Home design software - includes shopping guide

Sunset, Nov, 1993 by Bill Crosby, Kimberly Chrisman

When it comes to computer software, it's hard to tell the tools from the toys

To hear the reviewers tell it, home design software has come of age. Finally, users--computerspeak for you and me--have at their fingertips a tool powerful enough to transform those who can't draw a straight line, let alone remodel a house, into accomplished draftsmen and women--nay, into designers of sufficient skill as to make architects everywhere wish they'd chosen law school after all.

True, this software category appears to be booming. But are home design programs all they're cracked up to be? Indeed, are they as useful as a pencil, a sheet of grid paper, some stakes, and string? Or are these programs simply toys providing hours of amusement as we noodle away at a design, without getting us any closer to actually building something?

The definitive answer: it depends.

Recently, we ran our house mouse through every home design program we could get our hands on. (While we were doing our research, two new titles and an upgrade came into the office, so it's likely that there will be other products on the shelves in time for December's consumer feeding frenzy.) All of our studying, scrolling, sizing, and swearing led us to some insights about design programs in general, and the ones we fiddled with in particular. Here's what we found out.

KICKING THE TIRES

Home design programs allow you to draw a straight line (so will a ruler); they'll tell you how long that line is (so will a ruler); they'll draw circles, chairs, and cherry trees (so will templates); and some will even give you a ballpark idea of how much your project will cost (so will the salesperson at your lumberyard). At best, these programs can do all these things at once (well, sort of), along with a host of other semiamazing tricks, all at a cost of $15 to $100. But does any of this necessarily bestow upon you full knowledge of the science of drafting, let alone the art of architecture? In a word, nope.

These products are basically menu-driven, object-oriented drawing programs; you can dump your ill-formed ideas onto the screen and then sort them out with the help of line snappers, shape generators, pattern- and colorfill options, and crude templates. Many programs include on-screen grids and rulers, zoom and adjustable scaling capabilities, automatic on-screen measuring features, architectural and electrical symbols, and some sort of help function for neophytes.

Printing a finished set of plans, though, is ultimately what these programs are about, and this is where the benefit of designing on computer is most evident. Not surprisingly, a printout generated by one of these programs will be infinitely cleaner and much more detailed than the best hand scribbles precisely because the myriad incarnations inherent in the design process are more easily manipulated on a computer than on paper. Want to see all 20 versions of the kitchen or living room of your dreams? Press a button and cross your fingers.

Which, ironically, is not to say that these products are necessarily time-savers. The learning curve on each can be formidable. As a rule, the bigger the project, the more sense it makes to invest the time it will take (and it will take time) to get up to speed on the software. Otherwise, home design by computer is a pretty arcane skill to acquire for rearranging the furniture.

THINGS TO LOOK (AND LOOK OUT) FOR

We found certain features particularly useful. Multilayer capability lets you draw an aspect of a plan (a wiring scheme, a sprinkler layout), then mask or unmask it over the main plan as if it were an overlay on a blueprint. Drag-and-drop allows you to view a library of templates, any of which can be dragged onto your drawing and dropped into place. In the best programs, templates scale automatically to your plan and are easy to move, rotate, flip, and measure.

The ability to group and ungroup collections of objects is also helpful; sometimes you'll want to manipulate, say, the entire contents of a living room as opposed to just the sofa, the fireplace, etc. And if you popped for a color printer, be sure to check carefully the palettes and printing capabilities of your program--more choices are always better.

What you don't need are the alleged design tips and electronic galleries or magazines that (we can only guess) are supposed to be inspiring. Often, these sections within a program are little more than a framework for advertisements, and they are never a substitute for the advice of your architect or designer, for any number of free references in the public library, or for us (no false modesty here: we've published 90-plus books on home and garden remodeling).

As for the 3-D function that many of these programs tout as a selling point, it's largely a gimmick. Maybe we're spoiled by the state-of-the-art stuff on MTV, in magazines, and at the movies, but the 3-D views on most of these programs are so crude and take so long to generate as to be virtually useless. Besides, if you need 3-D to help you conceptualize a set of plans, you're probably going to be too frustrated by the programs to learn what you need to know to get to the point where you've put enough on the screen to even generate a 3-D view (in other words, if you have to read this sentence twice, forget it).