Furniture management goes from way too much details for dozens of cabinets to totally inexisting type of furniture (I couldn't find the rugs for example). And it's not possible to create your own, personalized shapes.
I may have missed something and certainly didn't go through boring tutorials but I expect such software to be intuitive to the common, particularly if they are supposed to simplify access to CAD.

"3D Home Architect 5.0 is really awful, sorry to say."
I lost my copy of 3DHA 3, so some time ago I purchased the 5.0, and it's awful! It's baffling that a newer version could be so much worse that a previous one. It's very difficult to use... you try to draw a wall one way and it appears in the wrong direction! The graphics are poor... you try to add a floor or carpet and it disappears. Don't waste your time! Sorry Broderbund. I'm hoping that the version 6.0 is better. I liked the 3DHA3 a lot.

"3d HOME ARCHITECT 5 MISSED THE BOAT"
This product doesn,t support Windows 98
unless you have Windows 98 SE
I have never bought a product that supports
only 98Se and newer operating systems.
I guess Broderbund wants to be on the bandwagon
when 98 goes away but that will be a long long time
since about 90 percent of the world is still using win98.

"Leaves much to be desired"
A few years ago, when designing 2 rooms at my office, I became fluent in most of the off-the-shelf, under $100 design programs. I recall switching between 2 applications that each had great features, and would have made a perfect product if merged. One was 3D Home Architect 3, the other (which I can't recall the name) had some similarities to Home Designer 6. Having just tried 3D Home Architect 5 & Home Designer 6, I still have the same feeling: each has very strong & very weak points.

Having now sampled both applications, I can't seem to figure how so many people posted hate for 3DHA. I think it's a tie between the two.

My big criticism w/ HD6 is that you cannot manually change wall dimensions. It was incredibly tedious to recreate rooms based on the dimensions I had. Apparently, the pro version ($500) allows this function, but I wasn't going to pay that for my little project. When you click a wall you've created in 3DHA, it displays measurements to every other nearby wall. You then can click any of those measurements to resize it manually. This is the absolute most logical way to get exact measurements.

In HD6, the library of items is pretty skimpy compared to 3DHA. 3DHA easily allows custom items to show in the 'library' so it's easy to reuse them.

As for the 3D rendering, 3DHA really sucks. It is incredibly difficult to get the camera view into custom positions. This is where HD6 is best. You can arrange multiple cameras in your layout, each corresponding to another rendered window. You can also double-click the camera in the layout & it brings up other view settings such as height & field of vision angle.

As for working w/ your layout, 3DHA allows you to drag a selection tool over multiple items, creating a multiple selection. You can then move all of those items at once, or select their properties. For changing the color of multiple items, this is great. HD6 does not allow you to select multiple items & then change characteristics of them. Imagine having a room you want to change the color of all of the cabinets. According to my findings, in HD6 you'd have to change each cabinet one by one. In 3DHA you would just hold the shift key & select all of the cabinets, then make your changes.

Maybe I'm asking for too much from <$100 programs, but it sure seems both programs make it much harder to do things then they have to.

"I won't buy anything from Broderbund again"
3D Home Architect is a complete crock. I have attempted to use it many times. After hours of reading and playing with it I am still unable to perform the most simple task. I own V1.3 of this software and it outperforms the current version by light years. I also spent lots of time trading emails with Broderbund in an attempt to obtain either additional product support or a refund and I got nothing. So henceforth they will not see another dime of my hard earned $. Sorry.