Better Homes and Gardens Landscaping and Deck Designer [OLD VERSION]

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Better Homes and Gardens Landscaping and Deck Designer [OLD VERSION]

With the Better Homes and Gardens Landscaping and Deck Designer, you can say good-bye to all those cookie-cutter yards that populate new developments. Say hello to an outdoor living area that reflects your tastes and interests -- an outdoor that anyone can experience and love as much as you do, day in and day out, for years to come. Assign the materials you want for your new patio design Quickly lay out your deck, add stairs, then place and arrange furniture Deck foundations automatically generate to match sloped lots Design and visualize your areas in 3D Import your own photos of houses, plants, people, and more

Your yard has always been good to you, giving you space to play with your kids, barbecue, and even sun-bathe on those lazy summer days. But now you're ready to bring some creative elegance and flair to your outdoor living. And you don't want to spend a mint just to have a landscape designer or consultant tell you what you want. If you know what you want, but you just need a little help turning that vision into reality, the Better Homes and Gardens Landscaping and Deck Designer software package is just for you.

Design your new deck with Home Designer's tools that let you visualize and design with realistic 3D models.

Better Homes and Gardens, the number one home and garden publisher, has partnered with leading software designer Chief Architect to bring you the Landscaping and Deck Designer. This program can help you transform your yard space into the landscape of your dreams, at a fraction of the cost of what a professional would charge. Using the software's fun, intuitive, and easy-to-use tools, you'll quickly be on the way toward becoming the envy of your neighborhood as your backyard barbecues in the sun turn into elegant moon-lit affairs on your new deck.

With the Landscaping and Deck Designer, you don't need any design experience to plan your new landscaping, deck or patio areas. In a few easy steps, you'll be able to take care of site planning and cost estimating. The software will give you everything you need, from conception to planning to pricing.

With a huge library of over 1,200 plants at your disposal, you won't have to be stuck with the same old options the local home and garden shop offers. You can create beautiful landscaping with trees, shrubs, water features, and flowers of your own choosing. You can even import your digital photos and add your own custom landscaping features to your plans. To keep those plants thriving, you'll want to install a sprinkler system. The "sprinkler designer" feature can help you lay out sprinkler zones for optimal watering. A "furniture" feature allows you to project a wide variety of backdrops, objects, images, and textures onto your designs. It's never been easier to select the right patio furniture for your new deck or out by the swimming pool.

The software includes a library with a wide variety of backdrops, objects, images, and textures that can be used in your designs.

In short, with the Landscaping and Deck Designer software at your fingertips, you can say good-bye to all those cookie-cutter yards that populate new developments. You can finally say hello to an outdoor living area that not only reflects your dreams and visions, but that also reflects how your outdoor area should be experienced, day in and day out, for years to come.

Features:

Landscaping templates designed by Better Homes and Gardens help you to quickly place your landscaping beds. Use the Better Homes and Gardens Design Planning Center to guide your designs with tips and advice. Choose from a library of more than 4,000 items for your designs, including over 1,200 plants. Plant Hardiness Zone reference maps helps you choose the most appropriate plants, and a Plant Chooser feature helps you search for plants based on climate, drought tolerance, deer resistance, and much more. Layout sprinkler zones quickly and efficiently. Design single or multi-level decks with Deck Designer. Assign the materials you want for your new patio design. Quickly lay out your deck, add stairs, then place and arrange furniture. Deck foundations automatically generate to match sloped lots. Design and visualize your areas in 3D. Import your own photos of houses, plants, people, and more. Produce realistic images of your outdoor projects. Easily create hills and valleys for custom landscapes. Automatically generate materials list to estimate costs. Includes free How-To Tutorial CD.

A database of more than 1,200 plants offers both detailed information and photorealistic models for your visualizations.

Terrain Tools help you create topographically detailed views in 2D or 3D.

What's in the Box
Landscaping and Deck Designer software on CD and instructional CD.

Better Homes and Gardens Landscaping and Deck Designer [OLD VERSION] Accessories

Better Homes and Gardens Interior Designer [OLD VERSION]
New Complete Guide to Landscaping: Design, Plant, Build (Better Homes and Gardens(R))
Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer Suite 7.0 [OLD VERSION]
Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer Pro 7.0 [OLD VERSION]
Better Homes and Gardens Picture Painter [Old Version]
Sunset Hillside Landscaping
Western Garden Book (Sunset Western Garden Book)
American Horticultural Society A to Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants
Taunton's Front Yard Idea Book: How to Create a Welcoming Entry and Expand Your Outdoor Living Space (Idea Books)
Better Homes and Gardens Landscaping and Deck Designer 7.0 [OLD VERSION]

Better Homes and Gardens Landscaping and Deck Designer [OLD VERSION] Reviews

And my house was gray again. I guess you could probably create what you want if you spend months of agonizing time in front of your computer, that is if you can resist the urge to chuck it through your living room window and onto your neglected dirt lawn. I haven't spent too much time reading the reviews for this product, but judging by the amount of "1" stars, I can tell that I'm not the only one who is fed up with this software after many, many tries to design a simple landscape. Aarrrgghh. But you end up doing tons of grunt work by just trying to figure out how to use this annoying product. All I got was more practice with the undo button.

