Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #252 in Software
• Brand: Eleco
• Released on: 2008-10-10
• Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows XP
• Format: Closed-captioned

Manufacturer's Description
Bring dreams to life

GRAND DESIGNS 3D gives you design tools to create your dream home. Renovation & Interior edition allows you to remodel the interior and exterior of your home in 2D then add furniture and materials to create a dream living space. Finally, visualise your designs in 3D and create photorealistic images.

Customer Reviews

Useful product
Looking at the other reviews, opinions on this are clearly divided. It's not especially cheap, but I feel it's actually an ok product. The single machine licence is a nuisance, but I found it easy to use and very comprehensive, as long as you are clear about what you want and know how to go about it. It's not for doodling, it is intended for serious re-modelling and renovation. Sure, the professionals have much better products and are expert with them , so if you just want to pay someone to do the work for you, there is little point in buying it. If you want to do all or some of it yourself, I think it is very useful and not hard to learn. Recommended.

good and bad
If you can master the software, this package could save you a lot of problems in the long term for a planned renovation or refurbishment but you'll need to invest quite a few hours of practice before you're able to get the best out of it. It is complicated and a real chore to use, especially as the buttons and layout of buttons are not logical nor intuitive.

Also, if you already have (or are thinking of getting) the much more expensive Grand Designs 3D Self Build & Develop package, be aware that it includes this Renovations and Interiors programme - so don't get both!

Intuitive & Easy to use
I bought a copy of this software to put together some plans for an outbuilding I want to convert. I found the software excellent value for money and miles ahead of similar software on the market. Many available products are based on US software and contain house features and finishes that would not be seen on European properties, also many are based around imperial measurements and don't convert well to the metric system. In contrast Grand Designs 3D is clearly designed for the European housing market and European measurements. In about three hours I managed to knock together a plan for the outbuildings I want to convert without much difficulty, having not used the software before. I thought the software was pretty easy to use as long as the user takes the time to look at some of the plans and tutorials contained in the software. There is also a pretty good help system and the manual seemed to cover everything I needed. I am reasonably computer literate but certainly no expert, but I found this software pretty easy to use and very flexible, it looks like almost any window, door, bath, kitchen unit etc can be resized to the exact size you want. It was great being able to keep changing features until you get what you want. The cost of the software is miniscule compared to the projected cost of building an extension or refurbishing a kitchen and I'd thoroughly recommend the software to anyone who wants to try and visualise a project before they phone a builder or architect.