Better Homes And Gardens Home Architect

Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer Suite 7
The best value in consumer level home design software that we have tried to date. Highly recommended!

Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer Suite 7 is a scaled down, "home hobbyist", version of Chief Architect (a professional level home design program used by architects and professional building designers, which sells for $995 to $1595). While this consumer level program is not intended to produce a full set of "permit ready" working drawings with cross-sections and details for a complicated project, it is the best home design software that we have used to date, in its price range, for "non-professional" designers who would like to draw their own project and visualize it in 2 or 3 dimensions.

Easy to learn, with 30 step-by-step training videos on the included Tutorial CD and a comprehensive printed manual (rare in software packages these days), the program relies upon "drag and drop" object oriented technology, which allows the user to "draw" interior and exterior walls by simply dragging the mouse across the screen to the approximate length. Then, selecting individual walls to specify the exact dimensions of the room or space that they enclose. These enclosed "rooms" can be assigned characteristics that define the space — some of which include floor, wall, and ceiling finishes, ceiling or no ceiling, wall heights, type of roof overhead, foundation type beneath. Special types of "rooms" — like porches, decks, stairwells — can be assigned characteristics that would be associated with those types of spaces. Windows, doors, furniture, kitchen and bath cabinets, plumbing fixtures, electrical outlets, lights, plants, landscape elements, and other pre-defined objects are all added to the drawing by selecting the desired object from a library of more than 4,300 items and clicking on the plan where the object is to be placed.

Great for visualizing home additions, kitchen and bath makeovers, deck and patio plans, home office space, basement playrooms, (or just to let you see what your house would look like painted hot-pink with lime-green trim;-) Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer Suite 6 is well worth considering before you build or remodel your home.

Program Features

Inspire your designs with the Better Homes and Gardens Design Planning Center
Create a Virtual Walk-Through of your house
Design and visualize with 3D Models
Choose from a Library of more than 4,300 items for your designs
Generate an Automatic Materials List for cost estimating
No Design Experience Needed - Click, Drag, and Drop
Plan your home or remodeling project with the Getting Started Tutorial
Complete software for residential design, remodeling, landscaping, visualization, and more
Design Planning Center provides important design and product material information
Material Painter^™ applies color and materials to walls, countertops, cabinets, and more
3D Models and Virtual Tours
Import and Export files including BMP, WMF, PNG, AVI
3D Modeling Tools: Glass House^™, Doll House^™, and Plan View^™
Project Cost Estimating automatically generates a materials list for cost estimating
House Wizard^™ allows easy space planning design
Automatic and Manual dimensioning
Automatic Roofs creates gable, hip, and dormers
Automatic Stair tools for curved and split entry
A complete set of CAD tools to detail designs
Compatible with Chief Architect^® and 3D Home Architect^® (versions 4.0 and prior) file formats
4,300 Architectural Library items
Automatic building tools for roof generation, stairs, framing, dimensioning, foundations, and electrical
Create custom lighting and electrical plans
Home Design Style templates
Plan Check^™ validates your building against standard building principles
Decking and fencing tools
1,000 Landscaping plants
1,500 Sample home plans
30 training videos with "how to" information
Free online technical support

System requirements

Windows 98 SE, Windows ME, Windows NT, Windows 2000, or Windows XP
400 MHz processor
1 GB available hard disk space for a full installation (400 MB to install without all available program content)
64 MB of RAM
CD-ROM drive
2-button mouse supported by Windows
16-bit color monitor with 800x600 screen resolution

Recommended System

Windows 98 SE, Windows 2000, or Windows XP
2 GHz processor
2 GB of available hard disk space
512 MB of RAM
CD-ROM drive
2-button mouse with a mouse wheel
32-bit color monitor with 1024x768 screen resolution
Video card with Open GL hardware acceleration with 32 MB of memory or greater
Internet access

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Need more options for a more complicated project? Want to create full working drawings with cross sections, full-scale details, and the ability to print actual working blueprints on large format printers? Try Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer Pro 7 - (Available soon, Version 8)

Click here to read about other home design software