Sweet Home 3D
Version: 6.2 Web: www.sweethome3d.com
Sometimes it’s not easy to explain your vision for a new room layout using just words. Whether that’s because of your limited artistic skills or the complexity of the design itself, we recommend transferring your thoughts to a 3D plan using Sweet Home 3D. It is of inestimable value since there are virtually no other open source applications of this kind.
At first, this application seems to be just a specialised version of a vector editor, where you can draw your room and arrange smaller rectangles that act as furniture items or appliances. It still requires spatial thinking to imagine how things will look in real life, though, so next it’s time to make use of the 3D. Below the flat, top-view, editing area there is a 3D view of the room. Use the green arrows at the top-left corner, or your mouse, to change camera view and zoom in/out.
By default the isometric view is infinite and any item placed on the canvas will be shown hanging in the air. It’s good to start by drawing walls and floors and proceed with furniture after you have shaped the surroundings. Sweet Home 3D has a decent library of items available right out of the box: showers, shelves, bottles, mirrors, hangers and so on are all waiting.
The application’s website also hosts extra models made by community – there are hundreds of valuable extras. New users of Sweet Home 3D are advised to explore other people’s designs published online. Such examples usually have complex planning with several rooms and plenty of small details. Altering a previously mastered plan is a perfect way to learn about using
Sweet Home 3D and discover its features.
The software is based on Java and works equally well on any supported OS. If something goes wrong and you realise you forgot to save your work, Sweet Home 3D restores your unsaved design on the next run. Sweet!