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Bob Vila's 3D Kitchen Designer

Bob Vila's 3D Kitchen Designer is an online tool for designing a custom kitchen that walks you through the process of creating a floor plan, adding cabinets, counters, doors, windows and appliances-in various styles and colors. It is one of several online design tools and calculators at BobVila.com

To use Kitchen Designer, you first download a template. The templates include a blank one for starting a project from scratch plus three pre-designed kitchens: 1) Habitat for Humanity, 2) Honey Maple, 3) Victorian Updated.   Once the template is loBob Vila's 3D  Kitchen Designeraded (anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes, depending on what type of Internet connection you have), the application starts up automatically in your Web browser, displaying a 3D view of the kitchen if a pre-designed kitchen was selected. A portion of Bob Vila's personal kitchen (Victoria Updated) is shown below.

The design screen includes a variety of icons for customizing the cabinets, countertops, furniture and accessories, plumbing accessories, flooring, cooktops, dishwashers, and other appliances. The basic idea is to select an icon, say a cabinet, and then drag-n-drop it to the desired location in the kitchen. Once a cabinet is situated, you can then adjust its color and door style.

Kitchen Designer allows you to toggle between 2D and 3D mode. 2D mode is used to define the size and shape of the kitchen by selecting walls and dragging them where you want. It also allows you to add doors and windows, insert partition walls, and adjust the ceiling height. The room dimensions and door/window positions are displayed in real-time as you tinker with things in 2D mode.

The bulk of the design work is done in 3D mode. This is where you select and position objects such as appliances, tables, chairs, and cabinets. With a few clicks of the mouse, you can paint all the rooms, choose from 12 different hardwood and tile floors, or select from 22 different cabinet finishes. Cabinet finishes include solid melamine colors and various shades of cherry, maple, oak, and pine.  3D mode also allows you to observe the room from several different viewing perspectives and to zoom in and out. Once you're happy with the design, it can be printed out or saved for future reference.

I encountered a few glitches when using Kitchen Designer in 3D mode. Because it doesn't run on my current version of Netscape (see requirements below), I had to use Internet Explorer. Unfortunately, Explorer crashed several times as I was using Kitchen Designer. This may have been related to some new memory chips that were installed in my PC although Explorer had been working fine up to this point for normal Web browsing. I also ran into occassional difficulties changing cabinet colors and waiting for cabinet icons to appear in the menu. These may have been bandwidth-related issues but they were still a bit annoying.

Impressions: Glitches aside, Kitchen Designer is an interesting tool that is fun to use. Within 20 minutes or so, you can put together a couple different kitchen layouts and get a rough idea for how various combinations of cabinets, countertops, and floor styles will look. The fact that it is available online for free is also nice. Of course, it has its limitations since it is not a full-fledged CAD application. If you want cut lists, detailed drawings, and extensive customization options, you'll have to look elsewhere. But, Kitchen Designer can at least help you come up with some design ideas and get you moving in the right direction.

System Requirements: Windows 4.0/2000/XP. IE 4.0+, Netscape 4.72+. Netscape 6.0+ and Mac OS are not supported.