Home Designer Suite

Bought this software because it is on Amazon, My goto location to buy everything. I have used cad programs in the past and always manage to fumble my way through to what I need. But this program was extremely annoying after hours of working I had only created 10 posts to hold my roof up! and no roof! So i went to punch software and bought home design 21. After about 8 hours on the punch program i already had the whole house laid out and a lot of windows in. No return policy means I just got screwed out of $107.79. My advice, if you are not familiar with Chief architect, then get Punch home design

Not as user friendly as an older model that I used.

I, like others, was having difficulty getting this program to work on my HP. However, I moved it to my husbands Toshiba and it worked beautifully! So, I contacted CS and asked what the problem could be. I received an answer within 24 hours that it was probably an out of date video driver. I checked, and sure enough mine was dated 2014. AMD didnt make it easy for me to update, but I finally did, and now it works great! As far as the program goes, it works pretty well for my purposes, although the library could be a little more user friendly. Sometimes hard to find the piece youre looking for. But all in all, Im very pleased!

Tried buying this again, assuming/hoping it would now be the up-to-date version. But, alas, no. It was the 2021 version again. And, it doesnt matter if you buy this as a download or on a USB stick; itll be the 2021 version either way.

Bought this to design our new house and quickly became addicted. It’s like the greatest video game ever created! I was familiar with Chief Architect so it was like riding a bike but some may find it to be not very user friendly.

This program is terrific for quick and easy layouts and for putting in lots of little details too. My wife and I will be building a retirement home and have made six versions so far, each one building upon the previous version. Were still not there, but getting close. Its easy and intuitive to use, and the users guide and online tutorials explain things extremely well. We will give the finished product to a few builders so bidding will be apples to apples. The only problem is its so much fun, Ive been up til 2, 3 or 4 in the morning playing with it! Highly recommended.

I have been looking around for months for a decent program for design work for a home remodel. This program does a fairly decent job of that with some small exceptions. One thing some of the other programs I have tried out allow for locking of dimensions so you can set the length of a wall and have it keep that length when you add in other sections to build out a room. This one I have been unable to find any such feature so each time you add in something it would keep altering all the other dimensions around it to different sizes. While I can see it as a good thing to auto adjust for sizes, sometime you want a length to remain the size you set it at while you are still adding in additions. The biggest issue I have found was with the library, there are so very few options in there it makes it almost not worth it. Using the browse feature to find new libraries is super cumbersome, they are all broken out into different packages some free but most have a fee which ranges from low to high. Within those extra libraries though, you only get 5-8 objects where 1 is good and all the rest are just trash objects. These really should be modified to just get all of them for X price, or categories where you get everything for X price instead of Bathroom 1, bathroom 2, bathroom fixtures... etc. Trying to find a particular item in the catalogs is next to impossible and is either not available or buried inside something else. Then when you find the one you need, every time it is only available in the more costly version and not available in this version. Kind of poor setup for consumers since most people dont need the bells and whistles the more costly ones have because we arent architects, and if you get the cheaper version you cannot even buy the additional catalogs.

The software is easy to use but basic. Ok for making models in the most basic form. To turn it into a useful form you have to purchase upgrades. If you have that money to spend, buy a proper piece of software.

I love it! But, patience is a must! You are not going to hammer out a house plan in a week, unless your a professional. Which I am not.

I received the product about two weeks ago to begin designing a house. First, I have no design software experience as I only surf the internet and use Microsoft Windows /Excel/PowerPoint from time to time.