Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer Pro 8 0

Designing like a professional has never been so easy! Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer Pro 8.0 is professional home design software for the serious home enthusiast. Enjoy the same tools that the professionals use for home design, remodeling, interior design, decks, landscaping and cost estimation. Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer Pro has all the same great features as Architectural Home Designer, Interior Designer, Landscaping and Deck Designer plus advanced CAD tools, advanced building tools, the ability to create blueprints, manual framing and roofing and much more.
Integrated Design Tools Home Designer Pro makes it easy to design and visualize your ideas on your next home or remodeling project with over 8,000 powerful integrated tools. In addition, the Design Planning Center provides advice, decorating guidelines, tips and techniques from the editors of the Better Homes and Gardens magazine. Create accurately scaled floor plans that automatically generate 3D models in minutes. Create any detailed view of your design using advanced 3D camera tools like Glass House, Doll House, Framing, Elevation and Cross-Sections Quick Startup Options Guide will help you begin with How-To tutorials based on your type of project Use the House Wizard for quick and easy layout of your rooms Select from the pre-designed Home Design and Landscaping Style Templates complete with colors, cabinets, decks and more Exclusive Design Planning Center for up-to-date How-To and Design Tips from the experts to help in your design process Includes Step-by-Step Tutorial DVD Packed with over 70 easy step-by-step tutorial training videos Generate shadows from the sun for realistic 3D views Point-and-click to remove wall surfaces, or use 3D Cross-Section Elevation Slider to quickly create a 3D slice of your desired view Create any custom roof or ceiling plan with the Roof Design Tools

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars Great Product
Product is great - much better and more powerful tool than 7.0 or Designer Suite.

5 Stars Finally
The Home Designer Pro software is a cut-down version of the full Chief Architect product (allowing a building to be drawn that is less than 4 stories tall). It is a good product for professionals in the residential construction field — WAY better than the others available. If you have version 7.0, Chief Architect’s website would be a good visit — they update to version 8.0 for products purchased between certain dates.

5 Stars Feature filled and easy to use
I recently got the BHG Designer Pro 8 version and started by watching the video tutorials and skimming through the extremely thorough manual. This was adequate to get me started on using the software even though I had no previous design or CAD experience. In very little time I had reproduced my architect’s plan and was looking at it in 3D. This helped us identify changes to our architect’s plans (and getting my wife’s agreement) and no doubt we saved a lot of money than making these changes after the work starts. I have not yet developed my roof building skills to where I can match my architect’s drawings but I am working on this.

I also experimented with importing my architect’s plans into Pro and using the CAD to Walls features and amazingly in a matter of seconds my architect’s plan was in my system. As it turned out, I reverted to the manually drawn plan since I was having some problems (probably me rather than the software) with the doors and windows in the CAD to walls drawing and doing it from scratch was easy enough anyway.

This is a fantastically powerful, feature laden program and the many things I have tried actually work !!! I have not used any competitors’ design products so I cannot compare across these. However, if you have basic computer skills, this program is easy to use even for complex items of a plan. Important thing is to do the homework of watching the tutorials / skimming the manuals before using this immensely powerful system. Also they have a very active user forum and lots of great info there too.

5 Stars Pro 8 is a very good deal
I have been an avid user/teacher of Chief Architect Inc software since 1995 (I mainly use Chief Architect X1 in my /drafting and design business) but the line of consumer software like Home Designer Pro 8 is a great way to introduce yourself to professional level output. Yes it is a cut-down version in terms of choices and productivity tools that are available in its “Big Brother” (Chief X1) but at 1/5 th the price it makes up for the extra steps its economy warrants. The only thing that is more difficult to do in Pro than Chief X1 is curved roof planes, other than that it can easily do what programs costing many thousands more can do.

David J. Potter

5 Stars Forgett Autocad !!!!!
I’ve been using Autocad for +20 years, and taught Autocad for 4 years. I JUST PUT IT TO SLEEP after using Home Designer Pro 8.0 !!!!!! If you are into designing Custom Homes, the software pays for itself on the preliminary design phases. Designing in 3D is a wonderful experience!!! However I did purchase it considering it as a full trial before purchasing (+2000 dlls) the full blown version Chief Architect for detailing the design. Once I buy it I will still use HD 8.0 for designing interiors, remodeling or landscape jobs.

IT IS THE BEST SOFTWARE I HAVE EXPERIENCED.

After so many years, Autocad is too big and complicated rocket science tool, expensive, 2D process, time consuming, if you are designing Custom Homes. With HD 8.0 I feel liberated and enjoy designing, with Autocad, you never finish feeding the beast!!!

