to say, and come out with a future version that does what we want, minus all the sluggish code bloat.<
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>Specifically, I want to be able to enter a four-column spreadsheet of wall and cabinet dimensions (location, direction, length, height) into a program, have the program turn it into a proposed room layout, let me click/drag the rooms and walls to match my sketch. (Actually, I'd like to have a $100 electronic device that works with a $50 software package that I can walk through the rooms of the house to generate the entire diagram for me automatically.) Then I want to be able to save the whole existing-structure design as a template, and use that file to create a series of what-if scenarios at varying levels of detail (first an overall sketch to show the concept, and then a refined sketch of the final design). It shouldn't be *too* painful in either 2D or 3D mode to apply the finishes that I want.<
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>The refined 2D sketch should be presentable to a general contractor and a building inspector to secure bids and permits. I'm not sure how much I care about the 3D views so many developers are wrongly obsessed with.<
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>Thanks for listening!

How can they release such poorly-written software?
I really wish I had read the reviews before buying this product. Like another reviewer here, I bought this program to model my house and try some different designs. My computer is WELL above the required specs, and I am a veteran of Adobe Photoshop, so I know my way around sophisicated graphics programs.<
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>This software not only continually crashes doing simple tasks, but the simple tasks are tedious and hard to do at times. I live in a one-story house with a slightly complex layout. Because some of my rooms are not entirely square, this program has a hissy fit trying to adjust dimensions. It never quite comes out right, and constantly throws messages about rooms overlapping even when such is not the case. If you ignore the warning pop-ups about 3-8 times over and over, eventually the program accepts your changes and doesn't complain. But the headache just isn't worth it.<
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>The program also suffers from lack of a good 'undo' function. It rarely will undo more than your last change, and sometimes it won't even do that. In other words if you make a mistake, chances are you're going to have to go back to your last saved file (you did save, didn't you?) and start from that point again. Some things you place, like diagonal walls for instance, are also inexplicably immune to being deleted.<
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>I might play with this some more just to try and do individual rooms, but overall this software is a GRAVE disappointment. I could do my home design much more easily in "The Sims 2" and have a lot more fun doing it.