Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)After using this software for a week, I'm generally pleased with the results. The learning curve is not too difficult to climb; though I have some prior experience with less sophisticated versions of this type of software.
The box comes with a thick printed manual, which is nice to have for reference. The index in the manual is good but not great. Unfortunately the manual is not comprehensive. It appears to cover the core functionality but does not have any depth to its discussion of "power tools". The manual appears to be a nearly verbatim copy of the online help.
The software comes with short online instructional videos -- basically animated screen captures with voice-over commentary. The two or three videos that I've watched have filled in the gaps that the manual left open.
My pc has a 2001-era 1Ghz Celeron and 1GB of memory. It renders the 3D drawings fast enough to not be frustrating, and I have limited patience for this sort of thing. However, I have not added great amounts of detail to the plan yet -- mostly just walls, roof, electrical, and some trim. The addition of detail may slow rendering down enough to be annoying. Other reviewers have complained about performance, but the documentation has hints for speeding up if you run into problems.
While the core parts of the software are pretty good, the power tools leave a little something to be desired. This may just be a lack of education on my part, but if so then I'm going to blame the skimpy documentation. These power tools almost appear to have been developed by either different groups or by third parties. Overall they lack the polish and usability that is part of the core software. Take the "room wizard", for example. This is a slick way to put together the interior floor plan of the house. The problem is that the room wizard launches almost as a separate application, and when you're done it asks to "update the current design". When you say yes, it appears to paste the picture drawn in the room wizard back into the main application. From there, it is difficult (impossible?) to get the interior layout to overlay your foundation design.
I had difficulty with other power tools: the topo designer is clunky, the site planner has an annoying lot size limitation (no line can be more than 1000'), the estimator won't let you add additional materials (you can put in the cost of concrete for your foundation, but you can't add fill or stone for drainage; if I have to manually put this stuff into a separate spreadsheet then having a built-in estimator is pointless). And so on. Again, maybe this is a learning thing, but the rest of the software is easy to figure out -- why are these so different?
Overall, I would give the software 3.5 stars: four stars for doing the stuff it absolutely must do very well, minus one star for advertising extras that don't work so good, plus a star for good documentation on the core functionality, minus half a star for failing to document the extras. (I figure that the extra thirty to fifty bucks of cost over competing brands is due to these extras, but I haven't tried the competition.)
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