Home Design Software Tips - Before You Build

                  The benefits of using home design software can be unbelievable. Whether you have experience with home-building design or not, home design software can give you a pretty clear picture of what the new house is actually going to look like and this is wonderful. 1. Make sure that you understand how the software works. Take some time to read the instructions and practice using the software until you become comfortable with all of the tools and other options that are available in the program. 2. Get a couple of books on house design, to make sure that you are designing everything so that it will function and flow properly in the new house. In other words, don't make your hallways to big and your bedrooms too small. 3. Don't design a house with engineering problems. Your home could look marvelous on your computer, but have engineering problems. Don't get too excited, before you actually try to figure out if the home can be built. 4. Once you have a pretty good design, you're going to need to make sure that all of the electrical, plumbing, heating and air-conditioning systems will actually work and function well with the home design. 5. It wouldn't be a bad idea to understand how homes are actually constructed, before you design one. I can't tell you how many architects I have worked with, who don't understand how homes are actually built. If you have the house design software, design a couple of different buildings, before approaching an architect or engineer. A good engineer or architect and even a good general contractor can look at a home design and point out potential problems with it. Have fun with your home design software.

Home Design Software - What to Look For and Consider

                    There are many different manufacturers producing and selling a variety of software packages for the amateur and professional home and landscape designer. All of these packages offer something different, and hopefully this article will help you choose the one that is right for you. FEATURES TO LOOK FOR Full featured landscape and deck design software 2D as well as 3D views Plant finder software to allow you to choose plants based on region Smart, Simple and Fast drag and drop technology Pre-loaded templates Technology that allows you to build a design to match your current home Quick rendering speeds to bring your design to life faster "Building Green" features allowing you to create an environmentally friendly design Large Object Libraries - Several thousand objects allow you to build an almost infinite number of designs OTHER CONSIDERATIONS PC vs MAC - You will need to buy software that will fit your needs, depending on whether you own a PC or Apple MAC compatible computer Learning Curve - At first you may want to buy the software package with the most features, but generally these packages are the most difficult to learn how to use. You will need to find the right software suite which balances the amount of features, along with a relatively quick learning curve, so you can put those features to use. System Requirements - Always make sure that you read the system requirements of the software before you make the purchase. If your computer is not powerful enough to handle the package, your computer will run way to slow, and you will get almost nothing accomplished. User Reviews - You should be able to find user reviews by doing a simple Google or Yahoo search on the web. Look around and read a few, to see what others have to say about the product. WHERE TO BUY Local Retailers - Your local retailer will probably provide the best customer service when helping you choose the right product, but may not have the lowest prices. Big Box and Wholesale Clubs - Usually low on price, and also limited on customer service. Online - You can find almost any Home Design Software package online. Online retailers also may provide some of the lowest prices, as well as customer reviews to help you choose. Many times though, it can be difficult to return an item if you do not find it to be acceptable.

Custom Home Design - Software For the Do-It-Yourselfer!

                    If a new custom home is in your future, consider doing at least the preliminary designs yourself. Of course you have no doubt already looked at countless home designs in magazines, but none fit your bill - exactly. With today's technology, computer drawing software has been made extremely user friendly. There are a number of design software options available that the complete novice can quickly manage. And many of these programs are powerful enough for professional designers as well. Simple and professional. What could be better for your own do-it-yourself custom home design software? Now you can take the best ideas of all of those plans that you have been browsing over and try to incorporate them into your special home. Many of these software programs offer simple "drag-and-drop" features. This speeds up the design process considerably and allows you more time to do the more important design tasks like bathroom designs and kitchen designs and closet designs..... Now designers, architects and builders will do this work for - FOR A PRICE. But it may take a few generations of drawings to get to your desired home design. And we all know that time is money! You will gain a great deal of insight into your home when you design it yourself. You will look at space requirements and flows that you may otherwise disregard if designed by someone else. And some of the small but important spaces - closet, linen storage, laundry, even kitchen cupboard spaces - will get the extra attention that you deem is required. Having this kind of input into your special new home design will be exciting and self-satisfying as well. Imagine having you friends over raving about a particular design feature and being able to say "That was MY design idea". Now you will likely still have to engage someone to produce the construction set of drawings, but the design is still YOURS. And you will truly end up with a custom home designed especially for you.

