Broderbund 3D Home Architect Design Suite Deluxe 6 [OLD VERSION]

This appeared to a promsing product which I intended for rough designs of a house. However, my experience is that is poorly suited for this task and I would not recommend it.

I have come so very close to getting this program to work for me, and have even gotten exploratory value out of it, but you should know that the database is often corrupted by the tool, and requires program re-installation and design recreation.In the words of the help file (on line at ...):MBuilder Has Encountered a Problem...When using the program, the following message appears:"MBuilder has encountered problem." There are several possible causes forthis issue. The remainder of this note describes how to proceed.Determine If the Plan Is Corrupt1. Launch 3D Home Architect® and create a new plan.2. Add a basic structure to the plan.3. Save the plan and close 3D Home Architect®.4. Launch 3D Home Architect® and open the plan created in Steps 1 & 2 above.5. Choose from the following:* If the error message does not reoccur when working with the new plan,the previous plan is most likely corrupt. Recreate the plan or restorea backup copy of the plan.* If the same error reoccurs, continue with the following procedures.These suggestions will help to prevent corruption in future plans-- Further instructions tell you to turn off large displays, accelerations, etc.As long as you have separate backups every 15 minutes or so (not just saving the file, but saving to a set of many different files) then you may be able to recover some of your work.The problem is, you may work for a long time with the program working, but with save files written by the program that are corrupt. Once written out, it can't be read back in.I have worked with their on-line help system, and have been referred to the instructions: just reinstall and recreate what you did.My question to them was, "How do I know what to avoid?"Part of the problem is that the design may be OK in memory, but when it gets written out, it is corrupt. There is a "repair database" command that sometimes works, but only if the file is still in memory, and not always then.Identifying what caused the problem has eluded me so far (50+ hours of use, design not finished)A hint for you if you do use the program: you should know that small pieces of walls can be left behind as remnants. When walls start to act funny, expand the area, pull all of the walls back out of the intersections, and delete the little pieces that are left. You can then rejoin the wall segments and continue. (you will need to redo roofs ceilings and floors, but you will be used to that by then.Try it, many parts work extremely well, but make all your decisions up front, because changing is tedious.Just a few things would enhance the utility of the program tremendously: a copy/paste that works between files, a robust database, and a format painter that can work on trim.Good luck.

I bought this program, honestly, because it was the cheapest one I could find. So I can't complain much - you get what you pay for as they say. The program crashed on me many a time, but if I saved regularly it wasnt really that bad. I live in Alaska and many things that I would look for to build a house here were not included. Also, I have this dream of having a fabulous bathroom. The interior decorating parts of this program didnt include many types of bathtubs and such. All in all, I enjoy making homes in the Sims 2 much more for that reason. However, as far as designing the floor plan, not too bad. Easy to figure out, and fun!

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.