Home Design 3D - Free for iOS

User Reviews

• Promising but incomplete

  revett11/16/2011

  Pros

  I bought the $50 PC version as well as the iPad version. The software is powerful (many features) and has great potential for home design.

  Cons

  (1) At 1GB, I had to try the download eight times before I got the full package. It would make sense to split it into several smaller downloads. Repeated emails to the vendor went unanswered until I threatened to lodge a dispute with PayPal. Presto -- instant response. (2) The program is extremely difficult to learn partly because much of it is in pidgin English. (What the heck is "cotation", you ask? It is their word for "dimension".) The manual is awful, missing illustrations that are referred to and, again, translated from French by a French person with limited knowledge of English. I had to read some sections four or five times to figure out what they meant. (3) The program is buggy! I have learned to save my work every five minutes because the program crashes regularly. (4) The program seems to use some keys in a manner different from what almost every other program does. (The right arrow key, for example, moves the whole palette to the left. Go figure.)

  Summary

  A good program if you have a lot of patience while learning, but it needs proper translation from the French, it needs to be made more stable, and it needs to use more keys in what have become standard ways among many programs. I have version 3.2. I would recommend waiting for version 4, assuming there will be one.

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