[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 : 582 points
Date : 2023-02-17 18:52 UTC (1 days 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!
| Element_ wrote:
| I used this for a recent home renovation project, highly
| recommended. It has everything I needed to layout a house and get
| a basic 3d rendering, it worked great. You can make a donation to
| help out the author on the homepage.
| huevosabio wrote:
| Cool stuff! Will give it a try next time I need something like
| this.
|
| I found https://floorplanner.com/ to be quite useful as well. The
| renders are good enough for me to feel like I am looking at the
| space rather than a sketch.
| [deleted]
| briHass wrote:
| Love SH3D. As others said, it takes some time to learn, but
| becomes pretty intuitive.
|
| The ability to import and scale a background image is my favorite
| feature. I recently used it with a satellite image from my
| County's property line tool and planned a shed location. It was
| easy to measure setbacks and other obstacles. I even had fun
| translating the surveyor jargon on the deed to retrace the
| property lines.
| 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.
| drumttocs8 wrote:
| Archicad is amazing, but unfortunately, technically not free.
| 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.
| jnrk wrote:
| > I figured there must be some professional software for this,
| but if so, I don't know what it is.
|
| As an architect I can confirm that there's indeed a lot of
| professional software for this. The ones I usually work in are
| Revit and ArchiCAD, which are tailored for architects. Our
| interior architects also use Sketchup a lot. There's also more
| general-purpose CAD software like AutoCAD and Vectorworks
| available.
| userbinator wrote:
| _I figured there must be some professional software for this,
| but if so, I don 't know what it is._
|
| There's a whole category of such software, it's called CAD. The
| professional products are notoriously expensive.
| [deleted]
| 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.
| jasonjamerson wrote:
| I recommend modeling in Blender and importing to Unreal,
| which has a library of furnishings and real time rendering.
| djhn wrote:
| But only if you budget the time for learning those.
| Blender might take several hours of tutorials just to be
| able to create an empty room in the shape of a regular,
| rectangular box.
|
| Also Blender lacks support for exact measurements AFAIK.
|
| I tried this approach but gave up after barely achieving
| a rough floor plan after a day's of work.
| jasonjamerson wrote:
| It definitely takes some doing, and you're right about
| the measurements.
|
| I often draft the floorplan in AutoCAD first, bring that
| into Blender...
|
| But the results are amazing. I wonder if a powerful but
| easy interface could be built as a bridge /plugin for
| these tools.
| xupybd wrote:
| Fusion 360 is free for personal use. It could probably do
| this
| xupybd wrote:
| Wow didn't expect down votes on that response.
| jlv2 wrote:
| I kept the installer for the last free version of SketchUp
| around for exactly this reason.
| iorrus wrote:
| Floorplanner is pretty good imo but it's an alternative with
| roughly the same features and functionality
| 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/
| notJim wrote:
| I think "floor plan app" is the keyword you want to use, there
| are a bunch of these. You draw a floor plan and then most of
| them can give you a 3d render based on that. I used
| floorplanner.com, but there are several options.
| 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)
| CSDude wrote:
| Not same, a bit harder but this is also free: https://pcon-
| planner.com/ and also has catalogs for actual furniture firms
| with actual items (where you need to register but most approve)
|
| I've learnt this because the furniture firm designed a wardrobe
| for us with wrong dimensions and the designer lady was surprised
| that I showed them why they made wrong - they put the dimensions
| for outside of the wall, without taking in the account for wall
| thickness.
| edwcross wrote:
| Unfortunately pCon.planner is Windows-only. I wonder if the
| file format is standard and compatible with other software?
| 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?
| amatecha wrote:
| Is there a place to find good 3d models to use in this software?
| I want to plan out a "computer lab" room in my home, so of course
| I wanted to map out where computers would go, which desks, at
| which heights, etc.. ... but I found that the models available on
| the software's site are relatively few...
