Virtual Architect Home & Landscape Platinum Suite

Say you wanted to draw out a small (square) basement to aid in a redesign?.... Forget it, get some graph paper and a tee square. The time it would take to become proficient with this software would be better spent playing angry birds.

Real steep learning curve for me. Its ok but was not as powerful as I hoped. It does help in planning a project.

I had a design package 10 years ago that worked great. Unfortunately, it was not supported on newer OSs, and I think it went out of business. This was the only one at Office Depot, so I bought it. Its worse than the 10 year old one. Not intuitive, and the most basic items - such as setting the boundaries - are a huge PITA. Stay away!!

It is not a bad program (not sure exactly which HGTV I bought, may have been Ultimate (computer no longer works)) but has a few quirks, like you can always see a shadow of the furniture and walls on the floor beneath, which drove me crazy. It also took awhile to figure things out that I think could have been made easier. But at least it has much more flexibility and detail then the Chief Architect Home design essentials which was a complete waste of my money. Guess you have to spend much more to get one that works well. I looked at sketch up and noticed it looks just like HGTVs, the icons and set up looks identical, but I have not tried sketch up at $695!

I have used CAD software in the past, so I was aware there would be a learning curve, and that no CAD software is simple. However, I am very disappointed that the software is highly troublesome - I have had frequent freezes (my OS is Win7 64-bit). Its frustrating to be working with a design and get frozen out. Although there are periodic auto-saves, whatever it was I am working on disappears.

I cant figure out how to use it. When you try the user guide , you get an error

Very hard to use and understand.

I need an engineering degree to operate this.

Love the program and a great price. It installs easily and has many useful functions. It arrived quickly and came with a rebate also.

I returned the first box because the user guide had been removed and the second package was the same way, not satisfied at all