[HN Gopher] Sweet Home 3D is a free interior design application
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Sweet Home 3D is a free interior design application
Author : punnerud
Score : 212 points
Date : 2023-02-17 18:52 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sweethome3d.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sweethome3d.com)
| jimmcslim wrote:
| I'll see how well it handles my 1930s timber cottage that is well
| out of square!
| [deleted]
| kyaghmour wrote:
| I've successfully used SH3D to create plans for a 14'x24'
| workshop that a contractor then used to build it. A year later I
| used it to remodel 2 bedrooms with some funky closet arrangement
| and again gave the plans to a contractor to do the work.
|
| It's got its quirks, but it's good enough to get a good idea of
| what things would look like. Most irritating is when its 3D
| viewer fails because of some random error as a separate window
| and has to be closed and reopened. Then again this was an older
| version. Maybe things got better since.
| jeremy_wiebe wrote:
| We completely renovated our apartment about 3 years ago. We used
| Sweet Home 3D to help visualize our kitchen as we took out a wall
| and rearranged things.
|
| Being able to model it and then "explore" it in 3D was really
| helpful to settle on our final layout. And especially since the
| designer we hired gave us one option that stunk.
| ale42 wrote:
| So slow right now... looks like the server is getting a HN hug...
| alanbernstein wrote:
| I had a need for this kind of tool a while ago, and this was the
| ONLY decent option I found. I'm just wondering what alternatives
| are even available. I figured there must be some professional
| software for this, but if so, I don't know what it is.
|
| I was pretty happy with this for whatever project I was doing at
| the time. I recently started using inkscape, for a general
| purpose drawing of my house. I can also include layers with other
| kinds of information like a circuit map. I can also include
| exterior information, like landscape design, buried utility
| lines, or assorted raster maps.
|
| It just seems like a "whole-house visual diagram" software tool
| should exist.
| wyldfire wrote:
| > this was the ONLY decent option I found
|
| Can SketchUp do any of this?
| dddddaviddddd wrote:
| It can, but when I last looked, you needed the paid version
| to have similar features.
| smtpserver wrote:
| This is pretty neat https://home.by.me/en/
| aweb wrote:
| Agreed, I use it a lot for personal projects and it's quite
| straightforward to use while still pretty powerful. I'd just
| like to export the data somehow though
| michaelmior wrote:
| I like magicplan[0]. It's not perfect, but I like that I can
| just point my phone around the room and tap on points to create
| a rough layout. You can add in precise measurements later if
| you choose to.
|
| [0] https://www.magicplan.app/
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Sweet Home 3D_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32325485
| - Aug 2022 (2 comments)
|
| _Sweet Home 3D is a free interior design application_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21652888 - Nov 2019 (115
| comments)
| BizarroLand wrote:
| I live in a geodesic dome and sweet home isn't really suited to
| buildings that aren't comprised of 90 degree angles.
|
| Other than that it;s a great little program.
| pabe wrote:
| I didn't find a better solution for planning the layout of a
| house. It's basically like playing Sims; way easier to handle
| than e.g. SketchUp.
|
| It can also export layers (or the whole building) as OBJ which is
| awesome for 3D printing or working with Twinmotion. I decorated
| my rooms in Twinmotion and did awesome high fidelity renders. You
| can even experience your building in VR!
|
| Maybe one day there's an AI that helps you with planning a home.
| mnsc wrote:
| How is the workflow for going to vr? Do you need som fancy
| headset or would a quest 2 with a link cable work?
| Yuioup wrote:
| Does it do gardens?
| rubidium wrote:
| Yes but not super well.
| senkora wrote:
| I used this when planning out my apartment. I grabbed a floorplan
| from the listing ad, recreated it to scale in Sweet Home 3D,
| resized and recolored the bundled furniture models to match the
| dimensions and colors of furniture I was considering ordering
| online, found a layout I was happy with, and had everything
| ordered before I even moved in.
|
| Sweet Home 3D was honestly really useful for giving me confidence
| that everything I was buying would work well together, and I'm
| very happy with the result.
| km3r wrote:
| I did this with various different apartments trying to figure
| out which layout worked best with the furniture I already had
| (and the use cases I wanted to meet).
| sabujp wrote:
| I did a full design of an addition for my home with it, now i
| Just need to find a contractor in the bay area who doesn't charge
| an arm and a leg to bring it to fruition
| hdjsksjd wrote:
| [dead]
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| Why not ask ChatGPT to design your interior for you? ;)
| rubidium wrote:
| Used it for a full house renovation of a 125 year old house
| (merging a duplex to a single family and moving stairwalls). Was
| super valuable and used the drawings to get my plan approved by
| the city. The 3d view really helped in visualizing what the new
| spaces would feel like.
