3D Home Planning Software? 73
thorar asks: "I'm willing to move to another flat in town (or to restructure the one I'm currently living in). I'd like to create a detailed map of the apartment to study alternatives without much pencil and paper, possibly with appropriate furniture and 3D rendering. I'm not an expert in Studio Max nor similar softwares. I'd like something as simple as IKEA Kitchen Planner, but all Google serches lead to some software suite that looks unprofessional or Windows95-stylish. What would you use?" There are numerous commercial alternatives for such an application, but is there anything like this available via Open Source?
the most free/popular building design software (Score:4, Insightful)
Widely supported, runs in Windows and Linux, has a huge community behind it, and I'm sure a little digging will turn up plenty of furniture for your lev^B^B^Bhome.
Since when is looking Windows-95ish. . . (Score:2, Insightful)
Surely the decision to make one-time use of free software for performing a quantitative task in a non-professional environment ought to be made based on something other than whether it comes with super-nifty 3D shadowed buttons in your favorite candy-apple color.
I say, give those windows95ish program a try, and don't ask for alternatives until you've found them lacking in function rather than style.
Besides, just think of all the fun you can have with those extra cpu cycles that won't be wasted drawing pretty pictures around the border of your software.
Re:Re-evaluate your criteria (Score:3, Insightful)
Using a computer here is a real crutch. At least in the way you want. Pen & paper will save you gobs of time.
For lamps, TVs, computers, phones, etc, make sure you have the measurements for the power and network lines. Nothing worse than having a perfect layout only to discover that your phone is all the way across the room because that's the only jack.
If you want to be real geeky, use HalfLife2 and create a level of your apartment. Furniture won't be that hard and you walk around and get a feel for it. If you enable physics and tweak them a bit, you could even move furniture around inside the level.
Take pictures of your floor, walls, celing, couches, etc in order to texture everything properly.
You could probably do a HL2 level of your apartment in a few days.
P&P would take an hour.