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?
Or for the mac... (Score:3, Interesting)
The Sims or The Sims 2 (Score:4, Interesting)
Granted that the grid-based system that The Sims employs for house design means you cannot get an exact scale model of a property. However, you do get a variety of different furniture items with the game and it is possible to design and import your own wallpapers and floor coverings.
Re:the most free/popular building design software (Score:2, Interesting)
This is a game level editor and visualizaer. I'm sure the modelling is strong, at least for primitives, but the focus on real time effects may make things like lighting effects suffer.
Re-evaluate your criteria (Score:5, Interesting)
You're doing something on a non-professional level, and expect professional level results on the cheap? I don't think its going to happen.
You could use some fancy 3d modeling program, but it sounds like all you really need is pencil and paper:
1. Draw out a floorplan. Its not that hard, just use graph paper. You were going to measure it out anyways (RIGHT?).
2. Make photocopies of the floorplan. These are to come up with layout ideas on.
3. Sketch or take photographs of the area, maybe move some furniture around so you mostly see the walls.
4. Photocopy the sketchs/photos, and draw over them so you can get an idea what it would look like furnished.
Pencil and paper are great tools, you shouldn't be so quick to discount them just because some program exists. They've been around for a long time, so there must be some advantages to using them.
The majority of people who probably use home design software are probably not OSS geeks. I'm willing to bet a lot of them are (gasp!) interior designers, landscapers, and architects. Hell, they just might still use Windows 95.
In any case, here are two possible candidates.
http://www.imsisoft.com/prodinfo.asp?t=1&mcid=244
https://secure.chiefarchitect.com/xcarthd/custome
Re:the most free/popular building design software (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
If you want realistic lighting then go with something like POVRay or Yafray (yafray blows my mind with its realism). Radiant will give him some 2D plans to work with as well as letting him walk around in the rooms with some idea of flow. Perhaps a level written to run in the HL2 engine or Doom 3 engine would give you better lighting effects.
Trash Paper (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm an architect and my best tool is trace paper and a pencil.
We have a full blown suites of AutoDesk software, but in early design phases you want to explore ideas so quickly that no software is going to react as quickly as sketches suggesting what your brain is thinking. That's the trick. Depicting reality before you've considered the possibilities locks you in, it restricts what your mind can consider. Once you're confident of having tested all kinds of crazy approaches, then you can start trying to depict it. Using light scribbles still keeps it fuzzy and flexible enough until you've worked out the next level of design.
What then? If you want to waste a lot of time learning software, by all means use CAD. That can help you build a scale and measurable model that can be dimensioned and taken off for construction quantities. I've been using CAD for 16 years now and it is certainly my tool of choice for drafting. (As opposed to the old ink on bond/vellum/mylar.)
After that, you might want to use some sort of visualization software. I've used Max and Vis, but have been learning to use Blender lately and find it can do just as well. (Plus it's Free! And multi-platform.)
But you are going to spend weeks and months coming up to speed on software when you could much more easily draw some scaled drawings that will do just as well. Remember, it's only been the last twenty years that *any* building has been digitally rendered... there is quite a bit of architecture accomplished without it.
I learned in school that you can't draft what your mind hasn't yet conceived. Drawing is a tool to help you see, to explore something that doesn't exist yet and to consider it's properties on your own terms. Of course it might be fun to make a huge solid block in Blender and slowly carve it away into a room. But it's certainly not the easiest!
Hope that helps.