Ashampoo Home Design has been around for years, helping people create and furnish their homes in 3D. We look at the latest iteration: version 44.99, which is free for Windows 10 and below, with a minimum of XNUMXGB of RAM (although, as is the case with all these genres of apps, the more you put into memory, the more receptive will be). Today, this interior design software has a very low cost: €XNUMX (€XNUMX) instead of €XNUMX (€XNUMX) for the download-only version. . If you want to give it a try, you can also take advantage of a XNUMX-day free trial.
Your journey begins with a carousel of low-quality renderings, no-audio tutorials, and an interesting houseboat-building wizard... (Image credit: Ashampoo)
Contac us
Launch the software and you will immediately feel that the design has passed its peak. There may have been a time when design was modern, but that was many moons ago. The "Startup Wizard" window gives you an overview of some renderings that aren't as good as what the current competition can achieve. You have access to exercise videos that are eleven(!!) years old and don't even come with narration; It's not a good first impression, but it explains the archaic feel. It also has a build wizard, that's more encouraging.
The build wizard seems to make the initial build process easier... (Image credit: Ashampooe)
You are a magician, house designer
The steps you are guided through are very simple and help you get started quickly and easily. You choose the general shape of your house, its dimensions, even the type of roof you are looking for. Once you're ready, place your new home on your lot. Everything was going well until we decided to insert windows and doors. For some inexplicable reason, which we could not solve, these doors and windows insisted on being placed on the first floor and not on the ground floor. Since there was no first floor, they appeared on the roof. We tried to create another building and the door appeared in the right place… until we noticed that the building was floating above the ground next to each other! Maybe we shouldn't have let a wizard design our house in the first place! There must be some way to fix this problem, but if this problem appears the first time you try the app and there is no obvious and clear way to fix it, how many potential customers will be left with the app? And how many more venture into the arms of the competition?
The 2D plan shows how this software allows you to work with precision and detail (Image credit: Ashampoo)
Interface
The interface is very heavy. It has rows of tools and icons at the top and a project sidebar on the right. What remains is where you will design your home. Except, not really. You can work on a 2D top-down plane or a virtual 3D render of your creation. Both are presented as floating windows that can only reside within the space not occupied by other tools. It's very frustrating because these tools take up a lot of space, and if you like working with those two windows open, you end up fighting for limited space.
The 3D rendering probably looked amazing, 20 years ago (Image credit: Ashampoo) Sure, they can partially overlap one behind the other, but the fact that they can't even be displayed as different tabs to maximize the limited amount of space available screen makes the design very poor or very archaic. Either way, he doesn't feel up to the task. Yes, you can hide the toolbars, but you still end up with windows competing for the same space, and you have to keep moving and resizing them as you work. not ideal.
Build your house
We haven't run into any "houseboat syndrome" when building a house from scratch. The tools work fine, but it seems like it takes too many clicks to get the job done. It's also not clear if your cursor is set to use a particular tool or just to help you move around your layout. Often times we find ourselves inadvertently adding walls when all we wanted to do was select another part of the build. Now, unsurprisingly, you have a wide variety of options available to you. The type of wall, for example (exterior, interior, load-bearing, etc.), the way the roof is built (options that have been shown thanks to our wizard above) and of course the utilities and furniture galore.
Every object, every wall, every door, etc., has properties that you can access and modify, via their respective Properties windows (Image credit: Ashampoo) Take a door, for example. Click on it to access its properties, and from there you can scroll through a list of different styles... except the thumbnails are pretty small and most of the time it's not clear what your selection will look like, until you select it and check the result in the 3D window. Many, many clicks to get what you want.
With a little patience, you can add objects to your room and customize each one to suit your needs (Image credit: Ashampoo) The Item Catalog is better because you can double-click an item to see a large preview, so it's OK. Most items have multiple options, such as multiple sinks, toilets, and showers. Adding an item consists of dragging it from this catalog onto your plane...unless you want to work on the 2D plane, even if this window is the most foreground, the 3D window will appear as you scroll, competing for the attention. like a neglected pet. If you can still see your 2D window, you can drop the element there and then drag it to its appropriate location. But then there's another problem: Somehow the software now insists that you want to add as much of the chosen item as you can click. Sure, pressing the Esc key stops that, but would it be too much to ask for that to be an option, instead of ending up with 4 toilets stacked on top of each other in the same bathroom? As you'd expect, each item you add can be resized, although it does require a lot of clicking. Instead of dragging its outer edges as would be the natural and expected method, nothing is that easy here. No, you have to open its properties and then manually enter new values. If the size is not exactly what you need, you need to reopen the properties and repeat the process until it is.
Final verdict
Home Design may have been cutting-edge software at one point, but now it feels old and frustrating. You can design a house to your exact specifications, absolutely, and customize it to your liking, no doubt, with all the furniture it can fit...but you really have to click way too many times to get results that could be done. faster and considerably more efficient. Your contenders can do it, why not this software? Need help with your next creative project in your home? Check out our roundups of the best interior design software and the best architecture software.