ᐅ Which software do you use or would you recommend for house design and planning?
Created on: 13 May 2020 11:14
A
AleXSR700
Hello everyone,
I wanted to ask which software you use for floor plan design and possibly site planning? Maybe you have tested several and can share their pros and cons?
I have tried Sweet Home 3D and Avanquest Architect 3D Gold 2018 myself.
Sweet Home 3D advantages:
- Free
- Very intuitive (I created a complete house with it within an hour, not including interior design). It can be operated very quickly.
- Excellent user interface including 3D view.
Sweet Home 3D disadvantages:
- You cannot simply scroll right or left without drawing a wall or similar. The drawing area is basically limited to 2m (6.6 ft) around the house (a disadvantage when placing garages, but can be circumvented with little effort).
- You cannot rotate buildings/objects (for example, if you want to move a garage from one property boundary to another). However, you can rotate the entire plan with a plugin and, indirectly, also single objects that way.
- No dimensioning available. The biggest issue, in my opinion, is that Sweet Home 3D does not show any measurements. You have to click on each wall and window individually to check their dimensions and then write them into the plan manually.
Avanquest Architect 3D Gold 2018 advantages:
- Dimensions are entered automatically
- Quickstart feature allows you to create and adjust entire rooms very quickly and easily
Avanquest Architect 3D Gold 2018 disadvantages:
- I haven’t found a way to return to Quickstart after finishing it, making it hard to easily modify or add rooms later
- The program is not intuitive at all. Everything seems very complicated, even adjusting a staircase.
- The 3D view is cumbersome and not enjoyable to use.
- In the first hour, I couldn’t figure out how to remove a room’s ceiling to create an open space to the floor above.
- Creating floors, ceilings, and the like without defining a whole room seems awkward.
As you might guess, I gave up on Avanquest Architect after about 60-90 minutes. It was no fun. I suspect it can do everything, but if everything is very complicated and counter-intuitive, you simply don’t want to work with it.
Maybe newer versions of Avanquest are better. Maybe you have had good experiences with it. Or maybe you know of a program that combines Sweet Home 3D’s ease of use with Avanquest’s dimensioning capabilities.
I’m curious to hear what you use or can recommend, whether free or paid.
I wanted to ask which software you use for floor plan design and possibly site planning? Maybe you have tested several and can share their pros and cons?
I have tried Sweet Home 3D and Avanquest Architect 3D Gold 2018 myself.
Sweet Home 3D advantages:
- Free
- Very intuitive (I created a complete house with it within an hour, not including interior design). It can be operated very quickly.
- Excellent user interface including 3D view.
Sweet Home 3D disadvantages:
- You cannot simply scroll right or left without drawing a wall or similar. The drawing area is basically limited to 2m (6.6 ft) around the house (a disadvantage when placing garages, but can be circumvented with little effort).
- You cannot rotate buildings/objects (for example, if you want to move a garage from one property boundary to another). However, you can rotate the entire plan with a plugin and, indirectly, also single objects that way.
- No dimensioning available. The biggest issue, in my opinion, is that Sweet Home 3D does not show any measurements. You have to click on each wall and window individually to check their dimensions and then write them into the plan manually.
Avanquest Architect 3D Gold 2018 advantages:
- Dimensions are entered automatically
- Quickstart feature allows you to create and adjust entire rooms very quickly and easily
Avanquest Architect 3D Gold 2018 disadvantages:
- I haven’t found a way to return to Quickstart after finishing it, making it hard to easily modify or add rooms later
- The program is not intuitive at all. Everything seems very complicated, even adjusting a staircase.
- The 3D view is cumbersome and not enjoyable to use.
- In the first hour, I couldn’t figure out how to remove a room’s ceiling to create an open space to the floor above.
- Creating floors, ceilings, and the like without defining a whole room seems awkward.
As you might guess, I gave up on Avanquest Architect after about 60-90 minutes. It was no fun. I suspect it can do everything, but if everything is very complicated and counter-intuitive, you simply don’t want to work with it.
Maybe newer versions of Avanquest are better. Maybe you have had good experiences with it. Or maybe you know of a program that combines Sweet Home 3D’s ease of use with Avanquest’s dimensioning capabilities.
I’m curious to hear what you use or can recommend, whether free or paid.
T
T_im_Norden13 May 2020 13:39Jucruzlo schrieb:
The downside with SweetHome3D is that it costs money for the Mac version—$14.99 to be exact. I just tried downloading it.No, on the website there is also a free OS X version available for download; it’s just a Java program. Only in the App Store does it cost money.
AleXSR700 schrieb:
- You can’t just scroll left or right without drawing a wall or something similar. The drawing area is basically limited to 2 meters (6.5 feet) around the house (a disadvantage if you want to place garages, but it can be easily bypassed).Completely forgot. Or rather, you probably meant that with your "bypass." There are two workarounds for this issue:- Zoom out. This simply expands the editable area and gives you space to move objects around.
- Or at the start of a project, place an object (I like to use a bird for this) relatively far to the right and bottom of the plan. This expands the already used space and then you can scroll easily.
I know the forum search isn’t the best. But does someone really have to ask this question "again" twice a year?
https://www.instagram.com/11antgmxde/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/bauen-jetzt/
https://www.instagram.com/11antgmxde/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/bauen-jetzt/
A
AleXSR70013 May 2020 21:12I searched the forum but couldn’t find what I was looking for, at least not a thread with detailed information.
@Tolentino:
When you zoom out, the canvas does not enlarge. To extend, for example, to the left (in the program’s view, the negative axis), you need to draw something.
I looked for the plugin and couldn’t find it. However, I did find out that there is an official plugin that allows you to freely rotate individual walls, rooms, or objects.
On the SweetHome3D website, in the plugins section, there is AdvancedEditing. That makes it possible. The other plugin I only have locally. It allows you to rotate everything at once – all levels simultaneously by 90° per step.
@Tolentino:
When you zoom out, the canvas does not enlarge. To extend, for example, to the left (in the program’s view, the negative axis), you need to draw something.
I looked for the plugin and couldn’t find it. However, I did find out that there is an official plugin that allows you to freely rotate individual walls, rooms, or objects.
On the SweetHome3D website, in the plugins section, there is AdvancedEditing. That makes it possible. The other plugin I only have locally. It allows you to rotate everything at once – all levels simultaneously by 90° per step.
AleXSR700 schrieb:
I searched the forum but couldn’t find what I was looking for—at least not a thread with detailed information.
@Tolentino:
When you zoom out, the canvas itself doesn’t expand. To extend the workspace to the left (the negative axis from the program’s perspective), you need to draw something there first.
I looked for the plugin but couldn’t find it. However, I discovered that there is an official plugin that allows you to freely rotate individual walls, rooms, or objects.
On the SweetHome3D website, there is the AdvancedEditing plugin in the plugins section. That one allows this functionality. The other plugin I only have locally, and it lets you rotate everything at once, turning all levels by 90° per step in a single operation. You might want to remove the link quickly and rephrase where to find what you mean. Moderators tend to delete links here very quickly.
A
AleXSR70014 May 2020 04:55Oops, sorry. So, how are links supposed to be added in the forum software?
Just go to the program’s website and then to the Plugins page. There, either look for the advanced editing plugin or use the search function on the page to find “rotate.”
Just go to the program’s website and then to the Plugins page. There, either look for the advanced editing plugin or use the search function on the page to find “rotate.”