Seeing Is Believing: Home and Garden Design Software

The current crop of home and garden design software offers a lot of value at a very reasonable price, but it still has far to go to fulfill its promise. The real cost of these products is not their purchase cost. It's the time you'll spend learning to use these specialized tools and actually creating a model of your home or garden. It's also fair to say that you shouldn't look to these products to replace an architect, designer or engineer.

Sierra Home Architect
You don't have to learn computer-aided design (CAD) to build a 3D model of your home—or that dream house in the back of your mind. Drag and drop your design in 2D floor plans, and the program builds a 3D model from the parts you choose. The CD includes thousands of furnishings, cabinets, colors and surface materials so you can mix and match to your heart's content.

Photo Home Interiors
This simple photo-editing program imports any photo as a backdrop and lets you play "what-if" by superimposing images from a huge library of 3D models and surfaces. Working in front of a photo is far easier than building a 3D model of your home, but you can only view the scene from a fixed point of view.

3D Deck
The deck-design software creates a working model of a deck that follows structural design rules for lumber spans. Drag the deck to enlarge it and the program automatically adds the needed support.

Electrical Wiring
Create and test your own circuits in an onscreen wiring simulator. It includes plenty of preapproved examples and step-by-step instructions.

Photo Garden Designer
Permits you to decorate a photo of your garden with hundreds of flowering plants, trees and landscape materials. A quick way to visualize a new garden against a photographic backdrop of your house.

Home Improvement Encyclopedia
Hundreds of common home repairs, illustrated, animated and on video.

The system requirements for Complete Home are the following:

Land Designer 3D
This includes a database of several thousand garden trees and plants, which you can plant in your onscreen landscape. Learn the fundamentals of garden design, then find plants that can survive winter in your region. Position your viewpoint anywhere in the 3D scene, then watch your plants grow over the years, blossom, turn to fall colors, then drop their leaves.

Ortho Home Gardener's Problem Solver
Based on Ortho's classic garden pest reference book, this database includes photos and descriptions of over 700 garden problems. The solutions presented rely heavily on Ortho's garden chemicals, but it's a great resource for identification and analysis.

The Complete Land Designer CD also includes Garden Encyclopedia, 3D Deck, Photo Garden Designer and a personal garden reminder calendar.

The system requirements for Complete Land Designer are the following: