BalutFX

Yes, 2025 and earlier versions of Home Designer are perpetual licenses and will continue to work, but likely won’t receive any further updates. What I was referring to is the lack of backwards capability in any of the Chief Architect products. If you open any of your HD 2025 (or earlier) plans in HD 2026 and save it (or create a plan in HD 2026) you will not be able to open it anymore in HD 2025. So you will only have the ability to access or modify plans saved in HD 2026 if you continue to pay the rental cost.

I agree 100%. The lack of backward compatibility essentially locks you into paying for Home Designer 2026 if you ever want to access your files again, once the subscription runs out. I also feel like referring to the discount pricing for current Home Designer users as an "upgrade" is not the right word anymore. A purchase of Home Designer 2026 and beyond is now only a RENTAL, plain and simple. I wouldn't rent Home Designer 2026 and beyond even if the discount was significantly less. Absolutely not worth it for me.

I selected Generated Sky as you suggested, and don't really see much improvement over the previous image I got with Home Designer 2026. I'm sure there are tweaks that can be done to improve the generated image in the subscription only Home Designer 2026, but I still would not pay the high upgrade cost for the RTRT feature that was added. Especially when there are free AI tools that can be used with legacy perpetual license Home Designer versions with much better results.

With the release of Home Designer 2026 (subscription only) and the inclusion of real time Ray Trace, I wanted to see how much of an upgrade that feature was. HD 2026 does provide a slight improvement to PBR in HDP 2025, but with tools such as ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion (which have a free tier), I don’t think the RTRT in Home Designer 2026 is worth the high upgrade price. For those of us with the legacy perpetual licenses, I’d recommend checking out the AI tools available. Here are some comparison images:

Yep. I downloaded the trial to see what was new, and also noticed that the additional features PDF was disappointingly very limited. Still can't import SKP objects as anything other than interior fixtures, so you will need a tedious workaround to place doorknobs and cabinet hardware for each instance. To me, this is a dumb and unnecessary restriction of the Home Designer line. Also, the "free" catalog items exclude cabinets. Another dumb restriction in my opinion. Why not just allow Home Designer users to purchase the catalogs that they want to use? The "upgrade" to Home Designer 2026 SUBSCRIPTION ONLY is definitely not worth the money, especially since the software dies as soon as you stop paying.

Yep. I downloaded the trial to see what was new, and also noticed that the additional features PDF was disappointingly very limited. Still can't import SKP objects as anything other than interior fixtures, so you will need a tedious workaround to place doorknobs and cabinet hardware for each instance. To me, this is a dumb and unnecessary restriction of the Home Designer line. Also, the "free" catalog items exclude cabinets. Another dumb restriction in my opinion. Why not just allow Home Designer users to purchase the catalogs that they want to use? The "upgrade" to Home Designer 2026 SUBSCRIPTION ONLY is definitely not worth the money, especially since the software dies as soon as you stop paying.

I saw that. Ray Trace and all catalog items included = $$$$. Cha-Ching, Cha-Ching

Chief Architect Premier X17 was released 25 June. What is the hold-up for Home Designer 2026?

I agree with you. The current monthly cost of renting Home Designer Pro 2025 is $59/month. That equates to $708/year. Sure, it is less to purchase HD Pro, but at least you get to keep using it as a perpetual license. I’m sure Chief Architect will set the subscription price much higher than I think it’s worth, but I also think they don’t really care about the Home user and are focusing their attention and pricing strategy on Chief Architect Premium and professional architects, who can afford the cost by passing it along to their clients. Home DIY folks are probably not enough of an income stream to matter. I used Home Designer (and then Chief Architect Premium) to help me design our kitchen cabinets and visualize our fixture/hardware, flooring and color selections. I didn't need or want to pay someone an hourly rate to go through the many changes my wife and I went through during the design and build process. It was something that I was happy to do myself with this software and made our build much easier and less stressful. But I can’t imagine someone with the same use case as me paying what will likely be a huge subscription cost rather than a 1-time purchase and probably at least 1 upgrade to get through the design and build process. It was almost 3 years from initial plans from our draftsman to the final decisions on what we put in the house. I guess we we all see how limited and expensive the Home Designer line becomes. Too bad for the non-professional DIY’r.

