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.
v5.3.1 [Jun 26, 2016]
Ensured that the selected items are visible in the plan after using Zoom in or Zoom out tools.
Changed how textures on borders of room floors are displayed so they never look distorted.
Displayed walls with half transparent pattern while drawing them or while placing doors and windows, when a background image is used.
Initialized the scale and origin of background images imported at new levels with the values of the background image available at the closest level.
Improved the mouse management of the virtual visitor in plan at small scales.
Added a Home.xml entry validated by the DTD SweetHome3D.dtd to SH3D files, and added file association for future SH3X files.
Added HomeObject super class to let developers manage their own properties on home objects.
Copied texture image files at OBJ format export instead of generating new ones.
Fixed the area computation of rooms drawn with a hole in their middle.
Fixed blocking errors that happened for textured floors in the plan with Java 7/8 under Ubuntu.
Fixed the color of menu items under Ubuntu and better drag and drop support under Linux using Java 8.
Upgraded Java 3D version to 1.6.0 fcs / JOGL 2.3.2 for Windows and Linux versions, and for the Mac OS X version run with Java 7/8.
Displayed Java 3D version in About dialog box.
Added Sweet Home 3D icon in installation folder under Linux.
Replaced JRE 8u74 by JRE 8u51 in Sweet Home 3D installers bundled with Java under Windows.
Replaced JRE 6u45 by JRE 8u112 in Sweet Home 3D installers bundled with Java under Linux.
Other minor bugs fixes and enhancements.
Review 2D and 3D designs without using the application they were created in
Create a floor plan for your home and start adding walls and textures