| 0x53 wrote:
| It does allow you to import 3ds/OBJ files. So that might be
| able to help some.
| myself248 wrote:
| The term "interior design" should, but does not, encompass what
| I'm trying to do. I'm trying to do an ergonomic study of some
| workbench and shelf layouts, with instruments and displays and
| tools located on a shelf above the bench.
|
| I'm tall, and when I lay out the shelves so they fit me, shorter
| people can't reach the knobs on the instruments. But if I just
| move everything down, I feel like I'm wasting space. And I don't
| want to just chain a short person to the chair for several hours
| while I build and rebuild shelves.
|
| I feel like there should be ergonomic models for reach and view,
| for like the 5% and 95%ile of human sizes, but I can't figure out
| what this is even called.
| 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
| duderific wrote:
| Good, fast and reasonably priced, pick the two that are most
| important to you. You won't get all three.
| nathan_f77 wrote:
| I'm moving to a new house in the next few weeks, so I'll be
| firing this up again soon. It was fun to model our current house,
| and it was very useful for figuring out interior design. I also
| used it to set up some floorplans in Home Assistant using
| https://github.com/adizanni/floor3d-card And a 2D version with
| https://github.com/ExperienceLovelace/ha-floorplan
|
| The home automation floorplan stuff was a fun project, but I
| don't really use it. I found that it's not as useful as a simple
| dashboard page with plain buttons and cards. But it was fun to
| work on just as a hobby, like painting models or setting up a
| model train set.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Hah, I wish I knew about it before drawing part of my soon to be
| new house using Room Arranger (https://www.roomarranger.com/).
| Although from a quick run it seems that RA is easier to use but
| less powerful, which for someone who knows absolutely nothing
| about either graphics or house design like me isn't much of a
| problem. It would be nice if RA data could be imported into Sweet
| Home 3D; does anyone know of some external tool to do that?
| hdjsksjd wrote:
| [dead]
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| Why not ask ChatGPT to design your interior for you? ;)
| 0x53 wrote:
| I've been using Sweet Home 3d for a bit now and it has grown on
| me. When I first started it wasn't very intuitive at all, but
| after a bit it got better. Currently, I just use it to do floor
| planning and get a rough idea, and then I use Fusion 360 to
| actually layout the technical parts of the project.
| 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.
| mrits wrote:
| I used floorplanner for my last remodel. It was great. The
| contracting company was really impressed by what I gave them.
|
| I'd say it will take a few hours to get used to it and after
| that you can probably do most of what you want to do.
| rubidium wrote:
| Sweet home 3-D is free. Does everything that you're paying for
| and will still be around in 10 years.
| zekenie wrote:
| this thing is low key awesome. planned my renovations with it and
| my contractor was blown away. he offered (jokingly) to hire me to
| make models for other clients
| newshacker000 wrote:
| This website has been around for quite some time.
| js2 wrote:
| A few years ago I recall trying to use Sweet Home 3D and being
| dissatisfied, but I don't honestly recall why. Maybe it was
| taking me too long to figure it out.
|
| I found Live Home 3D which is cross platform and purchased a
| license for it. I think it's free on Windows.
|
| https://www.livehome3d.com/
| bluedino wrote:
| I would love to get a copy of whatever the software was they used
| at the home improvement store when my parents bought cabinets
| back in 1990? I remember it running on an IBM PS/2 style machine
| (the all in one) and it had very slow wireframe graphics.
| userbinator wrote:
| As someone with a moderate amount of CAD experience, and working
| with graphics applications in general such as Photoshop, I'm
| surprised by the mandatory modifier keys for all the keyboard
| shortcuts. Ctrl+Shift+anything is a horrible combination to hit
| with one hand while the other hand is on the mouse, which is the
| usual way one of these applications is operated.
