Why I buy this one ?
- Expert design tips from the editors of Better Homes and Gardens magazines
- Create a virtual look and feel of the design with actual colors, wallpaper, flooring, furniture, windows and window treatments
- Easily design kitchens and baths with plans and 3D layouts
- Choose from a library of over 6,000 items for your designs
- Automatically validates the design against standard building principles

K & L Halliburton offers this stuff with condition New, new for:

Price : $50.00 Usually ships in 1-2 business days

Amazon.com offers this stuff with condition New, new for:

Price : $65.49 Usually ships in 24 hours

NYC Electronics offers this stuff with condition New, new for:

Price : $71.18 Usually ships in 1-2 business days

itdatacorp offers this stuff with condition New, new for:

Price : $77.16 Usually ships in 1-2 business days

7GIFTS offers this stuff with condition New, new for:

Price : $87.20 Usually ships in 1-2 business days

NothingButSoftware offers this stuff with condition New, new for:

Price : $89.00 Usually ships in 1-2 business days

What our customer's say!

"Poor software - buggy, crashes often", They list this software as Vista compatible. Their vision of compatible is the software runs 10 minutes then crashes - if you can finish all your work in 10 minutes, you'll be fine.

The drawing tools are weak, doing a simple 45 degree bend in a kitchen island is impossible. Doing something simple like putting a sink where you want it on a countertop is impossible - it always centers the sink in the space provided. If you're used to even the drawing tools in MS Powerpoint, this will be a big disappointment.

"Good buy!", We bought this product because we have a small basement and needed to figure out the best way to finish it for maximum space. My husband and I are both very happy with it, architecturally (placement of walls, space, cabinets, etc.) It is very easy to use and has done everything we have needed it to do. Whenever we've had questions we've called customer support and they have been extremely helpful. We have not used it for landscape yet, so I'm not sure how it is for that. As far as design goes (sofa fabric, wood color, etc.), it is adequate. It has a lot of options, it's just not very life-like(like a real picture). But it has been good enough for us to get a great idea of what it will look like. I would definitely recommend this product.

"Useful, But Difficult to Decipher the Best Options", This is a very complicated software package with so many options it can be intimidating due to the lack of intuitive function for each of the options you can select. Maybe if you're into the construction business you will understand some of the terms used, but I don't get many of them. A comprehensive glossary would be helpful to show what each of the design options means. But given this is an attempt to put home design within reach of the masses, perhaps it's the price we have to pay. Prepare for a steep learning curve!

I have struggled with the elevation settings ever since I got the package installed. Trying to put the house footprint onto the site plan has been difficult; at times, the software puts the structure underneath the terrain and I can't figure out why. I have a narrow sloped lot and getting the house to fit with a daylight basement was the goal of getting this software. I'm still trying to identify the key variables after several weeks.

The wall textures seem to be reversed each time I have created a floorplan. The result is the exterior of the structure has the texture of inside walls showing and vice versa. I've had to manually fix each wall after building a plan.

The wall cutting tool is hard to use. It doesn't clearly show exactly where the cut is being made. Only after you select the cut-out section do you see what part of a wall is actually being removed.

Many of the roofing options are very hard to decipher. Putting a roof over a bay window has proven to be a real chore with trial and error being the only way to figure out what the end result is going to look like. Lots of wasted time.

Building a porch have proven hard when trying to specify if the porch is over the foundation or an extension from the foundation. I'm still not sure I have it figured out.

The room build wizard is the best way to start out to get a basic floorplan generated. Building a wall at a time is painfully slow. And the instructions state you must build walls in a clockwise pattern or they won't all connect up properly.

Having the ability to place furniture in rooms gives you a better sense of how practical your design really is.

The framing view is so small it is impossible to see any detail of the lumber. I have yet to figure out how to zoom in.





"Waste of money....", You think if the software could do all the great things it says so easily, then a garage shouldn't be so hard, right? The simplest things like getting it to print right, laying out joist, wall height...pain in the... If you have never touched a tape measure or hammer and want to play pretend architect you might have found what you need. I recommend anyone with knowledge of construction, CAD, or decent software steer clear - it will only confuse and frustrate you - I though since it was created by Chief Architect it would have been worth a ****.

"It was OK", We were excited to play with this program because we are designing our new home next year. We found it tough to use and not very user friendly. The house we designed with it had holes in the roof, missing cabinets and crazy pitches in the roof. We did not have the patience to learn it, decided instead to use pencil & paper.

Read this reviews before You buy...

"my review", This product is a great product. I've had a lot of fun with it and I know I'll continue to enjoy it.

"Better Homes & Gardens Home Designer Suite", At first glance this software looks every bit what I expected. The User's Guide is extensive and the software looks like it will be fairly easy to grasp. I'm looking forward to using this software.