House Floor Plan Software - Home Design Software Ideas

               Nowdays the computer age is making software for a dazzling array of uses. One such genre is house floor plan software. With this type of program, you can quite literally be your own architect! Whether you're a home hobbyist or a trained professional, anyone can now use software to do everything from create house floor plans to landscaping the back yard of your dreams. Home design software ideas can go from dreams to reality with the touch of a button. Creating house floor plans from home design software can be accomplished in just a few easy steps. Most programs have a number of notable features. 1. Design, publish and print completed designs in 3D for yourself, family and customers. 2. Customize the home's exterior by adding dormer windows, skylights, sun decks, balconies, terraces, and patios. Door styles and window types can also be customized. 3. Calculate and manage the cost of materials. This feature makes it easy to keep your house floor plan design within you housing budget. 4. Lighting effects and shifting patterns of sunlight and moonlight can be created in order to see what effect the placement of windows will have on a room via 3D movies. 5. A built-in interior design program and furniture gallery can be used to create different themes before money is spent on interior decor. 6. Some software programs offer an optional landscape and garden program which allows the user to create a detailed design of yard desired right down to the flowers and ornaments. The landscape created can then be viewed through the change of seasons in order to create a colorful landscape year round. Most programs offer drag-and-drop capabilities that make designing your dream yard easy and fun. Because most house floor plan design software runs on the local hard drive of your computer, you should keep the software system requirements in mind when making a selection. The system capabilities of your home computer should always meet or exceed the system requirements of the software you intend to purchase in order to properly execute the program. Knowing these facts will save time and frustration.

Useful Features of Home Design Software

                    Before building a new house, you surely need to create the design first. Designing your dream house can be confusing and complicated. Before hiring an architect, you should consider using a home design software to help you with the task. Home design software is a popular tool for creating design plans. By using this software, you can totally express your creativity. It gives you the opportunity to design a home based on your personal tastes. You can also modify the design as many times as you like to get the perfect look. This software is a great choice for both professionals and amateurs alike. It has many useful features to offer. Here is a list of features that you may find helpful: 1. Automatic Floor Plan Dimensioning Tool: This is a feature that you can use to determine the size of your home. Use this to increase or decrease the size of a room. 2. Interior Furniture Objects: This feature allows you to put and position furniture objects such as tables and chairs, so you will know how they would look inside a room. 3. Stair Generator Tool: Designing staircases will be easier with this tool. There are many staircase styles to choose from. 4. Cabinet Designer: If you want to make your kitchen look as good as any other rooms in your house, this tool is what you need. You can use this feature to place cabinets or other appliances on the kitchen area. Certain software even allows you to customize the cabinet design. 5. Roof Truss, Window and Door Schedule: This is a feature that you will find on any home design software. This tool enables you to design the door or window with the style and size of your choice. 6. Custom Roof and Pitch: This simple tool helps you customize roof pitch, which is the steepness of the roof. 7. Exterior Furniture Object: You will be happy to know that the software can also help you design the yard of your house. This tool will help you arrange patio furniture or even plan a playground for your children. Designing your dream house using home design software is fun and easy. You only need to sit in front of your computer screen and a new design plan is just a click away. The handy tools will help you in creating plans for both the interior and exterior. Besides that, this software is also easy to obtain. You can order it online and the retailer will ship it to your address as fast as possible.

Creating Your Dream House With Home Design Software Programs

                    In the olden days, if you want to design your home or parts of your home, you need to hire and consult professional such as architect and engineers to create you a home design. But today, with the improvement of technology, you can create your own house design project without having an advance skill of an architect and engineer. To create or to plan a project for your house, there are many soft wares for home design that you can try. Some of them are CAD Pro Program, Chief Architecture Software Program, Google SketchUp 6 software programs, and 3D Home Architect Décor & Design software program. Each of the programs offers different features and different benefits with it. Computer Aided Design (CAD) Pro is a drafting software program that can be used for designing a house professionally. CAD offers a full feature drafting software and presentation that enable any designers, whether you are an amateur or professional, to create a blueprint in a short time. Though many people assume that it's difficult to be used but actually there are a lot of advantages provided by this program such as: you can view ad print your floor plans in a professional way and very quick, you can customize plan and project so you can suit it with your detailed needs. Even better, it also works excellently when you combine it with Windows Program. Chief Architecture is a professional house design software program. Its unique feature lies on its itemized costs estimate reports that enable you to know how much costs are calculated when you build a house so you can estimate the budget you have to prepare before building your house. It also is completed with 1,000 page reference of useful tips so that the design process can be more effective. Google SketchUp 6 is software that offers easy-to-use tool that can provided you with detailed 3D options in designing you house. The benefit of using this program is you can create as detail or fundamental as you want while designing your house. This software is for free. Another program that you can try to design your house is 3D Home Architect Décor & Design. This is a software program step to step wizard features that enable you to create a house design easily and effectively. It offers thousands of accessories such as colors, materials, and fabrics for your options in planning your project. It also comes with Architect Ability features that enable you design your own roof, house foundation, and even electrical wiring layout. With various house design software programs, creating a house design project can be very easy and fast. Even if you decide to hire professional in doing the job, you still can gain some benefits with the programs; you can calculate the costs so that you know your contractor give you the fair price for your house layout and you are also able to find what kind of house that you like to build for your own house.

