I’m confused about Home Designer’s intended audience. It’s marketed as a tool for home and interior designers to create realistic representations of their ideas, yet many of the controls needed to achieve that are unavailable.
I can model detailed wall assemblies and construction layers, but I have limited control over materials, lighting, and especially reflections. For interior design and communicating an aesthetic, those visual controls are central to the work.
The new rope lighting for LED strips is one example. Limited control over light direction and spill makes it difficult to represent a strip inside a channel with a diffuser without creating a blinding surface. You’re promoting this feature without giving us enough control over how the light behaves. Combined with limited surface controls, this makes realistic rendering frustrating. I can control the sun, but not how light interacts with a countertop?
A few of the other frustrations include:
Moulding: Why can’t I import a basic DXF profile or create and edit a custom moulding shape, as I can in Chief Architect?
Imported models with lighting: Why can’t imported fixtures retain their lighting data, as they can in Chief Architect? Why should I spend hours recreating lighting that was already defined?
Materials and surfaces: Basic color and texture changes are available, but the finer controls offered in Chief Architect are missing.
I understand that Home Designer is a separate product from Chief Architect, but these limitations affect fundamental design tasks. Why provide extensive construction tools while restricting the tools designers need to visualize the finished space?
I’d appreciate clarification on the intended audience and whether there are plans to improve these capabilities. I want to love this product, but I constantly end up exporting my work or using other software to get the results I need.