"Heed the advice of other reviewers", Despite all the warnings from other reviewers, I took the plunge with HD Suite 7.0. I figured I don't have much to lose for under $100. I will only add some things I discovered that haven't been mentioned in these reviews.

The software does have a rather steep learning curve if your house is not a standard cape design. The roof tool was certainly the most challenging part to figure out. The manual and online tutorial are vague about many minute details. I have gotten my hands wet in the past with CAD design using AutoCAD and SolidWorks, as well as CorelDraw and Micrografx Draw. Home Designer is much more like SolidWorks than the others, since it creates everything in 3D.

I wanted to model my L-shaped house with one section containing a 1-1/2 story, and the other section containing a gambrel roof, and both roofs blend together. To make things more interesting, I even have a bay window on the first floor of the 1-1/2 story. If I built my house using standard or gable roofs, there are no problems. But the 1-1/2 story took a lot of trial and error as well as searching through the HD and HomeTalk forums to figure out how to generate the roofs while avoiding complaints from the roof builder.

To create both the gambrel and half story roofs, I have to:
1. Turn off the auto roof tool.
2. Override the ceiling height (to say, 24"). This becomes awkward if the floor has been split up into several rooms, because I'll have to do it for each and every room.
3. Specify the roof details.
4. Build the roof and cross my fingers. I got to use the CTRL-R shortcut a lot and saved my last known good changes often!
5. Repeat steps 2 through 4 until I got something usable.
5. Then go back to override the ceiling height again (to say, 90"). Ditto as in step 2.
6. Avoid rebuilding the roof from that point on. Otherwise, the roof will forget that it was supposed to be a gambrel or half story.

I'm also trying out the dormer tool to add shed dormers to the half story, and it also has similar limitations as the roof builder tool. I came to the conclusion that I would have to spend the $400 to get HD Pro if I wanted to have full control of my roof design. I still can't generate certain roof combinations if one roof gets too tall, but it's good enough for me to generate some views, and I'd leave a slightly taller roof to my imagination.

Generating stairs also takes a little trial and error, since you need to click and drag to the right location the first time. Unlike most other items in the house, it's virtually impossible to move and resize stairs after they're built.

Fortunately, modeling my kitchen, bedrooms, and bathrooms were relatively easy and fun. The cabinet tool is great, and the basic library items were reasonable enough facsimiles. Other than minor details, the model of my kitchen looked just like the real thing.

I was very impressed with the power of this software for under $100. I would have given it 5 stars if I didn't have so much trouble with the roof tool and the incomplete documentation. I'm happy about the HomeTalk forums, as there are several very knowledgeable and helpful HD Pro users there that have answered many of my questions in the archives.

"Forget modeling a split-level house", I First realized that the product was limited when browsing the 100 or so samples that come with the product I saw there were NO split-level samples to use as a basis for modeling our existing home. After 4 hours of tweaking with floor levels, wall heights and unintuitive invisble walls, I was able to get something resembling our existing 3BR split-level, but it's off enough that my wife and I will not be able to get the kind of visualization we expected.
Invisible walls allowed me to approximate our multi-sloped roof, but the result is not very satisying for all the effort.
On the other hand, if NOT trying to model a split-level, it is very easy to use, almost trivial, to pop out a model from a floor plan and the renderings look very nice.
Bottom line: I wish I had seen the reviews and known the BIG limitation before I bought the product from Sam's Club.

"Warning: Not for Use with Sloped Terrain/Split- Level Entry Homes", The Home Designer Suite 7.0 is very cool, easy to use, and will make you feel like a pro in a relatively short period of time. However, if you have a split-level entry home on a sloped terrain, be prepared for wailing and gnashing of teeth. There should be a warning on the package.

I do not believe that creating a split-level entry is even mentioned in the manual; you will need to link-up to the software designer's website (Chief Architect) which can be done from the Home Designer help menu.

After discovering the forbidden secrets and practicing a few times, creating a split-level entry is relatively easy. If you have a split-level entry house, this is a major design feature of your home. So it would have been nice if the manual that comes with the software at least addressed the special challenges.

The other major feature of a real-life split-level is the slope of the lot. The house is sort of two stories in the front and one story in the back. Creating a reasonable sloped terrain with the software for this effect seems nearly impossible, unless you write topographical maps for a living.

The manual gives you only one poorly-explained example of creating a sloped lot using elevation lines. The video/tutorial gives you one more rapid example, with an arrogant claim that it is easy. The tutorial suggests that you consult your GPS device to help with the slope of your land. Please.

You can also link to the Chief Architect website from the help menu for an additional example of sloping terrain. The website says that "creating a...sloping terrain is easy...." It ain't. In addition, various secrets need to be uncovered to prevent your split-level entry home from either sinking into the terrain or floating above it.

The bottom line: if you live on flat land, buy this software, relax, and have fun. If you live on a sloped lot, you may still consider buying this software. But, be prepared for some considerable frustration.