Professional Home Design Software

               

With computers getting increasingly more powerful and more accessible to wider home markets than ever before, software publishers have started putting the power of professional desktop software solutions once the exclusive domain of industrial users into homebound applications and marketed accordingly. In the area of 3D rendering and drawing focused on home designs, you have professional home design software that are both powerful and user-friendly enough to be used by homeowners. About the only distinguishing quality is the price and networking ability to share common files that corporate users demand. Then there's the after sales technical support that is more responsive for corporate professional software editions. Otherwise, there's really little to distinguish between the two, except AutoCAD. AutoCAD: The Standard Home Design Software for Professionals It can be an uphill battle overcoming a standard that has long dominated industries for the last 25 years. The AutoCAD 2D drawing and 3D rending tool has lorded it over industries ranging from toy makers all the way to space shuttle builders and remains supreme as the design tool of choice among professionals. Just about all commercial products have been designed from it. It is not specially optimized for home design, but it has all the features and functions that home design software application products have, from simple 2D floor plans to sophisticated 3D models with simulated light and shadow interplay as well as walk-through animation. There are a lot of commercial copycats to the AutoCAD software from Autodesk, all wanting a piece of the industrial and professional market with some pricing themselves low and successfully getting some market share. Admittedly, AutoCad is not for everyone, as it is quite expensive, costing $3,500 for a single user license. But it's comforting to note that professional and amateur home design solutions are CAD based, borrowing many of the 2D and 3D drawing features from AutoCAD. Chief Architect Specifically designed and marketed to residential and commercial designers and architects, Chief Architect home design solutions come from a company bearing the same name that has been in the home designing business since the early 90s. Chief Architect Pro is the professional architect and builder's choice application. It is essentially a suite of drawing tools that encompass all aspect of home building designs such as house architectural designing, remodeling, interior design, garden design and landscaping, deck and patio design and floor planning, all in 3D and realistic light and shadow application and animated walk-throughs. Chief Architect Home Designer Pro In addition to Chief Architect, the brand has formed a business partnership with Better Homes and Gardens to carry the next generation Home Designer software products under the Chief Architect name. Hence, after Better Homes and Garden Home Designer 8.0, the 9th iteration is marketed as Chief Architect Home Designer Pro 9.0 with sub-derivatives for the home markets. Targeted to both novice and professionals, corporate and home markets, the Chief Architect Home Designer Pro 9.0 can be considered your-upscale top-of-the line home design solution costing about $400 in the open market. It is a derivative of the Chief Architect Pro. Chief Architect also markets Interior Designer Pro 9.0 which is taken from the same suite, with a more detailed focus on, as the name implies, interior designing.

Best Home Design Software - Architectural Home Designer

              For folks who are looking for a home design software that is not only easy to use, but more importantly, equipped with the best tools for all types of designing needs, then perhaps it's time to stop searching. Famed home design software producer Chief Architect has once again come out with a product that is definitely going to be there or thereabouts when talking about the best home design software in the business. With Architectural Home Designer, users can make use of a variety of designing tools for remodeling and home design that covers cost estimation, site planning, landscaping, decks, baths, kitchens, as well as entire interior designs. Everything in One Package What makes a good home design software is its ability to strike a balance between a user friendly interface and excellent outputs. However, aside from this combination, what makes a great home design software is its integration of all types of remodeling and design tools that will satisfy all of its users needs. It must be an all-in-one design solution which should leave users with a feeling that they could no longer ask for anything more. Architectural Home Designer is one type of software which is just that. With this amazing piece of software, users can choose from thousands of sample plans which they can use as a basis for their designs. Also available are a myriad of different home style templates that can be used in line with either the House Wizard Feature, or customized fully to suit the user's wishes. Architectural Home Designer also features highly effective building tools such as automatic generation of foundations, framing, stairs, dormers, and roofs. This program also makes use of the most artistic rendering methods to come up with the likes of Technical, Glass House, or even Watercolor illustrations. Excellent for Interior Design Although Architectural Home Designer is indeed an excellent program for both deck designs and landscaping, its strength lies in its interior design capabilities. For starters, there's the Material Painter feature which allows users to easily apply all types of materials and colors on their walls and scene objects. Users can choose from thousands of different textures and colors which are brought to life by the digital photograph feature. Also on board is the Smart Design Objects feature which lets users literally drag and drop thousands of objects from the program's extensive library which has been excellently categorized by object types. Quick and Hassle-Free Startup What makes Architectural Home Designer even more impressive is it allows users to get started quickly and without any unwanted hassles. Aside from the Quick Startup Options Guide, there's also the very useful House Wizard feature which allows users to easily lay out rooms in a very uncomplicated manner. As mentioned earlier, the program is also loaded with hundreds of different templates that come in full color and are complete with all sorts of objects and fixtures. Also included are 40 helpful training videos that provide step-by-step instructions on how to get started on a home design project. Further support is also provided on the publisher's online help system which gives even more detailed information on all sorts of designing projects.

