Sweet Home 3D comes as a cheaper alternative to using expensive CAD tools for creating a 3D house or room interior designs. The program is open source and you can use it as long as you like without paying a single buck.
You can choose between various project view modes (2D and 3D displays), include as many elements as you like by using drag-and-drop actions, and check the integrated help manual whenever you require assistance. The program provides you with various project components that are nicely organized into groups and can easily be edited when needed. For example, you can change the size of a furniture piece, rotate a bookcase, etc.
Once you finish editing your project, you can create a video presentation showing the design and export it to your local directories. What's more, you can take a snapshot of your design and save it for later. Sadly, the utility supports a limited amount of output formats for completing both of the aforementioned tasks.
Furthermore, even though it comes with a price, the Mac App Store version of the tool provides you with more project elements (more than 1200 elements).
Another thing you need to consider is that the program provides you with a limited amount of exterior design elements, such as front porch furniture and other types of objects. Still, on the homepage of the developer, it says the utility is created for "interior design" projects.
In conclusion, it's up to you to decide which is the best Sweet Home 3D edition for you. Either way, both versions (open source and Mac App Store) provide you with many useful advantages and are very intuitive.
v3.5 [Apr 29, 2012]
Added Furniture > Align side by side menu item to align selected furniture on the sides and on the back side of the first selected piece.
Added Furniture > Align on front side / Align on back side / Align on left side / Align on right side menu items to align selected furniture on the front / back / left / right side of the first selected piece.
Added Furniture > Distribute horizontally / Distribute vertically menu items to distribute selected furniture accordingly.
Added Align or distribute furniture menu in plan popup menu to grant access to these features in the online version.
Added a magnetism behavior during the drag and drop of a piece in the plan, when its borders approach the borders of an other piece of furniture.
Improved magnetism of furniture along walls (including round walls) with anti collision system.
Made zoom in the plan centered on mouse cursor when zoom is done with mouse wheel while Ctrl key is pressed (cmd under Mac OS X).
Added 3D view > Modify virtual visitor menu item to edit visitor location and angles.
Added Adjust eyes elevation according to selected level option in virtual visitor modification pane (selected by default for new homes).
Reversed rotation direction towards up / down in aerial view mode.
Made ground color vary according to light power setting (the ground color of your existing home files will be automatically updated and this might lead to some small changes in rendering).
Reused staircase cut out shape to compute the hole of a ramp in the ground.
Added support for element in Collada files to get a better default size of imported 3D models at this format.
Added move mouse cursor for objects move in the plan and improved cursors look.
Added a button to access preferences in the tool bar (except under Mac OS X where the cmd + , shortcut is well known and the tool bar already large).
Fixed a bug that froze application when a window displaying a 3D view previously saved as hidden was enlarged under Mac OS X.
Split HomeController class in HomeController + HomePluginController classes to grant access to controllers in a plug-in (if you created a derived version of Sweet Home 3D with a direct subclass or an instantiation of HomeController class, you should just replace com.eteks.sweethome3d.viewcontroller.HomeController class by com.eteks.sweethome3d.plugin.HomePluginController class).
Updated German / Spanish / Brazilian-Portuguese / Swedish help.
Russian version of the user interface reviewed and updated by Андрей Прищенко.
Changed the font of Sweet Home 3D logo (thanks to Julien De Méyère).
Replaced JRE 6u30 by JRE 6u32 in Sweet Home 3D installers bundled with Java.
Other minor bugs fixes and enhancements.
