Product Description

Suite 9.0 is the latest release from Chief Architect, leader in the Professional Home Design Software Industry, now with a new consumer focus just for you! With over 5,000 integrated tools it is perfect for home design, remodeling, interior design, landscaping, decks, cost estimation, and site planning. Design in 2D and 3D or both simultaneously! HOME DESIGN * Virtual Walk-Through: Draw your record line to automatically generate a virtual tour * Choose from over 6,000 library items or download free bonus items * Use Edit Area to select, move, edit, and copy entire regions of your design * Create Rendered Cross-Section Views with photo-realistic textures * Compatible with Chief Architect® (Version X2) REMODELING * Add lighting fixtures to create dramatic views * Choose from over 1,000 cabinets and customize using any style and color * Create accurately scaled floor plans * Change your colors, countertops, and flooring styles with the Material Painter * Ability to Add items to the Library Browser * Create base, wall, full height, curved, corner cabinets, partitions, shelves, and soffits for your kitchen or bath DECKS & LANDSCAPING * Auto-generate decks with the Deck Railing Tool * Choose from over 1,500 popular plants to place and arrange in your landscaping design * Get detailed information from the plant encyclopedia and learn which ones are best for you using the Hardiness Zone Maps * One-Click Hill and Valley tools for realistic landscape modeling * Design free-standing, post-and-beam, tiered, and multi-story decks INTERIOR DESIGN * Place name brand products in your design * Import your own custom colors or materials from a digital photo or website * Quickly visualize colors and textures for walls, floors, and countertops * Thousands of items in the built-in library: furniture, fixtures, lighting, doors, windows, and more * Ability to Export Custom Libraries - Share your libraries with other Home Designer Users

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #187 in Software
• Brand: Chief Architect
• Model: S90-DN-0AZ1
• Released on: 2009-08-07
• Platforms: Windows 7, Windows XP, Windows Vista
• Format: DVD-ROM
• Dimensions: .45 pounds

Manufacturer's Description
Home Designer Suite 9.0 is the latest release from Chief Architect, the professional software design company and the software of choice by more builders, architects and designers. Home Designer Suite leverages the same professional quality from Chief Architect making it the most powerful and easy to use home design, remodeling and landscaping software.

An advanced yet easy to use set of tools for Home Design, Remodeling, Interior Design, Kitchens, Baths, Decks, Landscaping and Cost Estimation. Click to enlarge.

Glass House View provides a full translucent view of your design. Click to enlarge.

Create plot and perimeter plans; automatically generate a 3D model of your actual terrain. Click to enlarge.

Doll House View, a 3D overview without the roof, is an effective tool for space planning of furniture placement and traffic flow. Click to enlarge.

Powerful deck and patio tools allow you to design and visualize your new deck with 3D models and can help you estimate the costs. Click to enlarge.

Choose from over 1,500 plants with the Plant Chooser. Click to enlarge.

Design or Remodel Your Home Today!
Chief Architect Home Designer Suite provides a fun and an advanced yet easy to use set of tools for Home Design, Remodeling, Interior Design, Kitchens, Baths, Decks, Landscaping and Cost Estimation.

Powerful, Fun and Easy Home Design Software

• Perfect for Home Design, Remodeling and Landscaping
• Choose from over 1,500 Sample Plans
• Choose from built-in home style templates, create your own custom home design or use the House Wizard
• Powerful building tools like automatic roof generation, dormers, stairs, framing and foundations
• Visualize your new Kitchen or Bath

House Wizard and Tutorial Videos Make it Easy!

• The Quick Startup Options Guide will help you begin with "How-To" tutorials based on the type of your project
• Use the House Wizard for quick and easy layout of your rooms
• Select from the pre-designed Home Design, Interior and Landscaping Style Templates complete with colors, cabinets, decks and more
• The online help system provides detail information on all types of building projects
• Includes over 30 easy "step-by-step" tutorial training videos that will quickly get you started on your next home design project

Kitchens, Baths and Custom Cabinets

• Design the Kitchen of your dreams--move walls, create new cabinets, add appliances--Design your perfect workspace!
• Plan the new layout of your bathroom with custom cabinets, sinks, showers and garden tubs. It's easy to visualize your ideas in 3D.
• Create custom cabinets in minutes by choosing your own colors, countertops, door styles and more
• Design your new kitchen or bath using the Cabinet Designer Tools
• Use the Cabinet Designer tools to create unlimited cabinet styles. Choose your own colors, countertops and door styles.

Interiors and Exteriors

• Design and decorating style ideas with inspirational photos by rooms
• Material Painter lets you apply colors and materials quickly and easily
• Choose from thousands of colors and textures or create your own materials using a digital photograph
• Design for your lifestyle and personality--change colors, add lighting and choose furniture to accent your new room
• Choose from a variety of interior items--including chairs, tables, sofas, fabrics, accessories and more. Resize, change colors and materials to meet your exact needs.
• Smart Design Objects, Drag-and-drop from thousands of design objects in the built-in Library organized by category

Decks and Landscaping

• Powerful deck and patio tools allow you to design and visualize your new deck with 3D models and can help you estimate the costs
• Design single or multi-level decks complete with automatic deck framing
• Quickly lay out your deck with stairs and arrange furniture
• Deck foundations automatically generate to match sloped lots
• Plant Encyclopedia to learn more about the plants in your designs
• Choose from over 1,500 plants with the Plant Chooser
• Pathways--Use the Stepping Stone tool to design curb-appealing landscaping using stone, pavers or sidewalks--line with trees, shrubs, flowers and more

