Visual Home 1.01 8/5/96 INTERNET CONNECTION This product does not require you to have a network connection, but some features will be greatly enhanced if your computer is wired to the net. If you do not yet have an Internet connection, Books That Work and Concentric Network Corp, offer you a free copy of Netscape Navigator Software, version 2.01. To install Netscape Navigator, click on the icon "Install Netscape" in the "Books That Work" program group (or in the "Start" menu for Windows 95 users) and follow the instructions on the screen. When you are done, click on the "Account Signup" icon to activate Concentric's services. Should you encounter any difficulty installing Netscape Navigator software, or connecting to the Internet, please call Concentric at 800-745-2747. The file "cncinfo.txt" contains some important information for you to setup your account. Installing Visual Home in no way commits you to use Concentric as your Internet Service Provider (ISP). KNOWN BUGS We did not have enough time to fix all the bugs reported. If you encountered problems with the product, you may wish to check out the file "knownbug.txt". This will save lots of time if you decide to contact our technical support staff. WINDOWS 3.1 USERS Windows 3.1 users may experience problems unique to them. We have identified some of them and provided a possible solution for each of them. Please review the file "win31faq.txt" on the CD-ROM. You can double click "d:\win31faq.txt" to view it. Substitute the letter "d" with the drive letter of your CD-ROM. PERFORMANCE To obtain best performance, Visual Home should be run on a Windows 95 machine with 256 colors and at least 16Mb of RAM. More RAM will speed up the program better than anything else. INSTALLATION Windows 3.1 Installation: 1. Insert disc into your CD-ROM drive. 2. From the Program Manager’s FILE menu, choose RUN. 3. Type d:\setup.exe (substitute your CD-ROM drive letter if it is other than "d"), and press return. Windows 95 Installation: 1. Insert disc into your CD-ROM drive and wait for the Autoplay window to appear. 2. Click the button labeled "Install Visual Home" and follow the instructions. TYPES OF INSTALLATION You will be given a choice of three ways to install the product: partial, minimal and full. 1. Minimal installation: Runs the Visual Home executable directly off the CD. This installation runs slowest, but takes up the least disk space, about 3 MB (megabytes). 2. Partial installation: Copies the executable and some files required to run the executable. Takes up more space than minimal installation, but runs more quickly than minimal. This uses about 20 MB of disk space. 3. Full installation: Copies all files to your hard disk. This runs the quickest especially if you have a slow CD-ROM drive. This uses about 300 MB of disk space. The installer will create directories on your hard drive and install the files it needs to run this program. Unless you tell it otherwise, it will create a BTW (Books That Work) directory and a subdirectory on your C: drive. You can change the drive and directory by choosing a different location. The installer will also create a Visual Home icon in your Windows 3.1 Program Manager. The default Program Manager Group is Books That Work, but you will be given the option to select a different group. Windows 95 users will see this under the Start menu. HOW TO RUN VISUAL HOME - Double-click the Visual Home icon in the Books That Work Program Manager Group. - If this icon is hidden, select Books That Work from the Windows menu in your Program Manager. This will bring forward the program group containing the Visual Home icon. - Windows 95 Users will find the icon in the Books That Work group under the Start menu. If you try to run this application without the CD in your drive and an error message appears: - Insert the Visual Home CD. - Wait 3 seconds. - Select "Retry" from the error message box. UNINSTALLING VISUAL HOME For Windows 3.x users, we do not offer an automatic way to uninstall Visual Home. For Windows 95 users, choose "Visual Home" from the "Add/Remove Program" applet from your Control Panel. You can bring up the "Control Panel" by clicking the "Start" menu and choosing "Settings". DELETING YOUR OWN SAMPLE FILES You may want to delete some of the Sample Files you've added to the Sample list. To do this, find the file called personal.3tl in the directory btw\vh\template on your hard disk. Open it with a text editor, like WordPad, Write or any word processor. Notice that each line begins with the Tab name, "My Samples", followed by the name you gave each file. Just delete the line for each file you want to remove. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS - 486DX/66 or higher IBM PC or compatible - Windows 3.1 or Windows 95 - 8MB RAM for Windows 95 (16 recommended), - 16MB RAM for Windows 3.x - 12 MB free hard disk space for the partial installation option - VGA graphics (256 colors or higher) - CD-ROM Drive (double-speed or higher recommended) - Sound card recommended We strongly recommend that you use 256 (8 bit) color. The program will run faster, use less memory, and will probably look better than if you run it in 16 or 24 bit color. In general the more physical memory (RAM) you have, the better Visual Home will perform. There is a big difference between 8 Megs and 16 Megs. Windows 95 uses memory more efficiently than Windows 3.1. The faster the CPU you have, the faster your program will run, especially in 3D View. Clock doubled chips won't improve performance as much as a chip with a faster clock rate. For example a clock doubled 50 MHz runs externally at 25 MHz and may be slower than a 33 MHz CPU. For the best 3D performance and look, run in 256 colors (8-bits) with a PCI or VESA Local Bus (VLB) video card. For those using Windows 3.1, setting a large amount of virtual memory provides better performance. You'll find instructions on how to change these settings in the file "win31faq.txt" on the CD-ROM. CONTACTING BOOKS THAT WORK For technical support with this software, please call (415) 843-4440, or send e-mail to support@btw.com We hope you enjoy Visual Home. For information on other products in this series, please call (800) 242-4546, Or write to us at 2595 E Bayshore Rd, Palo Alto, CA 94303. If you use the Internet, visit the Books That Work World-Wide Web site at http://www.btw.com/ Books That Work is a registered trademark of Books That Work. Microsoft, Windows and the Windows logo are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Other brand and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective manufacturers. Portions of this software are Copyright 1993-1995 Criterion Software Ltd. and its Licensors. Copyright 1996; Books That Work. All rights reserved.