|
| That said, the compatibility is impressive --- which is not too
| surprising, given that it's Java:
|
| _Sweet Home 3D may be run under Windows 98 to Windows 11, Mac OS
| X 10.4 (Tiger) to macOS 13 (Ventura), various Linux systems and
| Solaris._
| 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.
| emilburzo wrote:
| This was one of the unexpected extra benefits of having a robot
| vacuum with LIDAR, free accurate floorplan after one sweep.
|
| Obviously you just get an image, but for what I needed (map in
| home assistant with sensors overlaid) it was enough.
| judge2020 wrote:
| The vacuum navigates and route plans based on the geometry,
| though, so chances are the actual map is on the device. Robot
| vacuums are competitive and plentiful enough to where there
| has to be one with a way to download the map from some
| endpoint on the device, or at least a way to pop it open and
| pull out some SD card. Of course, it'd probably be in a
| proprietary format, so transforming it into a usable mesh
| might be tougher than getting the data.
| bitcoinmoney wrote:
| I come to HN for comments like this.
| zdimension wrote:
| You (like me) are looking for a parametric modeler. SolveSpace
| is pretty good for that
| romwell wrote:
| >You (like me) are looking for a parametric modeler.
| SolveSpace is pretty good for that
|
| OpenSCAD is my go-to since you just write code.
| AdamTReineke wrote:
| I never figured out how to relate primitives to each other
| in OpenSCAD so my models were an endless soup of absolute
| position math. I used SolveSpace for a while and it was
| brilliant because what took hours in OpenSCAD took just a
| fraction of the time. And then I picked up the Maker
| license for Solidworks ($100/yr) and haven't looked back.
|
| I rendered my whole house in Solidworks to plan for a
| remodel and it was extremely well suited for the job.
| romwell wrote:
| I'm going to try SolveSpace, but I'll look into that
| Maker license. Didn't know of that, and I can absolutely
| afford a grande-latte/month for a tool like that.
|
| The nice thing about FOSS though is that it's worry free.
| I can keep OpenSCAD and Cura, and my projects will build
| years later without me having to think about it.
|
| The stuff I built with 3DS Max educational license,
| though, is not accessible. So I am hesitant to jump ship
| for Solidworks (even though it's the industry standard).
| 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.
| teknopaul wrote:
| +1 on the sweetspot. I never mastered a proper CAD tool.
| Sweet home 3D was amazing at helping plan the furniture build
| and layout of an empty 40m2 living space. I have been living
| in that space and benefiting from the simplicity SH3D for ten
| years now with no need for a change.
| 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.
| sethd wrote:
| It's been awhile since I've used this, but IIRC you need this
| plugin to be able to easily update dimensions without manually
| moving everything around:
| https://www.sweethome3d.com/support/forum/viewthread_thread,...
| 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.
| patates wrote:
| Described in programming terms: You try to type the weird
| dynamic object you have to deal with in Typescript but after
| spending too much time, you learn to relax about types and
| just write it in JS and it feels like it's working most of
| the time.
| docmars wrote:
| Don't forget the power of `as const` and type guards for
| tricky dynamic types! Especially for function params that
| accept multiple complex object types.
| 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.
| patates wrote:
| > and most houses are not as square as you think they are
|
| I'd say most houses don't even have straight walls, so you
| should be very happy if what you got is vaguely a
| trapezoid.
| 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.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| Ugh, thanks. I was hoping it'd be more parametric based, like
| Fusion 360, but alas seems not.
| 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.
| AdamTReineke wrote:
| Love Polycam! My wife just got the newest iPhone this fall
| before our remodel started and I was stoked to capture our
| house before the remodel and cannot wait to get the after
| all scanned in for comparison. https://poly.cam/capture/11B
| 48FCD-E6A5-4ED7-9C9D-BF5DFE60579...
| shaunkoh wrote:
| I love the app! The interior designer and property agent
| who saw me using it were pretty blown away.