So I changed it back to green, and decided to erase the deck and try for a different design. Problem solved, right. The tutorial videos are indeed short, and they do show you how to use basic functions. So they have this tool for creating a landscape curb, and although I didn't want a curb, I assumed I could use that to frame what I wanted so as have an area to plant bushes. Well, the terrain feature tools only allow a kidney bean shape, a rectangle, or a circle.

Oh yeah, the shapes of the rocky areas - I wanted to create a curvy line to run along the sides of my driveway, and these three shapes don't allow that. It doesn't work. AND if you forget that you need to right click first, you will have a new terrain feature where you just clicked.undo button) Where was I. These can be modified by selecting the object (which is a major chore in itself - first you have to right click on it, then select object.

I thought the whole purpose of a landscape program was to quickly try many different ideas for landscaping and see it in 3-D before you do any grunt work in your yard. There is a "spline curb" tool, which supposedly makes curves by clicking and dragging straight sections of curb that will attach themselves end to end to each other after they're drawn. The most frustrating thing is how exhausted you feel, and then you catch a glimpse of your yard out the window and realize that you haven't done anything yet. Did I mention that my garage door appeared a foot above the driveway. Then after trying to get a gentle slope down from the house and managing to create big mountains in the yard, I learned how to use the undo button.over and over. I don't own a Hummer, so I tried to lower the door (can't do it) then raise the driveway (more mountains). The first day I got this software, I built the house, painted the walls green, and aside from a struggle to get the roof to look like my house's roof, it went okay, so I was still optimistic. I ended up with a bunch of parking blocks in my lawn.

Trust me, you will too. You must trial and error your way through this non-user-friendly program to accomplish anything in your mind's eye. Use your fifty bucks for an extra bush instead of buying this useless program. Undo button. Forget the undo button.

Okay, I gave up on the deck and the garage door for the time being, and decided to try to create some raised areas where I thought some decorative rock and some bushy things and maybe a tree would look good. Sigh.You can't just draw a curvy line. The next day, I anxiously sat down and started to lay out the perimeter of my yard, and after another struggle to get the curve in the road for my front border, I was a little frustrated, but it turned out okay.

Wrong. I give up. I tried to design a deck in the back, and the act of doing that changed the color of the house back to a drab gray color.

But there are no answers for most of the questions that you will encounter. Seriously, you could spend as much time getting your yard the way you want it in this program as you would just drawing it on a piece of paper, then actually landscaping your actual lawn. Finally, I figured how to create a beautiful curvy border for my rocky area.

But by now, the "floorplan" view looks like a mangled mess of lines, because it shows all the elevation lines, some dimension lines of the house, fence, plot lines, sidewalk, road, camera angle lines, and I haven't even planted any trees or bushes yet - so every time you try to click on something to modify, you stand a GREAT chance of clicking on something nearby.

The program insists I am either resting on a slab or on a footing and foundation, which I cannot raise the height on. Basically a big rectangle. I find the manual to be minimal without additional tutorial on multilevel connecting rooms. My deck auto connects to the room level and I cannot raise it to show the space under neath. Decks seem to be only set at ground level. You can edit "rooms" and lower their height but somehow this then raised the height on the floor above (my actual first level). But, it has a skirting raising it 3 ft off the ground.

After many tries I gave up trying to get this simple arrangement. I cannot recommend it unless you are a master at work-arounds and gimmicky to overcome the programs limitations. I tried faking a very low first story for the 3ft supports but this didn't work.

An add-on room is an 18" step down. I have access doors at grade level to crawl under the house, but the program will not let me drag a door down that far. Thus my deck is also raised 3 ft up.

I live a a house trailer, 15 x 60. The foundation is automatically set down in the the earth. How much more simple could it be.

My spouse keeps telling me to quit yelling at this program; shut it down & get out some paper. Workarounds could be found with Custom Home.BHGLDD 7.5 is a selected by default nightmare, yuck. BHGLDD 7.5 is so user unfriendly. You can't input dimensions into objects. Silly, really. I'm trying to create a patio out of paving stones & this bad program is taking my money & time.I'm shutting it down now. We'll be done with our design in 2 hours.

_CT Reitzell Copy & Pasting objects is difficult.heck, just selecting landscaping objects is a hair-puller.

A real hassle. We've been using Custom Home 3D by Sierra for many years with great success.

Custom Home 3D is not highest resolution, but does the job. Better Homes & Garden Landscaping & Deck Designer 7.5 is a big disappointment.

Try to mouse-draw a terrain line next a wall & then select said terrain line to input dimension data & the auto-snap to surrounding objects will drive you mad & stop you from selecting anything but walls. Why can't the user define an area & then auto-fill with selected building material in grid type fashion.

Custom Home 3D was very inexpensive & has helped us with numerous floorplan & furnishing projects throughout our property developement stints.

I'm not sure an engineer with CAD experience could run this program let alone a novice. I agree with Josh. I tried it over and over thinking maybe I needed just a little more patience. What a waste of time and money. Don't waste your time. I've never been so frustrated in my life.

It will take you less time and frustration than this thing will. This is the most frustrating program ever. if you want to do land scape design. Your better off with a pad of paper and a pencil.