Sweet Home 3D 6.0

www.snipca.com/29500 What you need: Windows Vista 7, 8/8.1 or 10

We covered Sweet Home 3D in Issue 539’s Cover Feature as one of our must-have free tools and, since then, the brilliant interior-design tool has been updated with lots of new features that make it even more essential. whether you’ re redecorating your house or just planning to rearrange your furniture, Sweet Home 3D lets you visualise your plans so that you get a clearer idea of what’s possible and what looks best.

The program makes it easy to create a 2D plan of your room by dragging it into the correct shape and size, then dropping in doors, windows, furnishings, lighting fixtures and more from a library of items. Brilliantly, the program renders your 2D plans into 3D models as you create them. You can reposition the point of view wherever you want it, providing you with a virtual walkthrough of your designs.

This update includes improved 3D models, along with plenty of tweaking options, such as the ability to open doors and drawers on models of cupboards that you’ve added to your plan. It’s also now possible to flip your entire plan horizontally or vertically, and you can easily switch to a multi-level view of your whole home. See www.snipca. com/29476 for a full list of new features.

While there are no limitations placed on the free version of Sweet Home 3D, it has a relatively small library of furniture items and textures, but these should be more than enough for most users’ needs. The paid-for version (£15 from www.snipca.com/29474) works exactly the same way, but comes with extra furniture and texture options. However, you can expand the free version’s library for no extra cost by downloading user-generated models at www. snipca.com/29475, where you’ll also find a portable version.

1 2 3 4 Use the Create Walls or Create Rooms tools at the top to draw your floor plans in the graph- paper 2D view pane, then drag items from the furniture library into your plans. Right-clicking the 3D model pane lets you switch between an ‘Aerial view’ or a ‘Virtual visit’. The latter gives you a realistic idea of how your design will look. You can click and move the view icon in the 2D view pane to change the point of view of the 3D model. You can also click and drag in the 3D model window to change the camera angle. If the furniture options don’t have the correct dimensions, you can double-click them in the Item list pane and customise the measurements – along with other attributes, such as textures.