Others say...

"Really not that bad."
I've read these reviews and some people love it and some people hate it. And I disagree with the person that uses it just to fool around with it, and said that anyone who would use this for a real life project is stupid. I have been using it for the past month in my spare time (which isn't very much with a 4 month old), I have used it to draw a plan to renovate the first floor of our house. Sure, some things are a pain, like having to block views of walls, floors, etc. to move a chair or table, but overall, I think that if you really want to draw up a plan, this program isn't that bad. I'm sure there are other programs out there that will do a better job, but for 80 bucks or whatever, you get what you pay for. If you really want to have a good program, plan on shelling out the 250-300 dollars for the better ones.

"Major Improvement!"
I found this software to be absolutely faultless. It does have the same drag around interfaces as before, which allows houses to be designed at lightning speed; only your menu choices are not put into two menu systems which allow more comprehensive choices. Once you figure out to click the top row as before, and then choose your comprehensive choice on the right, as not before, then you are off and running.

The programmers for this software are much better than the instruction book writers. For example, you can eliminate 98% of the problems with this product by "opening up" outside walls and then "closing" them again to make floors that have disappeared reappear, and to make walls that aren't attached all the way up to the cathedral ceilings, all of a sudden attach themselves.

The only drag around interface that seems to have been lost is that you can no longer resize windows in 3D mode by grabbing their edges, however, you can still click into them while in 3D mode and resize them, which is not quite as convenient as before. However, in return, you now have more options. You can now add skylights, curved walls, curved staircases and irregular windows.

The program has also been enhanced to allow true construction details. If you want a beveled footing and an actual buildable foundation set to various heights, you can now have it.

Furthermore, one of the most annoying features of the previous releases, which was having to set "invisible" walls to get staircase openings to appear in the second story floors (which always crashed the plans) has been revised and you can now simply draw in an opening into your floors.

The 3D walk through is an absolute joy to use with the product and you can zip your view height up and down and walk around and zoom in and out with perfect ease.

Having the ability to do true rendering, wherein the sun shines through the windows is my favorite new feature, as all good designs take into the account where the sun shines. For example, an awning over a south facing window will allow the sun to shine into the room in the winter when the sun is lower in the sky but block the sun in the summer when it is hot.

I don't much care if older plans cannot be imported, as I am busy on new plans with curved staircases and skylights which were not possible before.

Any roof can be made with this product. But you have to draw the roof on first, before you put in the interior partition walls, otherwise it will distort the automatic roof centerpoints, which are needed to change roof types which is annoying. But this is all due to their not well documented feature in which the roofs and floors automatically attach themselves to everything, which saves a lot of time. And you do have the option to draw your roofs "out in space" and then drag them into place to eliminate this automatic attachment feature. Therefore, just about any roof can be created, and easily at that.

I suspect that the people experiencing crashes do not have updated computers. It works perfectly on a Pentium 4 - 3.00 GHz with 512K RAM.

"Works basics okay but needs work to facillitate out the normal type of designs."
This software works great as long as your house isn't designed much different than standard box houses and doesn't have complicated roof shapes. I tried for two weeks to draw the correct roof on my house and have it draw in the right gable windows and finally gave up leaving a wide gaping side where a wall should be. It has an automerge capability for the roof for gables and hips that essentially made it impossible to draw my roof correctly because mine angles differently than they expect, apparently. Developing slopes in the landscape area is equally frustrating and largely a lot of trial and error. I finally got something close and gave up. You really have to spend a lot of time doing trial and error for most things (for example, it took me forever to figure out how to put two stacked windows (a regular window and a top transom type window) on the upper level of a two story wall. All in all, it did not work for what I wanted but I assume if I worked at it long enough and did enough forum support I might be able to get it to work but that is unknown. I also tried to build a deck plan with it and while it did the basic deck well, I needed to draw a two level stairs that starts down and then changes direction at the landling and could not get it to do that either. I eventually had to go to home depot and have them do it for me. For basic work, it seems like a good program but for anything out of the ordinary, it didn't work for me.

"Works well for me, but needs more development in some areas"
I really haven't had any of the technical problems mentioned in these reviews, and I've actually had a good experience with this version of 3DHA (I've used 2 & 3 in past years). At this point, I've used this new version for a large Victorian house that will be used for scaled dollhouse plans. I'm very pleased with the results. I particularly liked the plan trace feature, as my design was loosely based upon a historic floorplan.

There are, however, some negative aspects to the package. The manual, although textbook-thick, offers very little insight into the features of the program that aren't already obvious in the application itself. There were a couple of times I had to figure out tricks like putting small partial walls on a level "above" my main roof to get gable windows in the attic (that will make sense if you have the program and want to add gable windows). I was hoping to find tips and tricks like that, but the manual is basically just a brief description of every option on every menu in the program. Add a lack of any extra information online, and you really have to be pretty intuitive with software to pick it up.

My major disappointment is related to the walkthrough mode and "3DTrueView" rendering. The basic walkthrough is functional but doesn't look much improved from old versions. I had the impression before purchasing the software that the walkthrough itself was in "3DTrueView," but this is not the case. Instead, you have to select a scene from the walkthrough to render, and it takes quite a while to do it at the highest quality. When it's finally done, the rendering is just not that impressive. It's nice to see where shadows fall and such, but I was hoping for a little more photo-realism. With all of the near photo-realistic 3D gaming engines available now, you'd think they could incorporate something similar into an application like this in its sixth major release. I'd really like to have the option to walk around the design on the floors rather than flying around through walls, and it would be nice to have the ability to do it in the fully rendered version.

Still, I give it four stars (probably more like 3.5, really), because it's definitely functional. I feel like it lives up to the majority of its promises and gets the job done, even though I feel like it could have become so much more.

"Not for apartment owners and also time consuming"
I am renovating my apartment and wanted to put together some quick layouts, move some furniture and walls around, and so on. Not possible with this software. No apartment feature at all. When I returned it, I was told that apartments were not homes, which was very distressing to me as mine just cost me a fortune. They wouldn't take it back at all, as it's their policy (Comp USA) which while totally rational (instal-and-return) created a intensely irrational hatred for both Comp USA for not standing behind their products, and the software makers for suggesting that my ridiculously expensive co-op is not a home.

Smart Draw Floorplan is a basic product that does layouts. No 3D and not perfect, but very simple and comprehensive.

Hate Comp USA and hate the fact that I wasted the time trying to return it. Vow to no longer spend any more of my irrational money at their store. (Yes I should have bought it at amazon, but I just had to touch the box--go figure). And am also considering selling my non-home for a shoebox.