Sweet Home 3D for landscaping
Will Stapley reveals how he recreated his sloping garden
Regular readers will recall how last year I used Sweet Home 3D ( www. snipca.com/37124 – click the turquoise Download button) to plan a play area in the lounge for my kids (see Issue 556, page 20).
Having spent more time in my home over the past year than ever before, I’ve once again turned to Sweet Home 3D to plan some improvements, but this time concentrating on my garden. If it were level, I could have done this quite easily by creating a room without walls and giving it a grass texture. Sadly, my garden is anything but flat.
As well as adding an unusual edge to games of football with the kids, the slope also makes it harder to recreate in Sweet Home. However, after many attempts, I managed to wrestle the tool into submission. It’s not the simplest of processes, so you might want to grab a stiff drink before continuing.
First, I created a new level for my garden by pressing Ctrl+alt+n, then opened the properties for my existing ground-floor level (Level 0) by doubleclicking its tab (located above the floorplan). I then changed its elevation to match the difference in height between the top and bottom of my garden (110cm). Next, I selected my new level (to make things easier, I renamed this Garden) and created a wall that matched the length of my garden by pressing Ctrl+shift+w, then clicking and dragging the wall on to my floorplan. The size is displayed as you drag, but I find it’s best to create a small wall, press Escape, switch to the Selection tool (Ctrl+l), then double-click the wall to open its properties. From here, I entered my garden’s precise length in the ‘Distance to end points’ box.
Staying in the properties window, I changed the Thickness setting of the wall to match the width of my garden (see screenshot left). To add the slope effect, I selected ‘Sloping wall’ in the Height section, then entered 0 in the ‘Height at start’ box, 110 in ‘Height at end’ and clicked OK.
I now had a basic sloping garden effect, but because I’d created it using the Wall tool, Sweet Home wouldn’t let me place objects on it (such as trees and shrubs), nor give it a grass texture. To do this, I needed to convert the wall to what Sweet Home calls an ‘object’. After selecting the wall, I opened the ‘3D view’ window and selected ‘Export to OBJ format…’, choosing ‘Export selection’ when prompted (this meant only the selected wall is exported as an object, not my entire home).
I now had to import the object.
To do this, I opened the Import tool (Ctrl+shift+i), selected my garden object, then left the various import settings at their defaults. My garden now appeared on my plan as an object, meaning I could double-click it and add a grassy texture, as well as recreate the plants I’ve randomly plonked in it over the years (see screenshot above).
With my garden perfectly recreated (or thereabouts), I can test out all kinds of slope-taming options, including a full-on levelling approach with retaining walls. Of course, whether any of my ambitions see the light of day remains to be seen, but I can at least take virtual strolls around them.