Customer Reviews
Contour lines a farce! 
2007-12-28
The program does not allow the individual contour lines to be adjusted to match normal landforms! Most frustrating and disappointing!
I bought 3D Home Architect Landscape Design Deluxe 6.0 at the half price book store, so I was a little leery about the purchase.
I gave it the good-ole college try and the package failed after I invested some hours trying to fit my complicated ten acre landscape into the package!
In the package/program it assumes you have the standard small building lot, so contour lines go all the way across the lot, not matter how you enter them. I have two ravines, each partially on my lot and they intersect! The stream has two "S" curves across my lot and it enters my lot twice and exits twice. Yes the contour lines have to follow the twisty stream with 26 foot high slopes on one/two sides of the stream!
That catalog of trees does not include oaks nor walnuts! Not even the normal scrub tress you find in a natural forest, you know those in a "wooded lot".
If you have a standard developers building lot with one simple slop that goes all the way across, you might be able to create a satisfying 3D landscape plan.
Good Luck!
Sam
Very Bad 2007-09-01
This is not user-friendly at all & provides very little help with starting up. I cannot quickly construct an image to even serve as a base for the design. I am going to try to return this item & try something else...I doubt they will let me return it though.
Awful software, even the latest version 2006-09-10
Terrible software, hard to use, useless. I asked for my money back the next day and they refused. I wish I had read the reviews here first!
3D: difficult, dumb and disasterous 2006-04-08
What a colossal waste. Knowing what I know now, I wouldn't pay 5 cents for this program. Possibly the worst job of programming I've ever experienced. Graphics are a joke, tools are inexplicable and the help features are useless. Need I say more?
Horrific software 2005-09-23
This software is garbage. I installed it and tried to use this software and it is very simple. Very limited plants, no sprinkler design system. To call this software "Basic" is an insult to the world "Basic".
Too complicated to use 2005-09-22
Using 3D Home Architect Landscape Design Deluxe 6 will help people create the sort of home that brings comfort&peace of mind. Use this landscape-design for a yard that looks perfect, even as the seasons and the years roll on. Experiment with structures - Incorporate decks and patios, plus more than 300 decorative and functional garden objects Select the right plant for your landscape with Plant Encyclopedia, a listing of 7,500 different plants
Ended Up Paying More 
2005-08-02
I thought that I'd have a hard time learning this software, since other reviewers commented on its difficulty, but it wasn't that hard to get the hang of it. My intent on purchasing this was to recreate my house and landscape it within the program. I soon learned that wasn't going to happen, since none of the housing plans available to choose from resembled my house, and I couldn't alter the structures in any way. So, I ended up buying 3D Home Architect Home Design Deluxe 6 and recreating my house in that program. I then transfered my house design to the Landscaping software and landscaped it within that program. I should have purchased the suite available with has both the Home Design and Landscaping software combined, but I ended up buying each program individualy and spending more money. Overall, I think it's a fun program to plan a house and garden. I'd give it another star if only I wasn't pissed about having to spend more money on more software just to use this Landscaping program the way I wanted to.
Stay away from Broderbund software 2005-07-07
I wish I could give them zero stars.
Broderbund pulled support for software I owned only 2 years after it was released.
I was unable to install it because it required internet registration which was no longer supported. To solve the problem, they offered to SELL me a different software title.
They must have thought I was stupid. They expected me to give them more money???
This company has second rate software and third rate customer service. Do not buy anything from them.
Takes LOTS of time. 2005-06-01
Like most people, I was initially very disappointed with this software, and though I am an experienced computer user, could not figure out how to do some simple tasks. I kept at it though, and with practice and a LOT of time was able to create a spectacular plan. I drew my house first as a series of tall fences, then eventually used photographs. I eventually learned how to draw the perimeter of my property--- this was difficult. So was defining mulched areas, water areas, concrete areas, but it could all be done. It took a while to figure out how to get to the "master list" of plants, it is only easy to add certain ones. Once you do, the search capability is very nice!
Once you get past the basics, tweaking the details can be fun. The 3D view was essential for me... I avoided making some mistakes that would have taken years to realize, by looking at my plan as it aged, walking though it, and seeing it in different seasons.
Now that I have learned everything, I whipped up a plan for my mom's house in under an hour. But for my own.... it took several weeks to figure out--good thing I started in winter.
Even with 7500 plants, I wish there were more. So.... I am glad I bought it, but there could be a LOT of improvement.
This is a trainwreck! 2005-04-15
3D Home Architect Landscape Design Deluxe 6... I found the software to be useless. My goal was to recreate my backyard and use the program to help fill in with plants and project how they would look in the coming years. I found that it was impossible to structurally recreate my backyard in the first place. If you were designing a fictional house on a vacant lot it would work fine, but there is no way you could ever create the idiosyncracies of a real property. I had to use a metal garden shed to stand in as my cape cod house, I just resized it to a 35' square! Then I found that there is no way to run stairs up to the side of the house, so I substituted a concrete column. Then I realized that no matter what I did to my patio and "stairs", I could not get them to snap up against the side of the house; there was always grass shown between the objects. I realized I was wasting my time. I found that the advertised "7,500" plants included only 358 that could actually be placed on the landscape. Most of these plants are totally unsuitable for my Minnesota home! The program should allow you to create a outline landscape quickly, choose your climate zone, and display a library of thousands of plants suitable to the area that can be placed in the landscape. I cannot believe that I paid $50 for this garbage. I passed this feedback along to Broderbund.