Cheap Home Designer Software - Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer Suite 8.0

                 One of the best cheap home designer software around is a program produced by the professional 3D architectural software company Chief Architect. Their latest version of the program is Better Homes and Garden Home Designer Suite 8.0 and it has received its fare share of reviews on both software magazines, as well as in architecture websites. It has definitely become a mainstay in the home design software industry and at just around $100, one should be able to get his own hands on this impressive piece of software. At a Glance One of the primary reasons why this program has become so popular is because of the fact that it was designed and developed by such a successful designer software company. Chief Architect have released dozens of programs in the past that encompass other aspects of the industry, and their services even extend to training and customer support. This time around, with the new Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer Suite 8.0, they have come up with yet another effective program that will serve as an excellent tool towards a beautifully designed home. Aside from a comprehensive user manual, the kit will also include more than 30 video tutorials that should be helpful for most types of users. The Pros Purchasing this program will bring forth a lot of benefits for users of all skill levels. Even first-timers shouldn't have too much trouble using this software simply because it is very user friendly and quite straightforward. Although it does involve a myriad of different features, it is still very easy to use and navigate through. Besides, included in the kit are a variety of tutorials that will cover a multitude of subjects regarding the software. Also on board is a large database that holds a lot of accomplished home plans that can be used as samples or as a point of reference. An added bonus is the landscaping software which makes this an even more impressive cheap home designer software. The Cons As with any home designer program, the Better Homes and Gardens Designer Suite 8.0 still has its share of cons, albeit seemingly workable once the bigger picture is taken into consideration. For one, custom designing stairs and roofs might pose as quite a challenge, especially for those who lack the experience in using these types of programs. An even bigger problem is that the designs and blueprints produced by this program are not at the professional level. However, the price tag it comes with is definitely able to make up for any minor shortcomings it may have.

Why Get Home Design Software?

              To have a house that one actually design and built according to one's taste is practically everybody's dream. Instead of just buying or renting a house that was already made, you would of course want something that you yourself have planned to suit your preferences. However, designing a home could be quite a difficult ordeal. It is quite expensive to hire an architect to draft your plans, and it is also very hard to put what is on your mind on paper. Luckily such a predicament may be a thing of the past with the help of home design software. Here are some reasons that make home design software so advantageous: -Home design software could enhance your capacity to make beautiful home designs that are efficient, while matching the limits you have with you budget. -With home design software you can add your personal touch to every design since you will be the one to make it. -Home design software has so much more capabilities beyond the usual sketching and drafting. -Home design software allows you to customize everything instantly from the changing of dimensions to remodeling floor plans, you can even fit in cabinets and furniture without even having to waste paper and pencil. -Not only can you design your floor plan with home design software, you can also design your landscape as well, allowing you to known what types of plants would best fit your space and how much you need to fill it. -You can also gain some useful and systematic insight regarding your electrical wiring, and plumbing. The software itself would tell you what types of power, water, cooling, and heating systems you would need. -With home design software, you are not limited to just viewing boring blue prints on flat paper, you can see 3D views of your dream home, and you can even see the cross sections of your future house. -Best of all, home design software is so fun to use. Planning your home would be as enjoyable as playing a game on the computer. This would motivate you even more to continue planning. Things to look for when buying Home Design Software: 1. Features - the software you buy should have features that are beyond just basic floor planning. There should be a wide set of tools such 3D views, infrastructure incorporation, among many others. The software should also allow for great customization and freedom of designing, because after all, it is your house that is being designed. 2. Ease in Usage - the software should be very easy for you to use, whether or not you have a background in architecture. The main reason you are getting the software is that you are not an expert with home designing, and thus the software you buy should have an interface that you can use quickly and intuitively. 3. Ease in Installation - the software you get should also be very easy to install. The program should include the entire designing package. There should be no more need to download other applets save for free updates that might come farther in the future. 4. Functional Help Desk - you can expect the software to be a little more complex and thus you would need some assistance as you use it, thus there should be a functional help documentation included that provides simple and easy-to-follow solutions for your problems. Designing your dream home with home design software can be fun, exciting, and very efficient. So why not make first step in fulfilling your dreams by planning your house with the wide array of programs now available in the market. Who knows, you might be building the actual house in the real world sooner than you would think.