Overview
Imagine having a professional landscape designer right on your desktop. The 3D Home Landscape Designer Deluxe combines tools to help you easily create your ideal landscape and boasts to have everything you need to design your own landscape at home or at work. With a massive gallery of over 9,000 plants and yard features from deck chairs to playground equipment, this program gives users a chance to plan every aspect of their outdoor environment. The 3d Landscape's Plant Encyclopedia has an extensive botanical reference, which is a big help when you're ready to lay down foliage. It will also let you move through the three-dimensional model of your house and yard, viewing each creation from all angles. This software was designed to save you from costly mistakes and make designing your backyard landscape a breeze.

System Requirements

• Platform: Microsoft Windows 98/2000/ME/XP
• CPU: Pentium III class processor (500 MHz or higher)
• RAM: 128MB RAM required (256MB recommended)
• Hard Drive: 100 MB free hard-disk space
• CD-ROM: CD-ROM drive
• Video: Video Card with OpenGL driver and at least 8MB RAM

Setup
Installation was easy. Insert CD and follow the onscreen instructions. There is no need for the CD to be in your computer to use the software.

In Use
This software is very attractive to a homeowner who is trying to design a fairly large backyard. First, you have to choose your lot shape according to your property. My lot happens to be a pie shaped lot located in a culdesac where my house sits just slightly to the right. While trying to choose the shape of my lot, the software contained no templates of lots or 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 one of the pre-programmed lots to mimic my pie shaped lot. Forget it. You cannot edit the sizes even if you follow the steps in the manual. I tried to create a new lot from scratch. After getting frustrated, I finally decided to accept the incorrect dimensions of a rectangular plot. I began to insert sample plants, waterfall, gazebo and trees from the toolbar to get an idea of what the yard would look good. That was fun to a degree. It's hard to be creative and imagine what your garden is going to look like without an accurate shape of your lot or house in place.

I emailed for online help from the Broderbund website, and their website stated that I would get a response within 4-6 hours. 36 hours later, I got an answer that was related to my question, but did not address the problem. My question was: "Can I create a plan view of my house on the property?" The answer was, "we have a lot of sample houses you can import from a catalog of houses..." So the answer is No, you cannot start out with your house. I started reading more of the manual (which, by the way, is a 396 page book that doesn't address 3D Home Landscape until page 259). In the book, it mentions installing 3D Architect for more options on designing your home and how to import it into 3D Landscape after you're done. The impression is that 3D Home Landscape Designer is an add-on for 3D Architect.

I also played with the plants and found the plant encyclepedia to be quite educational. Each plant has a helpful description letting you know how it grows best and the expected heights. Unfortunately, while inserting these samples into the design in 3D mode, 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 program crashed again when I toggled from 3D view to outline view. My system surpasses the software's requirements, so that was not the problem. The program crashed a total of 5 times with runtime errors just trying to do a simple thing like change the dimensions of a site boundary.

Summary
Over all, this software can be helpful if you have the time to familiarize yourself with it and if you don't mind designing a backyard with someone else's house on it. If you are in a hurry or do not feel like obtaining a CAD degree, then I would not recommend this product. This product is best suited for a professional landscaper vs. a homeowner. This is a complex program that requires patience and time to learn. It would work best partnered with 3D Architect to initially design your home and property, and does not work well as a standalone product.

I have decided to accept my muddy weed infested backyard until the Spring and then fork out the bucks to hire a professional landscaper to do the job for me. At least I can come home and see the results without busting a blood vessel.

Pros

• Powerful design tools
• Extensive plant library and reference
• Nice 3D view (when it works)
• Includes tools for desks, patios and functional garden objects

Cons

• Not User Friendly
• Buggy and unstable
• Requires 3D Architect for a complete start to finish landscape design
• Steep learning curve

Overall Rating:

3 out of 5 Mice