TylerS

Isn't this the faq and sales questions forum? i.e. I don't understand the benefit of this software vs competitors now. Would anyone care to enlighten me?

This is for personal DIY so the Professional (Chief) product line is out of the question. The struggle I have is that on a rendering and feature basis the Home Design Pro ($500) seems to be similar to competitors $100 products. I find it hard to justify the $200 for the architect series (and especially hard to justify the $500 product). And the $100 "Suite" series is very limited in features compared to competitors. I've got a 15 day demo with a competitor's product plus the demo of this product so we'll see what I go with.

I was looking at the product offerings and I'm a little concerned about two of the restrictions on the Architect version. http://www.homedesignersoftware.com/products/product-chooser.html Full control of render settings allows you to customize your photo-realistic rendering for speed or visual quality option is only available on pro. Does this mean that image quality is limited in the architect version? What kind of settings are limited and what do they do? Is the image stuck on high quality / slow speed, or low quality / fast speed? Define the North Pointer for Sun Angles is also only available in Pro. What does this mean for architect? Is there no sun in the renderings? Or is there just no choice on the angles? Or is there some other way to define it?