3D Models and Virtual Tours

• Design in 2D and 3D. 3D Views are automatic with a point-and-click of the camera tool.
• Glass House View provides a full translucent view of your design
• Doll House View, a 3D overview without the roof, is an effective tool for space planning of furniture placement and traffic flow
• Create a Virtual Tour--draw your record line to Automatically Generate; or record your camera movements
• Visualize your home with day and night views
• Assemble a scale model of your design with Model Maker
• 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

Site Planning & Estimating

• Use Automatic Build Terrain and Terrain Perimeter tools to 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
• Make your backyard design come alive using several easy-to-use terrain and landscaping tools. Add a pool or pond and visualize in 3D.
• Fences and Driveways--With the Fencing tools you can choose a variety of fencing styles and custom gates. You will also find driveway, sidewalk and curbing tools
• Hill and Valley tools make it easy to add gardens, beds and slopes that automatically appear in 3D views. Choose from landscaping style templates or create your own.
• Cost Estimating--Don't be surprised by the cost of your project. Automatically generate a complete spreadsheet for your project costs, broken down by category. Calculate the amount of lumber for your deck or concrete required for that new patio.

Customer Reviews

Comprehensive but American
This is a very powerful piece of software which seems to have limitless options available for design. It needs a pretty good amount of RAM, so I guess you need a good-ish computer (program has lots of graphics etc.)

There is a comprehensive series of tutorials which I found very helpful, and once you've mastered tbe basics of creating a room the programme allows you to then get complicated with different designs and furnishings - -and makes it very easy!

If you're creating from new there are a comprehensive selection of defaults that allow a quick and professional creation of pretty much any home feature. The only problem I found throughout the program is that it is obviously made for the USA market, which is pity because many of the ready made items (especially the houses) are distinctly American.

The options available let you recreate your own home conditions to plan any changes to either the structure or the decor. You may have to use a little artistic licence at times for the reasons given above, but it's not a serious issue really.

There is also a garden planning facility, including a comprehensive selection of plants and shrubs (which again are USA based).

You can view what you've created from all angles and in 3D (which is why you need quite a good computer). You can also use the program to calculate costs and quantities.

It's difficult to see what else a home owner could possibly want from a home design package. I dropped it a star only because it has not been adapted for the European market.

Recommended for anyone looking to redesign home and garden and wanting a professional program to work with.

Good product, great price, Americanisms show through thou.
First off, before you click the Buy button, you should review the minimum hardware specs. You need a pretty powerful PC, with alot of RAM (which most modern desktop PC's should be fine with), but most importantly, a powerful video card, with at least 256MB of video memory. Don't even think about running this off a budget laptop, it won't work.

OK, with that out the way. This is a pretty nifty bit of kit. It's well laid out, and rather powerful home designer software, you can do room designs all the way up to a full house and garden design, pretty much every aspect of the design can be tweaked using the software. It's pretty simple to use, but will require a little bit of work to get to grips with the intricacies of the software. The quickstart videos are all online (not on the DVD), and are well thought out and teach the basics quickly, however they are very "American", as this a American product, with some terminology differences.

The Americanisms continue, as this seems very geared for imperial measurements. The built in templates some let you change to metric, others seem fixed at imperial measurements. You can of course start your own template using metric measurements, but it does mean you can't use some of the built in ones (I couldn't see how to change it after the template was used).

The American theme continues, many of the default materials are based around American housebuilding techniques, rather than European ones, small annoyance, and something I suspect can be changed if you delve deep enough in the settings.

One of the best parts is the licensing, which allows use on upto 3 different PC's, and you can free up licensed PC's by uninstalling whilst connected to the net, to move licences around.

The Import/Export options are good (including importing of models from Google SketchUp or 3DStudio and exporting to DXF to amongst many other formats). There even appears to be an option to import terrain data from GPS (in GPX format), which sounds neat (but I haven't tried it).

You can also get the package to calculate materials lists, which sounds handy, but again, I haven't needed to use this yet. However it sounds promising, as based on my experiences of the software so far, I have no doubt that it will work as I expect it to.

I think most people will be very pleased with this software, it would get 5 stars if it were more tailored for the Euro market, but knocking a point of for that. Otherwise at the price it represents very good value for money.

PROS
Pretty easy to use considering the complexity of the subject
Online tutorials are well thought out and helpful to get the basics
Fantastic price
Flexible licensing
Easy to achieve good results quickly.
Compatible with Win7(even 64bit)
Good Import/Export options
Material Calculations

CONS
Some templates fixed to imperial measurements
Many Americanisms in the software.
Beefy hardware requirements

Add a star if you manage to get to grips with the software!
Very comprehensive & very hard to use! The tutorials do help & the options seem almost limitless but be prepared to spend a LONG time learning how to do what you want to......

.........& even longer working out all the possibilities of what the software COULD do!

Seriously a very good piece of software for those with the time & talent to invest in it. And you need to provide the ideas yourself as no software can turn you into a creative designer!

Probably over-kill for domestic use.

One to have a long hard look at before purchasing but a great bit of software for the right person!