Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer Suite 7
The best value in consumer level home design software that we have tried to date. Highly recommended!

Now Available - Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer Suite 8.0

Now Available - Better Homes and Gardens Architectural Home Designer 8.0

Now Available - Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer Professional 8.0

Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer Suite 7 is a scaled down, "home hobbyist", version of Chief Architect (a professional level home design program used by architects and professional building designers, which sells for $995 to $1595). While this consumer level program is not intended to produce a full set of "permit ready" working drawings with cross-sections and details for a complicated project, it is the best home design software that we have used to date, in its price range, for "non-professional" designers who would like to draw their own project and visualize it in 2 or 3 dimensions.

Easy to learn, with 30 step-by-step training videos on the included Tutorial CD and a comprehensive printed manual (rare in software packages these days), the program relies upon "drag and drop" object oriented technology, which allows the user to "draw" interior and exterior walls by simply dragging the mouse across the screen to the approximate length. Then, selecting individual walls to specify the exact dimensions of the room or space that they enclose. These enclosed "rooms" can be assigned characteristics that define the space — some of which include floor, wall, and ceiling finishes, ceiling or no ceiling, wall heights, type of roof overhead, foundation type beneath. Special types of "rooms" — like porches, decks, stairwells — can be assigned characteristics that would be associated with those types of spaces. Windows, doors, furniture, kitchen and bath cabinets, plumbing fixtures, electrical outlets, lights, plants, landscape elements, and other pre-defined objects are all added to the drawing by selecting the desired object from a library of more than 4,300 items and clicking on the plan where the object is to be placed.

Great for visualizing home additions, kitchen and bath makeovers, deck and patio plans, home office space, basement playrooms, (or just to let you see what your house would look like painted hot-pink with lime-green trim;-) Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer Suite 6 is well worth considering before you build or remodel your home.

Program Features

• Inspire your designs with the Better Homes and Gardens Design Planning Center
• Create a Virtual Walk-Through of your house
• Design and visualize with 3D Models
• Choose from a Library of more than 4,300 items for your designs
• Generate an Automatic Materials List for cost estimating
• No Design Experience Needed - Click, Drag, and Drop
• Plan your home or remodeling project with the Getting Started Tutorial
• Complete software for residential design, remodeling, landscaping, visualization, and more
• Design Planning Center provides important design and product material information
• Material Painter^™ applies color and materials to walls, countertops, cabinets, and more
• 3D Models and Virtual Tours
• Import and Export files including BMP, WMF, PNG, AVI
• 3D Modeling Tools: Glass House^™, Doll House^™, and Plan View^™
• Project Cost Estimating automatically generates a materials list for cost estimating
• House Wizard^™ allows easy space planning design
• Automatic and Manual dimensioning
• Automatic Roofs creates gable, hip, and dormers
• Automatic Stair tools for curved and split entry
• A complete set of CAD tools to detail designs
• Compatible with Chief Architect^® and 3D Home Architect^® (versions 4.0 and prior) file formats
• 4,300 Architectural Library items
• Automatic building tools for roof generation, stairs, framing, dimensioning, foundations, and electrical
• Create custom lighting and electrical plans
• Home Design Style templates
• Plan Check^™ validates your building against standard building principles
• Decking and fencing tools
• 1,000 Landscaping plants
• 1,500 Sample home plans
• 30 training videos with "how to" information
• Free online technical support

System requirements

• Windows 98 SE, Windows ME, Windows NT, Windows 2000, or Windows XP
• 400 MHz processor
• 1 GB available hard disk space for a full installation (400 MB to install without all available program content)
• 64 MB of RAM
• CD-ROM drive
• 2-button mouse supported by Windows
• 16-bit color monitor with 800x600 screen resolution

Recommended System

• Windows 98 SE, Windows 2000, or Windows XP
• 2 GHz processor
• 2 GB of available hard disk space
• 512 MB of RAM
• CD-ROM drive
• 2-button mouse with a mouse wheel
• 32-bit color monitor with 1024x768 screen resolution
• Video card with Open GL hardware acceleration with 32 MB of memory or greater
• Internet access

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Need more options for a more complicated project? Want to create full working drawings with cross sections, full-scale details, and the ability to print actual working blueprints on large format printers? Try Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer Pro 7 - (Available soon, Version 8)

Click here to read about other home design software