Home Designer Pro 2026 upgrade

[Janetcrouch]

Hello, I just upgraded to Home Designer Pro 2026 from HD Pro 2024. I'm confused about the Project Management/Project Browser tab. I don't know what the pros and cons are of that and it is currently turned on. I currently store my projects on One Drive to conserve space on my computer, but I don't seem to have the option to save a project there now. I often save a plan as a different name and then make some changes so I have 1-2 options for my clients when they aren't sure what they want. It seems like now I have to import a plan into the project browser and then can only save it on the project browser. Should I just turn it off? I've only opened 1 plan for myself, so far, but I have other plans I need to start or continue working on and this seems really unhandy. Or maybe I just don't understand it. 

 

Also, I tried changing a material and in the preview box with the teapot, everything is very grainy. I can't really see it all. What is the problem with that? I tried updating my computer. I have a Mac mini (Apple M2, 16 GB) macOS Tahoe Version 26.1 Please help! As of right now, I'm regretting the upgrade! In the past, I've been happy with the upgrades I've bought even with a few things being slightly different.

[Renerabbitt]

3 hours ago, Janetcrouch said:

I don't know what the pros and cons are of that and it is currently turned on

it makes sharing groups of files, including any attached pdfs or material files back and forth to other users or machines. It is also a stepping stone to a cloud service chief is developing. 
One of the benefits is that you can build out pre established views in your layout via a project and then duplicate that project to use as a template where your views are always pre-populated as soon as you start drafting.
If you want to duplicate your install to another machine you would use the back feature. If instead you want to share a project (via onedrive) you would export your project. Recommendation is to delete+export as the export will be the current copy and the copy in project management would be outdated. This process is similar to saving externally.
There is a video you can check out here:
 

and this one I made here:

 

4 hours ago, Janetcrouch said:

I can't really see it all. What is the problem with that?

This is raytracing. You can change the preferred rendering technique options in the top of the preview window I believe. Raytracing takes a little bit to denoise the texture but will look a lot more realistic than previous versions when complete.
You might want to check this video out:

 

[Janetcrouch]

Thank you for the explanation and the videos. I will watch the videos in a bit. I think I might just turn off the project management feature for now. I don't share the Plan or layout files with anyone. I always export the layout pages as a PDF file to share with clients. I may have more questions after I watch the videos and try a few things. Thank you for the help!