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Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer Suite 8 0

For a fun and advanced, yet easy-to-use set of tools for Home Design, Better Homes And Gardens Home Designer Suite 8 is the perfect solution. Use it for remodeling, interior design, kitchens, baths, decks, landscaping and cost estimation. Powerful, Fun and Easy Home Design Software

Custom cabinets, sinks, showers and garden tubs in 3D Inspirational photos by room or type Thousands of colors and textures or create your own materials with a digital picture Deck and patio tools Design single or multi-level decks with automatic deck framing Deck foundations automatically generate to match sloped lots Plant Encyclopedia - Over 1,500 plants Pathway tool - design curb-appealing landscaping using stone, pavers or sidewalks Design in 2D & 3D Glass House View - a translucent view of your design Doll House View - a 3D overview without the roof Create a Virtual Tour Day and night views Assemble a scale model of your design Generate shadows from the sun for realistic 3D Automatic Build Terrain and Terrain Perimeter tools - create flat, irregular shaped or sloped lots - use a GPS to import or enter elevation data Create plot and perimeter plans; automatically generate a 3D model of your actual terrain Easy-to-use terrain and landscaping tools - Add a pool or pond and visualize in 3D Fencing tools - a variety of fencing styles, custom gates, driveways, sidewalks and curbing tools Hill and Valley tools - add gardens, beds and slopes that automatically appear in 3D Cost EstimatingMinimum System Requirements Windows XP/Vista 1.2 GHz processor 2 GB of available disk space 512 MB of Memory on XP 1 GB of Memory on Vista DVD drive

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars Joe S.
I purchased this product to design an addition on my house, and to help my wife understand what I wanted to do. The product is well worth its money compaired to other products I tried. Most of it is fairly easy to use, I am very happy with it.

2 Stars Frustrating experience, precision problems
I tried out this tool in hopes of mocking up my current home to plan for a potential addition. I had paper blueprints and lot diagram with exact angles and dimensions in front of me. This tool may work well for sketching and quick designs where precision is not important. For me it failed even to create a 25′ x 46′ exterior wall. After drawing a simple rectangle I double clicked on lines to change the dimensions. After entering 25′ for one wall it would still be displayed as 24′11″! I also could not recreate my lot even though I had the exact dimensions in front of me. Now you are probably thinking that I must have zero technical ability. In fact, I have a degree in engineering and have extensive use of complex software packages including AutoCAD. If you have a technical mind like me, this program will not behave as you expect and leads to frustration. I’m currently shopping for an alternative.

4 Stars A Powerfull software
This is a very elaborate,detailed and powerfull software. I was very impressed by its capabilities. You can prepare a house plan and decorate it down to minor details such as the pillow case type and color. You can also download paint color, appliances etc, from the manufactureres web site and use it in your design. Most of the function are fairly easy to learn and I think they did a great job with the DVD tutorial. However with so many detailes involved in designing and decorating a house, you should not expect to master this software, in one afternoon, or one day. It would be more reasonable to expect about two or three weeks of practice to be comfortable with the software. Some Autocad drafting experience would certainly be helpfull but not neccessary. I would suggest printing the sample house design tutorial that is provided with the software and start working on the house project. It will walk you through most of the futures of the software. I gave it four stars because once you draw the house, adjusting the wall lenghts to thier final sizes can be frustrating.

4 Stars This is an old favorite.
I think this program beats any home design program out there. It is based on the old Home Architect program, and I have always thought it was the simplest, best program. Roof design is tricky, granted, but I think it is in any program. I give it a four because it is not perfect, but I highly recommend it.

5 Stars Best Software I Think I’ve Ever Used
I think this is the first 5 star review I’ve ever given. I am so impressed with this product, I believe it may be the best piece of software I’ve ever used.

I started with another program by IMSI that got me through a rough sketch of what I wanted for our new home. Bug after bug and limit after limit got me to give up after a few weeks. This program was highly recommended on Amazon, so I purchased it with moderate hope. Nearly everything was intuitive and easy to do. Most importantly, I have yet to find a bug anywhere. It simply does what I want it to do quickly.

Between the two programs (both similar in layout) it took me about a week to get pretty comfortable to do just about anything I wanted. I do learn applications quickly, but it is by no means a complicated thing to learn. That and the numerous videos make this a pretty nifty package for quick education.

The company also has a website (inside the help section is a link) that has answers to everything you could imagine - either through the online help, or via the forums.

Great product, and not too expensive.

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