Fellow Home Designer users, hopefully you all know that there will no longer be an upgrade path to a perpetual license in the Home Designer product line. I have started several posts and replied to others recently in an attempt to summon opinions and support for additional features in the Home Designer line. I am very disappointed in Chief Architect for not offering one more opportunity to upgrade to a perpetual license, but that ship appears to have already sailed. But, with the release of the 2026 subscription version likely 2-3 weeks away, a few details of their plans have begun to appear. Previous users of the Home Designer line will apparently be offered a discount. That’s ok, but I hope it is significant, because once you stop paying for the subscription, your ability to use the software will die. Again, I have accepted that inevitability, but I hope Chief offers a decent discount. Second, as a former user of Chief Architect Premium (which I did to overcome the severe limitations of the Home Designer line), I can confidently say that the Home Designer line is simply the Chief Architect Premium software with several features disabled. I am ok with that approach, because as a DIY’r I don’t need, nor do I want to pay for the Premium features. However, I do think that the Home Designer line has many unnecessary restrictions. So, apparently the 2026 subscription model will include real time ray trace - it’s about time. But unless we make some noise, I don’t think Chief Architect will include other features in the Home Designer line, such as the ability to import 3D models as actual door/cabinet hardware, or lights, or the ability to purchase cabinet catalogs. These are just a few annoying restrictions that I believe the Home Designer line should include. What do you all think?

Based on the Chief Architect reply to a user's question in the "Sales Related" forum about his rent-to-own subscription, it doesn't look like Chief Architect will honor their free upgrade to the next version. Oh and none of us will get the same courtesy as the Chief Architect Premium customers to get a chance to be grandfathered in and upgrade at least to the 2026 version as a perpetual license, before they switch over to subscriptions. Sure, we aren't paying for SSA, but that was essentially paying for an upgrade every year, which I would do at the Home Designer level, for a software version that doesn't die at the end of my subscription.

I know you guys are switching from perpetual to subscription licensing for the 2026 and beyond Home Designer software, but it's unfortunate that you are not honoring your rent-to-own free upgrade to the next version, nor are you allowing current Home Designer users the option to at least be able to upgrade to the 2026 version as a perpetual license before you force any desire to upgrade into a subscription. You allowed existing SSA subscribers for the Chief Architect Premium line to grandfather-in to the perpetual license as long as they kept their SSA up to date.

Well, let me be the first to apologize for ranting when there was a solution to my problem. Although I probably wouldn't have figured that out on my own (especially since you have to do it in 3D view) and a search of this forum and the knowledge-base didn't reveal the answer (or maybe I just don't know how to search). Anyway, thank you and sorry Chief Architect for whining.

I was tinkering with my house plans in Home Designer Pro 2025 and wanted to change the handrail profile of the railing in my loft. I couldn't figure out how to do it, then realized that it is yet ANOTHER restriction of the Home Designer line that Chief Architect places on us, simply because we didn't (and don't need to) pay thousands of dollars for the CA Premium product. They even advertise the add-on catalog of handrails as compatible with HD Pro 2025, yet there is no way to apply the profile in HD Pro. I know I asked for comment before from other HD Pro users on what we think should be included in the Home Designer product line (like proper assignment of SKP objects when imported), but all I got was crickets. So, I guess this is more of a rant, but come-on Chief Architect. That's a pretty lame restriction for software that currently costs $600. I imagine we will still see those unnecessarily restrictive aspects in the soon to be released "upgrade" to Home Designer, but I sure would like other users to chime in on this subject, although I'm not holding my breath...

Well, I guess it was inevitable, but I’m still not happy that the 2026 and beyond Home Designer line will no longer be offered as a one time purchase. Especially since the upgraded features will likely still be extremely minimal and severely limited from the Chief Architect Premium version. Here is the the text from today’s sales email: Update: From the products page, looks like their 10% off sale for the 2025 versions ends August 4th, so that os probably right before the release date for the 2026 version. We are excited to announce the new version of Home Designer 2026 will be available later this summer. Our 2025 product line (Suite, Architectural, Professional) will consolidate into a single product that will be subscription based either monthly or annually. This is your last chance to purchase Home Designer 2025 Suite, Architectural, or Professional