|
| A bit of a learning curve but the flexible ability to import 3d
| models really helped. Now that i have every room in my house I
| can quickly test new furniture layouts.
|
| Highly recommend it.
| michaelmior wrote:
| Sweet Home 3D is pretty popular among users of the ha-floorplan
| add-on[0] for the Home Assistant home automation platform. It
| takes some work, but you can do some really cool things like show
| which lights are on, who is in what room of the house, etc.
|
| [0] https://github.com/ExperienceLovelace/ha-floorplan
| goleary wrote:
| I use https://floorplanner.com for similar purposes (I pay
| $5/month). It is great at getting the floorplan nailed, but
| leaves a bit to be desired when trying to fill the space with
| accurate furniture, patterns etc. You can have multiple
| variations floor plans per level.
|
| My gf uses https://foyr.com once we have the floor plan nailed to
| get an idea about what colors, textures & furniture to use in a
| space. It supports higher def renderings. It's kind of expensive
| though iirc.
| rubidium wrote:
| Sweet home 3-D is free. Does everything that you're paying for
| and will still be around in 10 years.
| guidoism wrote:
| I tried hard to make Sweet Home work for me. It solves the quick
| and dirty use case but I really wanted something where I could
| measure out every dimension in the house with a laser measurer,
| describe the shape and the relationships between the objects and
| let the computer do the rest. In a program like Sweet Home, and
| every other floor plan program out there if you make one change
| (like updating the measurement of the wall thickness you have to
| manually and carefully move everything else around.
|
| I ended up throwing together something quick and dirty with Org
| Mode tables and Metapost:
| https://github.com/guidoism/wildwood/blob/main/house.org
|
| It works pretty well and the output is pretty.
| unwind wrote:
| That sounds fantastic, and it mirrors my (brief & shallow)
| experience with such tools. It quickly becomes too much of a
| drawing project, and too little of a data-capture/tabulating
| one.
|
| But please please please show the resulting picture somewhere,
| it was _incredibly_ frustrating to read through your page 's
| wonderful build-up towards the goal, and then not get to see
| the rendered result? Poor me.
| guidoism wrote:
| https://github.com/guidoism/wildwood/releases/download/20230.
| ..
| aaplok wrote:
| What I ended up doing when I was in a similar situation is
| manually edit the XML(sh3d files are XML) with proper
| measurements and coordinates after first doing a rough sketch
| on the GUI.
|
| I haven't used that tool for a while, but I think that it
| includes a table with all the items (walls, etc.) where you can
| enter the measurements.
|
| Ultimately I think of sweethome3d as a sweet spot between paint
| and a full-blown CAD program. Nowhere as powerful as the latter
| but so much better than the former. Also my daughter had a
| moment when she preferred sweethome3d over Minecraft et al. as
| a building game.
| bitL wrote:
| There was a startup in SF that tried to do that using iPhone
| video feeds as one walked around the room, but they went belly
| up recently and whatever tech they created was siphoned to
| another platform startup.
| styx31 wrote:
| I shared the same frustration, but I finally gave up, and guess
| what, I was able to fulfill my projects and have a good insight
| about what my layout will be even with ~5cm difference. I
| learned to relax about absolute measures and think more about
| feeling and subjective dimensions.
| mgdlbp wrote:
| Parametric modelling - OpenSCAD (which you mention) is commonly
| used for that style of handwritten arithmetic and has a few
| python-based alternatives like CadQuery. In GUIs, FreeCAD has
| an architecture module that aims to be fully featured (never
| used it), but for just parametric drawings, SolveSpace is
| lightweight and probably more pleasant to use.
| IshKebab wrote:
| OpenSCAD is completely the wrong tool for the job. You want a
| graphical parametric modeller. The only vaguely decent FOSS
| one is SolveSpace. It's a bit lacking for actual CAD (no
| fillets!) but it works fine for 2D layout.
|
| I have actually used it for that (actually I did full 3D
| modelling of part of my house) and it worked ok, however I
| would say that measuring things with a laser and copying them
| into CAD is not a very accurate way to do things.
|
| You will end up with large accumulated errors, and most
| houses are not as square as you think they are.
|
| I haven't ever used one but I suspect those phone based AR
| measurement apps have a good chance of being more accurate.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Have you tried LibreCAD? It seems specifically designed for
| 2D, but I don't know how "parametric" it is.
| janeway wrote:
| I modelled my whole house including very piece of furniture. It
| is very "finicky" as you describe. It's good enough for my
| amateur use with manual clicking. (There's probably a
| programmatic option that I don't know). However if I was a pro
| contractor it would probably not be the best.
