Background music is Copyright © 1996, 1997 by Michael D. Walthius. All Rights Reserved.
The Designer
he
Designer is the heart of the Better Homes and Gardens Kitchen &
Bath program. It is here that materials are applied, accessories are
added, and details are fine-tuned. Unfortunately, the Designer
receives less attention than the Design Wizard in the Guided Tour
does. A brief narrated video plays the first time you enter the
Designer to give an overview of major functions, and certain sections
of the Designer receive a brief narrated description when you first
enter them, but for the most part you are pretty much on your own.
The Designer presents you with two windows, the Top View, where you
place, arrange, and color walls, appliances, and accessories, and the
3D view, where you view your design in the third dimension.
The 3D View
he
3D View is your viewport into the virtual kitchen or bath you are
creating. It's a visual window for some left-brained processing of
your creation. It's fairly self-explanatory. If you've ever played
Wolfenstein 3D or Doom, you know how to use the 3D view. The mouse
(or the cursor keys on the keyboard) is used to navigate the room.
Moving the mouse up (or pressing the 'up' cursor key) moves you
forward. Down is back. Left and right turn you in the appropriate direction.A
control panel at the top of the screen gives you additional options.
A click of the mouse changes your view from a person's perspective to
something more like what a bird might see if the roof of your house
were removed. 
Additional
buttons are provided to turn left or right, move left and right or
forward and back, raise your "eye level" to whatever height
you desire (ever wonder what Michael Jordan might think of your
kitchen?) and raise or lower your angle of view. You also have the
option of turning off the navigational controls and doing your
editing from the 3D view. In practical experience, however, I've
discovered that editing your kitchen or bath is a task much better
left to the top view.
was somewhat disappointed with the quality of the 3D rendered view.
Controls are provided to change the detail level (you are given three
options, which are, from slowest to fastest: Full Light and All
Materials, Minimal Light and All Materials, or Full Light and No
Materials). I found, however, that even at the highest quality
setting (Full Lights, All Materials) the display fell quite a bit
short of the "photographic quality" that the outside of the
software box claims. (To be fair, no personal computer today can
handle the amount of processing power required to provide a real-time
walkthrough of a true "photographic quality" room.) To
refer to 3D gaming again, I found the quality to be somewhat closer
to Doom than to Quake. That said, the 3D View does accomplish its
main task: to give a fairly accurate impression of the finished room.
The quality is sufficient to let me know whether I liked the green
granite or the tan marble countertop best, and whether a natural oak
or a stained cherry finish on the cabinetry was the better complement.
nteractivity
is good on my Pentium Pro 200 with 128 MB of RAM. I was able to
"walk around" the room without any noticeable lag or
jerkiness with the quality at the highest setting. I did find the
navigation a bit more sensitive than I would have liked, and often
ended up running "through" a wall when I was trying to get
from one place to another.
ne
feature that is not very obvious, and that I in fact found quite by
accident, is the ability to change the surrounding landscape. By
default, when you look out a window (or walk through your kitchen
wall) you see a nice manicured garden. If the kitchen that you're
designing will be in a beach house, you can change the landscape
picture to a coastal scene. Several scenes are provided, and the
program gives you the ability to import any picture of your choice,
making it possible to change the view out your kitchen window to what
you actually might see out your kitchen window. The landscape is
changed by changing your 3D View to edit mode and double-clicking the
landscape (you must be outside your design or looking out an open
door in order to do this.) A dialog will appear, allowing you to
select another landscape picture or import one of your own.
The Top View
f
the 3D view is the "eyes" of the Kitchen and Bath
Designer, the Top View is the brain. This is where all the nitty
gritty details are worked out to make you kitchen or bath beautiful.
If you've used the Design Wizard to create your room (definitely the
easiest way to do it), you'll find it waiting for you when you get to
the Designer's Top View. If you enter the designer directly, you'll
be presented with a blank canvas upon which to build your
architectural masterpiece. The Top View contains a visual
representation of every object in your room. Every appliance, wall,
window, and door is there, and you can move any or all of them around
simply by dragging them with the mouse. When you click on an object
to select it, handles appear for resizing and rotating. Pressing the
Delete key when an object is selected removes it from the scene. When
you move, resize, or delete an object, the 3D View updates to reflect
the change.
bjects
are added to the room by dragging them from a toolbar at the top of
the screen. Buttons on the toolbar allow you to choose between Layout
items (walls, doors, windows, etc.), Cabinets, Appliances, Fixtures,
and Details (furniture, plants, pots and pans, towels, etc.).
Selecting an object type causes several category drop-down menus to
appear along the top of the screen, each containing several
sub-categories. Selecting a sub-category brings up thumbnail
renderings of 3D models. 
For
example, the Appliances object type contains five categories:
Cooking, Fridges, Clean-Up, Gadgets, and Brands. The Clean-Up
Category contains three subcategories: Dishwashers, Trash Compactors,
and Laundry. The "Dishwashers" subcategory contains six
different 3D dishwasher models. In all, the CD contains over 1,200
models, many of which are name-brand items such as GE appliances and
Merillat Cabinetry. 
The
1,200 models included with the program are rather impressive, but
even better are the updates that are periodically available free of
charge via the Internet. Clicking the "Net" button on the
Top View's button bar takes you to the Better Homes and Gardens
Kitchen and Bath web site, which contains a new group of downloadable
models every month. New models for March 1998 include a collection of
asian furniture. Rugs, windows, window treatments (draperies, etc.)
and tiles are among the other collections available. In my mind, this
is a fine example of how the Internet can be used to add value to a
traditional software package. The Top View Toolbar also has a
"Find" button that allows you to search the database of
models using keywords. Objects are added to the scene by dragging the
item's thumbnail onto the Top View window. Once placed, objects can
be moved, rotated, and resized.
All pages copyright © Roger A. Moncrief, Indepth Reviews, 1997
Thanks to Judy Gefter, !LuM! and Charles Blaquiere for their advice and counsel, some I heeded and some I didn't.