January 24, 2009

Nizar Diamond Ali checks out a 3D home designing tools that is both free and functional, a combination not easy to find

Sweet Home 3D — a 40 MB tool available for Windows, Mac and Linux, is a simple and free 3D home design tool that works simply on drag and drop principle and updates 3D view instantly as a user updates the 2D plan.

It can be started off from the web browser and through Java Web Start as well, but a downloaded version is recommended for smoother running.

The first thing to be noticed in this tool is its ease in installation. Under Ubuntu (Linux), all it takes is extracting it and running SweetHome3D. Secondly, it has a quick response in 3D camera views given that it is a Java-based modelling tool and its interface is divided in four panels. The left panel has 3D objects library, while the panel below it shows the list of objects added in the plan being created. On the right, the top area is for 2D designing and the lower half is for 3D view of the same. This means there is no separate menu or mode for taking a 3D view which is a good feature as 3D view remains updated as soon as a new item is dropped in the designing area.

Let’s see how these four panels work together to provide an easy and entraining way of designing 3D home models. Start off with creating a simple home. Icons in the menu bar make an easy way to built walls and rooms in which rooms are displayed as square feet measurement at the time of creation. Note that a room appears as flat demarcation on the floor like a big tile rather than walled premises.

This allows placement of furniture and other props as appropriate without walls getting in the way. And whenever there is a need of wall, it can be placed and turned transparent using 3D View>Modify>Wall Transparency slider. These options greatly enhance the 3D view of the design as compared to other home designing tools.

Another useful feature suitable for more serious work is that of drawing dimension lines. Starting with one object and extending to the other, these lines display the distance in selected units — inches and feet, or centimetres and metres. Units are set from File>Preferences>Unit menu. Dimension lines works great for presenting 2D end-to-end wall measurement in a plan, as management or architects are often interested in knowing how much real estate is used.

Not only starters can use this for personal home or office redesigning, but home owners can share such detail with small- and medium-sized construction contractors instead of hand-drawn maps.

Another feature that augments dimension sizing is grid-based 2D design area with rulers at the top and left — thus, the user knows exactly how much space is being used for the overall plan.

The range of 3D items in the 3D library mentioned above is listed alphabetically and starts with bathroom; you will find bath, shower and washbasin here; in Bedroom category you will find an interesting addition of crib along with standard beds and wardrobes. Doors and Windows section has no extraordinary items as expected, but it has a complete garage door, and slider and double pane windows. Miscellaneous items include curtain and a few different types of staircases. This library should be good enough for basic home design. And for those looking to enhance their plan can always make use of models available free from the internet. Use Furniture>Import Furniture menu to bring up Furniture Import Wizard.

Press Find Models which opens up default web browser with model download page of Sweet Home 3D website. Here one can find both smaller as well as large furniture and other items. Some interesting 3D objects are decorative items such as Chinese Ying Yang image as picture frame, candle stick, cutlery, tissue box, razor, shampoo, soap and tools in traditional items, and microwave, laptop (running Ubuntu!), desktop PC, LCD monitor, keyboard and mouse in electronic items. Then there are cars and bikes too.

All these objects are OBJ files that can be imported in Sweet Home 3D, apart from LWS and 3DS formats which are also supported. This facility ensures reuse of effort that it takes to built objects that might not necessarily come pre-packaged with a home design tool, like fire extinguisher and electric fixtures. Inserted objects can be modified very easily using the bottom left panel because all the added items are listed in this panel, showing name, width, depth, height and visibility check box which allows selective removal of objects from the scene without having to delete it.

To view the plan in 3D, there are two options — first is the default aerial view, and second is virtual visit. In the second mode, a camera icon is placed in the plan pane which has two arrows on each of its sides.

Take the mouse towards the first oval shaped curved arrow, and the cursor changes to black circled arrow itself. At this point, holding the left mouse button and moving the mouse results in head angle change that is looking up or down. At the other end of the camera, doing the same results in rotation of the camera as it takes a while to master these two controls but once in grip, the camera can be real fun for taking a closer look at the designed home.

Sweet Home 3D is a simple, yet functional, tool considering it as free. Its value lies not only in the fact that it draws 3D views efficiently but also that it has good 2D drafting options including export to PDF that has a list of furniture and other items with their sizes and icons, along with 2D floor plan on a separate page. It is one good package one must have for unleashing both creativity and fun.