|
| I did plan custom designs that my contractor used. It's also
| great when I want to get a new desk or sofa or whatever so that
| I can visualise everything first. Possible to make pretty
| realistic 3d walk-through videos that would be fine on any
| design tv show.
| voisin wrote:
| I wonder if there is a good answer for quick mapping using an
| iPhone's LiDAR Scanner?
| ebspelman wrote:
| I work on an app called Polycam, and we have an automated
| Room / floorplan capture mode. We actually announced some
| updates to it earlier this week:
|
| https://twitter.com/Polycam3D/status/1623730477637959680
| etrautmann wrote:
| thanks, this is super cool. Does it have decent geometry
| export options?
| ebspelman wrote:
| Yep! For meshes we've got GLTF, OBJ, FBX, STL, and DAE.
| And then you can also export the 2D floorplan as SVG and
| DXF.
| s1mon wrote:
| I found this youtube channel[0] has some pretty good
| walkthroughs (quite literally) of using various iOS apps to
| scan architectural spaces. The short answer is that the LIDAR
| and iOS APIs are remarkably powerful, but not 100% accurate.
| There are techniques to improve accuracy (e.g. using a
| gimbal), but ultimately you'll need to do tape or laser
| measurements and modify the models that these tools can
| build, or just model it yourself with the scan as a
| reference.
|
| MagicPlan[1] and PolyCam[2] seem to be the most focused on
| building a schematic level building model which could be
| imported into other tools if needed. They both now take
| advantage of the Roomplan API[3] which Apple introduced in
| iOS and iPadOS 16[4]. MagicPlan has been out for ages[4] and
| originally just worked off the camera and the accelerometer
| to help build a floor plan. Polycam also supports
| photogrammetry[5] where you just take a bunch of photos and
| it builds a 3D model by interpreting what shape the object
| could be (I don't know if this is also used in architecture
| scale things, but it could be interesting for ID projects).
| Both MagicPlan and PolyCam allow you to tweak dimensions of
| rooms, doors, windows, furniture, etc. in a somewhat
| parametric way. This is where you likely want a laser
| measuring device to quickly update the dimensions. These can
| be used through Bluetooth to enter the measurements directly
| into the floorplans in MagicPlan[6]. I didn't try this, but
| if I was doing this all the time, it seems like it would be
| essential.
|
| Matterport is starting to get into mobile[7] (phone, tablet)
| capture, but they've built their business up on their branded
| hardware and cloud platform. They provide floorplans as a
| service[8] and everything adds up, but from what I see in the
| real estate market, they are ubiquitous.
|
| And if you want to spend a bunch more for very pro level app
| for documenting things like crime scenes, shipbuilding,
| infrastructure, etc. there's Dot3D.[9]
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/@LiDAR3D
|
| [1] https://www.magicplan.app
|
| [2] https://poly.cam
|
| [3] https://developer.apple.com/augmented-reality/roomplan/
|
| [4] https://9to5mac.com/2022/06/15/ios-16-roomplan-
| api-3d-floor-...
|
| [5] https://www.magicplan.app/about
|
| [6] https://help.magicplan.app/laser-distance-meters#laser-
| tutor...
|
| [7] https://matterport.com/3d-camera-app
|
| [8] https://buy.matterport.com/
|
| [9] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouZxCDKTizs
| jjeaff wrote:
| There are several products out there that can create 2d, 3d
| renderings of a living space using the iphone lidar scanner.
| Not sure it they keep dimensions.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| I have been playing with RTAB-Map and a Kinect, and exporting
| to various formats and it works reasonably well, but is still
| far from user-friendly. They also have a iOS version if you
| want to play around with it.
| philote wrote:
| Ooh, I just found my old Kinect yesterday. I'll have to
| play around with this.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| Download RTABMap and the OpenNI drivers and export as ply
| and use CloudCompare and MeshLab to play with the
| pointclouds. I am not a fan of the mesh function in RTAB-
| Map and there are some buggy options which insta-crash it
| on export. Meshlab is also super-buggy and has a terrible
| GUI. Have fun!
|
| EDIT - PLY not PCL
| guidoism wrote:
| This is definitely the eventual answer. I can't imagine in
| ten years we will be hand measuring walls.
| necovek wrote:
| Oh, yes we will.
|
| Unless you want to move all the furniture out of place
| (even in-built one), all the heavy stuff blocking edges and
| corners from view etc. Good luck with that bathroom sink or
| kitchen counter-top.
|
| And angles and inequalities (eg. top edge vs bottom edge),
| that gets funny fast.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| There are companies today like Matterport:
| https://matterport.com/ which leverage LiDAR to do high
| detail measurements and mapping for various applications.
