Should We Play Myst? Nah, Let's Design Our House!
A Review of myHouse for Windows 3.0
by Ron Enderland
I have to be honest with you. This review just tore me up.
You see, I spent ten years wiring houses. I know what it's like from the construction worker's point of view when a homeowner designs his or her own house. Let me spell it out for you: D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R.
It's just that homeowners who take on the job of home designers inevitably run into situations where an experienced opinion would save them (and the workers) untold amounts of heartache and dollar bills.
With that said, let's proceed with the review . . .
House design is a complicated process. Appropriately, then, this is a complicated program.
The controls are a little finicky, with frequent scoldings possible for breaking program
rules. I was given an "Illegal wall junction" error message about ten times before I had
my house's outside walls sketched in. I also received that dreaded "Floating point division
by zero" thing.
The program is a powerful one, though, albeit one with a steep learning curve. Once you've spent a few hours getting the hang of things, you discover that it's a nifty CAD package capable of major graphics manipulations.
Opening the included premade houses shows what the program is capable of in trained hands. You can make fully detailed layouts and export them in AutoCad DXF or in Lotus 1-2-3 WKS formats. You can also save them as files that are for use with myHouse itself.
Who is this program for? Well, the professional architect will have a CAD drawing
program that will dance circles around this one. The casual dreamer will not want to go
to the trouble of mastering the difficult interface. That leaves the serious amateur home
designer who has the time to learn the ins and outs of myHouse.
Here is where the serious amateur home designer must know his limitations, though. He or she may spend several hours putting the Dream Home together. There may be 3D views aplenty, the furniture may be sketched in, there might even be an AVI movie of a flyby of your lovely manor (which you can do with myHouse).
However, please take a DXF copy of your creation to a professional architect. Heed his
advice. Make his suggested changes. Then, your dream house will probably be something
that won't bankrupt you or cause you to be loathed by every construction worker in town.
Multimedia Cafe Scorecard
| Product: |
myHouse for Windows 3.0 |
| Company: |
The Learning Company, Inc.
|
| Cost: |
$49.95 |
System Requirements:
386 or higher IBM compatible,
4 MB of RAM (8 recommended),
16 MB hard disk space,
Windows 3.1 or higher (including Windows 95),
VGA monitor with 256 colors,
Double-Speed CD-ROM drive,
Mouse.
Breakdown:
Entertainment Value 3
Educational Value 3
Concept 4
Depth 3
Interface 3
Overall Score:
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