3D Home Landscape Designer Deluxe 5

Though 3d Home Landscape allows you to focus on the interior of a home, it puts far more energy into exterior design. Terrain modeling makes it possible to mold the land itself to any specification before features are added, with hills and even lakes adding depth to a given project. Using this feature it is possible, with practice, to closely model your own land and then to analyze its design strengths.

Once time comes to actually lay down foliage, 3d Home Landscape's Plant Encyclopedia is there to help, carrying detailed information on maintaining every plant in a garden. Your finished designs can be previewed with an eye to how the yard will appear in all four seasons.

Like most home and garden design programs, this one will let you move through the three-dimensional model of your house and yard, viewing each creation from all angles. It is a complex program that requires patience in the learning stages. Fortunately, the user's guide is thoughtfully written and easy to use, and there are first-rate animated tutorials available with the program that cover each new stage of the landscaping process.

And once mastered, 3d Home Landscape can help you work out every imaginable garden design, no matter how wild or daring. --Alyx Dellamonica

Amazon.com Product Description
Imagine having a professional landscape designer right on your desktop. Trust 3D Home Landscape Designer Deluxe 5 to help you easily create your ideal landscape. Combining powerful design tools with extensive botanical reference resources, it's everything you need to bring your landscape dreams to life.

Exciting new features like 3DTrueView photo-realistic rendering and easy 3D editing make this the most powerful landscape software yet. From laying out your design to selecting the perfect plants for your soil and climate, this comprehensive program puts you on the path toward surefire success.

This software will help you: design a landscape around a pre-built home from the program (or even those created with 3D Home Architect 5); use advanced terrain modeling to add realistic slopes and grades; incorporate decks and patios (plus more than 300 decorative and functional garden objects); expand your knowledge of plants and their maintenance with a 7,500-item plant encyclopedia; take inspiration from sample plans created by professional landscape designers; view your landscape over time--lifelike seasonal changes occur onscreen; use the Plant Care Calendar to establish an effective landscape maintenance plan; study 9,500 plant photos and 100 animated plant care demonstrations.

3D Home Landscape Designer Deluxe 5 also includes a Garden Notebook in which you can record your discoveries and an Encyclopedia of Plant Diseases with details on the symptoms and solutions for common plant problems.

Product Description
With 3D Home Landscape Designer Deluxe 5 gives you the tools you need to create an ideal botanical landscape! Incorporate your own decks and patios, along with over 300 different decorative and functional garden objects Powerful 3D editing tools let you see your creation in progress and enjoy it when it comes to fruition!

Again, long story short...after limping through a multitude of crashes, letters to tech support and getting answers back e.g., "I don't know, I don't use the program" and countless other frustrating and irritating things, today was the last straw. I opened the program and four months of re-creating my four bedroom tri-level home and yard are gone to waste. As soon as I open the program to do anything, it crashes. I have re-installed and to no avail.

BY ALL MEANS, save yourself the frustration and look for another package. I used to work in the computer industry up until '98 and Broderbund typifies the reason I got out...mediocrity!!

If you are doing a very simple two room house, want to WOW your friends or clients twirling the house around, do walk thrus (on the computer, can't make a separate walk thru file and send to someone), or you want your three-year old to be an architect and start them off early...buy it! Otherwise...go back to the ole drafting board....which is what Broderbund ought to do.


Buggy, difficult to use, not-intuitive   November 16, 2003
 50 out of 51 found this review helpful

I just tried to design a garden for our new house using "3D Landscaping". Despite what the box says, the software contains no templates of gardens that you can modify, just shapes (circles, rectangles, squares) with pre-programmed lot sizes (such as 40' x 110'). I tried to edit the dimensions of the 40' x 110' rectangle to mimic our new lot. Forget it. You cannot edit the sizes even if you follow the steps in the manual.

So, I tried to create a new lot from scratch. Instead of a flat plane to show our new lawn, the program created a cylinder. The cylinder could not be modified no matter how I tried.

I finally decided to accept the incorrect dimensions of the rectangular plot (40 x 110) and just insert sample plants (trees, climbers, etc) from the toolbar, to get an idea of what would look good next to what. The program crashed. When it did allow me to add the plants in outline view, they did not show up in 3D view, which means you can't see what they will look like in your garden (the whole point of the program!) The program crashed again when I toggled from 3D view to outline view. (My system surpasses the system requirements, so that was not the problem).

I am not a software neophyte, and I followed both the manual and the tutorials step-by-step to create a diagram, but the software did not work. I don't believe Broderbund tests this before releasing it to the public.

If anyone has found a quality landscape design software program, please tell me. Right now, I'm ready to turn to Powerpoint.


Frustrating   June 18, 2003
 42 out of 42 found this review helpful

I am about to uninstall, both my wife and myself gve this a try. My lot size is not one of the given ones. Setting up a lot (a 90x180 foot rectangle) is impossible. Did not bother going any further, with it. There is a couple of hours wasted I will never see again.....