Home Designer Essentials 2012

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Home Designer Essentials 2012 Review

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When I upgraded to Win7, my old $90 Broderbund 3D Home Design Suite Pro (CadSoft) would not install. I wanted to buy new carpet for my home and I needed to create a house design fast and accurately so I could bring accurate dimensions to the flooring store. Chief Architect Essentials did the job. I had the basic design done in a couple hours, including measuring, for only $60. Yes, you need the Internet to download the core library which is several gigs in size. But this package will run circles around EVERYTHING else in the price range. I downloaded it, so I had no manual. The help screens were adequate, and they have online training videos! Chief Architect comes in several versions, each one more comprehensive. So depending on what you want to do, buy the one that best suits your needs. Go to the Chief Architect website to compare the features, and there are a GOB of features to choose from. I'll note some differences below. This little package does every aspect of the more expensive packages, but to a limited extent. So there are no lilacs or snowball bushes, but it's got spireas and ponderosa pines. You can add raised-box flower beds. You can do a driveway and sidewalk, and kidney-shaped flower beds; but if you raise those flower-beds, you can't put cut-stone walls under them. Grrr. You need the Suite or Architectural version to do that.

It does 2D and 3D, plus recorded walk-thru. It can do walls, doors, fireplaces, cabinets, surface textures, auto-dimensioning, landscaping with plants, shrubs, trees (even growing them), and it generates a roof automatically. It can also control minute details like window trim, and chair rails. It has a built-in automatic materials list that figures out the number of studs and all other materials; the list varies as you make changes; and you can output the list to a text file. You can actually change the size of the toilet! Double-click on any item, and you get a number of variable options. You can even design and edit in 3D, not just display! When I inserted a fireplace, it knew to include a foundation for it. You can choose floor to bottom dimensions for any object (like door and windows), and even specify a negative number. That means you can have doors at different heights surrounding the same landing in case you have a step-up, like I do. For $60, that's fabulous!

Ease of use: click a wall, and drag it to the length you want it. Do the next wall and it automatically connects the two. You can change the default thickness of the wall (4" or 6" studs for example), and choose interior or exterior walls. When you create an exterior wall, it includes the sheathing and exterior siding automatically. You can easily drag it to the correct length, or click on the dimension and specify the exact length or distance! Depending on the wall you select when you choose the dimension, it will move that wall and not the opposing wall, and adjust the positioning and length of everything else. That's intuitive. Want to change the height of the wall? grab it at the top and pull it up. Measure the exterior dimension of your building first, then draw the exterior walls (that's a check against interior errors). Once you finish the first floor, click on foundation and it will automatically generate your foundation/basement! Just tell it the height of the foundation walls, whether it's a crawl space or full height, or something between. You can even shift the foundation wall if necessary (for cantilevered walls, etc.). When I generated the roof, it figured out the shingles and the rest automatically. Incredible! If you show external dimensions, it will break it up according to the interior walls so you don't need to clutter the drawing with all those lines and numbers! If you haven't used a CAD design package before, that little feature is very helpful and very unusual.

Drawbacks. You cannot output DXF files (AutoCAD) on this particular package. You need the Architectural or Pro version for that. You get a number of roof styles to choose from, but you cannot specify roof oddities. For example, I have a box window on the living room. I have a gable roof. It insisted on creating a break-out for the box window instead of just putting it under the gable soffit. To get the roof I actually have, I need to upgrade to the Chief Architect Architectural or Pro version ($199 or $495). But everything I've done so far would work in that upgrade. Wow! It has a huge library (downloaded automatically after installation), but no furnaces! Does that mean I couldn't indicate it? Nope. It has shapes of all kinds. I simply inserted a closed box, and made it match the dimensions of my furnace and changed the surface material and label. It doesn't have a patio. No problem. I created a rectangle, and specified concrete for the material. But when I tried to do a slope on my landscaping, I was out of luck. I need the Suite or the Architectural version for that ($99 or $199). Here's another oddity: it cannot distinguish between the inside and outside of a window! It only has one set of characteristics. So if I specify a sill and and trim on the inside, it shows on the outside as well - but only in 3D of course, and barely noticeable. I have a single step, down from the kitchen to the landing at the top of the stairs going into the basement. It didn't know how to handle it. I pulled out the landing and made a single stair 36" square, no rails or ballisters. But it put a riser in that blocked the back door from opening onto this make-shift landing. No problem. I told it to make the riser invisible. I have a floating deck I built years ago. To reproduce it in the drawing, I put two boxes 7" high on the step down from the sliding glass door, the smaller on top of the larger; I specified wood for the material, and then rotated the material so the 2x6's went length-wise. It was impressive!

On the other hand, because it doesn't distinguish interior from exterior on anything but the walls, it cannot distinguish between the inside and outside of a fireplace. So when I say that it's a brick face on the living room side, it puts a brick face on the outside (it's actually cinder block in the garage). If I put a hearth on the inside, it puts a hearth on the outside! That's silly. I tried "breaking" it so that I could specify different parts, but you can't break a standard library component. Then again, I could hand-construct it with shapes if I wanted to and specify the surface materials. For time reasons, and for my purposes, I didn't want to. I needed the fireplace to go through the roof. I got into 3D mode and dragged it vertically to the right height. It figures it all out without me having to break a hole in the roof! Phenomenal! Then again, once I did that, I couldn't put a mantle on the fireplace in the living room because it went from floor to ceiling. Because it's all automated, it won't let you put studs in the walls, or show unfinished wall studs. You need the Architectural version. I also have a double fireplace flue for the two fireplaces upstairs and in the basement; there's no way to handle that in the Essentials package.

Here's another oddity: I can place an invisible wall between two rooms, or between the dining room and hall, for example, so that I can specify the type of room and get the square footage. In 3D, the wall trim breaks (stops) at the invisible wall. Hmmm. When I put chair rails in the dining room, it put one on the hallway wall as well, up to the point of that invisible wall; it may be invisible, but it's definitely tangible. Also, you can only add chair rails in 3D, and only on a per room basis; it's not per wall. So I couldn't delete the chair rail on the hallway wall. Also, you cannot specify wallpaper above the chair rail and paint below it (two different surfaces on the same wall). That's because you can't break the wall vertically; you can only break it along its length. I could try creating a half wall, and then put a shape on top, I suppose, but I'm just not that ambitious...

Bottom line: I've been using CAD software since the 1980's. And I've used a number of DIY house-design CAD packages over the years, including 3D Architect which was the closest to this one. I've never seen anything this powerful, this easy, with this many features, for this price. Period. And if I want more, I can always upgrade to the fancier package. Even those prices, for what you get, are very reasonable, I think.
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