|
| One thing I struggle with though is making sure that the
| capture is robust enough before I move on. I usually only
| really know that something is off when the capture is done
| already. Can I "touch up" an existing capture by doing
| another local scan of a problematic area?
| 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
| _RenderMan_ wrote:
| I have an app for creating large scale, drift free scans
| using iPhone: https://imagespace.app
| 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 to make 3D tours of homes.
|
| 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.
| necovek wrote:
| Everyone is prepping for those self driving cars for the
| last 10 years, yet we are still swinging those steering
| wheels ourselves :)
|
| There are certainly cases where LiDAR approach can work
| wonders. But as long as you need to do a couple of
| corrections manually, you'll need to have both set of
| tools at your disposal.
|
| It will definitely augment current measuring approach (or
| rather, existing tools will be used to augment results
| coming from 3D scanning), but as soon as you have to pull
| out a laser or tape for one edge, your workflow is
| significantly more complex.
|
| Not to mention that for cases where one might use SH3D,
| it'd be hard to tell an automated tool to ignore that
| 2"x2" "tooth" in one corner for just wanting to look at
| different furniture arrangement.
| 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?
| necovek wrote:
| Measuring tape is pretty thin and can get behind or just
| under a bunch of things: or a laser can when tape can't.
|
| Basically, my point is that we'll need all three, and
| workflow won't be trivial to combine them.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Laser measuring tools avoid the need for a physical tape
| these days.
| necovek wrote:
| Mostly!
|
| But then you need to measure "free standing" wall (when
| measuring the opening is not an option), and without
| someone to hold something flat at the other end for the
| laser to bounce off, measuring tape still wins.
|
| Which is not to say that laser is not extremely useful: I
| generally use both.
| NikkiA wrote:
| TBF that would be a good application of AI to infer what
| is clutter and what is not from the visual light image of
| the same space, the wall behind an object can simply be
| inferred from the sections of that wall that aren't
| occluded by the clutter. It might not catch some obscure
| cases where clutter obscures some anomalous part of the
| wall, but it'll be good enough in the other 99% of cases.
| Multiple viewpoints would probably deal with a large
| number of oddities too - much how photometry can get more
| accurate with more viewpoints already.
| B0073D wrote:
| > org-mode
|
| Of course you did....
|
| Gods above I love org-mode.
| 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.
| y2hhcmxlcw wrote:
| I used this software to design my tiny house that I built with
| great success. It really helped me visualize the space. I didn't
| create an engineering ready floor plan with this so to speak. In
| other words, I intentionally left the measurements slightly
| relative which wouldn't work for most construction projects. In
| other words, if my bedroom ended up being 14ft by 10ft and 2 and
| 1/2 inches instead of 14x10' I was fine with that, it just meant
| other rooms slightly smaller. But give or take the width of dry
| wall and other factors it was worked fine. I found getting super
| precise measurements with this app difficult and so I didn't even
| try. I just let the guy building walls have a tad bit of freedom.
| Like I said, for most projects that would not work. Having said
| that, this app was a huge life savor and allowed me to really
| visualize the space and make key design decisions.
| 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
| dtgriscom wrote:
| I used SH3D eight years ago to model my soon-to-be-remodelled
| kitchen. It worked great, as long as I was only going for
| appearance and sightlines; I wouldn't use it for planning
| anything precise.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Is it possible to set parametric constraints? After using CAD,
| paint-like tools seems like stone age.
| radiojasper wrote:
| 2004 called. They wanted their web2.0 design back.
| 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.
| pasquinelli wrote:
| sweet home is also an famicom game.
| jraph wrote:
| A bit hidden (in the FAQ and in the SourceForge repository) but
| not only free: open source under the GPL :-)
| echelon wrote:
| I'm shocked SourceForge is still around. How are they making
| any money, and how can they employ half a dozen people?
|
| I'm also surprised that Slashdot still owns SourceForge.
| Haven't both of these companies split ways and been through
| several different hands? ThinkGeek, etc.
| 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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