|
| My company uses them to measure prior to use creating
| build plans for remodels and I used them at my previous
| company to do high detail measurements in the context of
| real estate.
|
| If the iPhone can eventually get to the point where
| Matterport is today with their tech then that's good
| enough for a huge number of use cases.
|
| Pretty much everyone in the construction and remodeling
| industry right now is prepping for that as the future. We
| all know it's 3 to 5 years away and want to be the first
| one to get it right.
| etrautmann wrote:
| isn't that all of the more reason to use a high-
| resolution 3d LIDAR point cloud - to get the exactly
| geometry? I hear your point about moving furniture, but
| you kind of need to do that anyway to get a measuring
| tape into corners.
| mjhagen wrote:
| Couldn't ML be utilised to recognise furniture and remove
| it from the model?
| mikepurvis wrote:
| This has been a source of frustration for me too, as I've
| occasionally tried out these kinds of packages. Particularly
| having used model-oriented dimensionless CAD tools like
| Solidworks, it feels like stepping back in time four decades to
| suddenly have to manually dimension and align everything
| upfront.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| I was looking for something like this, but for flexibility,
| stubbornness, and quick-and-dirty-ness reasons, I ended up just
| building the floor plan in blender. It's adequate I guess
| locofocos wrote:
| I used this when modeling a shed-to-house I built. Like most open
| source software, it's not SUPER polished but it's useful. Making
| basic walls, doors, windows, and placing furniture is fairly
| easy. It gets very complicated using their workaround for things
| like ceilings, roofs, and such but it's doable.
|
| One great feature is being able to export a 1:12 scale reference
| for my shed builder. It took some very careful toying with
| background layers, but I was eventually able to get a large-scale
| Kinko's printout from a PDF where 1 inch on the printout = 1 foot
| in the real world.
| tokyoseb wrote:
| I must say it looks pretty good, wish I had tried it when I
| renovated my apartment.
|
| But all the other similar software I tried ultimately were a big
| disappointment. In my experience, once the design is complicated
| enough they tend to fail: some objects start to glitch if you
| move them by a certain amount, I could never get the right angle
| between walls, etc. It seems to be difficult to implement a way
| to put robust set of constraints on geometry yet keep the
| software easy to use by everyone. Perhaps it works well with more
| rectangular designs where the walls all have the same thickness
| though, my place has some weird shapes.
|
| Ultimately I gave up on specialized software and ended up re-
| drawing everything at scale in Affinity Designer. Of course, it's
| only 2D and it's basically free-form vector drawing but at least
| you control everything and it's not too complicated to create
| your own library of object like windows, doors etc et re-use
| that. I was very happy with the result.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> It seems to be difficult to implement a way to put robust
| set of constraints on geometry yet keep the software easy to
| use by everyone
|
| Maybe they could integrate the Solvespace constraint solver. It
| seems to be gaining popularity outside its original CAD
| program.
| wyager wrote:
| I tried to use Solvespace for a number of projects, but it
| seemed like it had essentially ~zero support for parametric
| repetition (e.g. putting one hole every 15mm), which made it
| basically useless for any semi-complex project. A home might
| be easier, as long as you don't have any design features like
| "put a light socket every 3 feet".
| urbandw311er wrote:
| I've modelled my entire home with this in the past when planning
| major renovations etc.
|
| As others have said it's not slick but it has a good set of
| features and does the job well.
|
| Interesting aside: it's able to export to a fully interactive 3D
| model that you can embed in a browser! We used this feature to
| build an interactive trade stand during Covid at my company.
| trentnix wrote:
| I used Sweet Home 3D to plan a major home renovation in our new
| (to us) house and it worked great.
|
| I used Magic Plan on my iPhone to map the floor plan with LiDAR,
| converted the result to a 2D PDF, and imported that into SH3D. I
| then drew walls and doors and windows on top of that, effectively
| recreating the existing home. Then we started experimenting.
|
| SH3D proved to be invaluable at understanding how to utilize
| existing walls and unproductive space to minimize renovation
| costs. Being able to "walk through" the various plans we
| considered was invaluable. And I couldn't be happier with how my
| plans worked out.
|
| SH3D has some rough edges and took some time to master. But the
| learning curve was worth it.
| voakbasda wrote:
| I used Sweet Home 3D to design my current house. I passed the
| desgin off to my contractor, who had it turned into blueprints.
| That was over 10 years ago, so I'm sure it has impoved.
|
| It's free and open source, yet it's relatively user friendly.
| When I need to design another building, I definitely will use it
| again.
| tssva wrote:
| I find all of these packages cause a level of frustration which
| endangers my laptop. Fortunately my daughter is enrolled in the
| technical drawing curriculum at her high school. Last summer I
| had her create plans for our house in Autocad.
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