Create a floor-by-floor house plan, decorate it with a furniture from a wide variety of catalogs then view the results both in two and in three-dimensional images.
Sweet Home 3D can help you draw a sketch of your home, arrange its interiors and visualize the results in 3D views. The program has a simple interface, which is divided into four main panels. One of them is the floor plan, the second holds the 3D preview, the third contains an object library, and the last one shows a list of the active objects and their properties. The tool is quite easy to use, provided you have some knowledge of technical drawing and a good spatial perception.
It is a good idea to start by drawing the walls on the floor plan. This way, you will have the limits you need for each of the house’s spaces. After that, you can drag and drop objects from the library, including pieces of furniture, equipment, lights and others, such as staircases, workbenches and curtain rods. These objects can be modified to match the exact measures. Similarly, their properties can be changed, including color, texture and shininess. Moreover, they can be positioned with accuracy even on the Z axis.
All the changes you make on the floor plan are automatically reflected on the 3D preview. However, the tool does not allow making changes directly on the 3D model. Good news is that two types of views are allowed: aerial and virtual visit. And, if you want to make a presentation of your work, you can even create a video.
The program´s features can luckily be expanded with plugins. It is great that you are allowed to import texture collections. Likewise, as it supports 3D models created with other tools, it is possible to download and import complete libraries using the furniture import wizard.
All in all, Sweet Home 3D is a free design application that may come in handy when you are remodeling your home or planning where to put the furniture. It has the limitation of not allowing to design exteriors or gardens. You should also know that it requires a large quota of system resources and may not work unless your system is using the latest 3D rendering software. Fortunately, there is also an online version of this program that you can use from your browser.
v4.0 [Mar 22, 2013]
Used the Shift key to keep objects moved in the plan aligned along horizontal or vertical axis, and changed the key used to toggle magnetism setting to Alt key under Windows, cmd key under Mac OS X and Shift Alt key under Linux.
Added Materials option in the furniture modification pane to edit the various materials (colors or textures) of the selected furniture.
Improved the color chooser with the ability to choose a color among RAL and Creative Commons palettes, with a pipette tool or in a list displaying colors recently chosen.
Added options in the room modification pane to change the color or the texture of the wall sides surrounding the modified room.
Added Pattern in plan and Top color in 3D view options in the wall modification pane to change the pattern used to draw a wall in the plan and the color used to paint the top of a wall in the 3D view.
Replaced Wall pattern in plan option by New walls pattern in plan option in the user preferences pane.
Added 3 new wall patterns.
Added 3D view > Delete points of view menu item to delete all or some of the stored points of view.
Added 3D view > Create photos at points of view menu item to create photos at a subset of the stored points of view.
Renamed the existing Inch unit as Foot/Inch/Fraction, made it always display the closest 1/8 inch fraction for lengths shown in the furniture table and in the plan, and removed decimals for areas in square feet.
Added to user preferences the Inch/Decimals unit able to display decimals of an inch for lengths shown in the furniture table and in the plan, and for areas in square feet.
Added Furniture > Import texture menu item to improve the access to the texture import wizard.
Added Furniture > Export to CSV format... menu item.
Set 3D view > Display in separate window / Display in main window menu items shortcut to Ctrl Alt Y (cmd alt Y under Mac OS X) and enabled program shortcuts in the separated 3D view.
Added an option to choose whether only the selected items in plan or all home 3D items should be exported to OBJ format.
Added a Check updates at program launch check box and a Check update button to user preferences pane to get information about the available updates of the program and SH3F/SH3T/SH3L/SH3P files.
Create a floor plan for your home and start adding walls and textures
Review 2D and 3D designs without using the application they were created in
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