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Software for Room Planning and Design?
anandsr asks: "Hi everybody, I am looking for a software that allows creating 3D models of house and furniture etc, to see how a house would look before building it, and populate it. What would you all recommend, are there any that amateurs can use." I've seen these in use in stores like Lowe's and Home Depot, but is there anything out there geared and priced for the home user?
And a lot of time.
and I can tell you that I wouldn't do it again. The programs are hard to use effectively as a casual user. I think I know what you're looking for. You're probably looking for a program that will help you assemble the house in an interactive fashion and then do a walkthrough of the plan in 3D including things like carpet colors, tile patterns, lighting, etc. Believe me, it's a huge pain in the ass! I actually wound up taking advantage of the vendor's money back guarantee. They were good for it too, though it's too bad! You will find your imagination to be a much better tool.
To be more specific, I was hoping the package would have more of a wizard type of approach that would walk me through the house room by room. Allow me to move things around a lot, etc. As it was, the program had me placing walls one section at a time, doors one by one, etc. I never even got around to finding out how to texture the floors, etc. It was just too painful for the amount of time I was willing to put into it (which, admittedly, wasn't much). Additionally, the 3D walkthrough was a beast to use, and slow to boot! I never even found out how to do a walkthrough of the interior of the house. I could only ever get the exterior view working, and it was nothing to write home about.
If you do decide to go with a package, make sure it fills your specific needs. What I mean here is that some of the packages were more oriented towards a builder. So they would help you with things like materials estimation, etc. That's great if you're doing your own general contracting. However, if you're like me, you just wanted to get a feel for the house before it was built. I didn't find a package that really helped with that (without a lot of pain that is).
If you're still curious, one of the better vendors is at http://www.punchsoftware.com/
Good luck!
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
This would be a great application of the Quake engines.
Granted it ain't pretty, but it's probably a better alternative than, say, autocad.
This sig no verb.
"I've seen these in use in stores like Lowe's and Home Depot, but is there anything out there geared and priced for the home user?"
Uhh.. Those *are* for the home user. Geesh. You don't really think the pros use that stuff, do you know?
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
Maxis produce exactly what you're looking for.
Try http://thesims.ea.com/.
I love Sketchup, but at $500 it is probably too expensive. Still, it is fun - you can download a fully functional demo from their site, and it's good for 8 hours of use. It's pretty intuitive, so that might be enough time for your situation.
You've got a new Journal entry, but your username totally screws up the URL. Any other way to view it?
I've been working out how to redecorate my flat, and I found the best way is to take digital photos of the rooms, import them into Photoshop, and go nuts! Sure, it requires a modicum of artistic ability (I started out studying architecture, so I can just about manage this), but it's enough to work out your colour schemes and stuff...
Yes, Broderbund, the people who brought us Carmen Sandiego. :-) I've used their 3D Home Architect program for exactly what you're talking about here, and I thought it was pretty good. It's time consuming entering a design, because there are just SO MANY details about a room, but the UI is solid and the furniture/appliances/other crap you might want to put in your house library is pretty thorough. I used it a couple years ago so I don't know how their latest version is, but for only forty bucks it's hard to go wrong.
I've looked high and low for a good home modeling program, and just haven't found it.
.psh extension) that's not too bad. But problems I've run into (with this, and with other demos I've played with):
I've got something (at home, though, so I can't tell you right offhand what it is -- it uses a
* Very difficult to draw the floor plan -- snaps when I don't want it to, doesn't when I do; sometimes walls get totally screwed up; difficult to draw angled walls
* Limitations to the built-in objects -- doors, windows, etc, are "take it or leave it" -- use the ones they've got, and if it's the wrong size, you *might* be able to stretch it to fit.
* SLOW
* difficult to switch between floors
* 3-D walkthrough is a "through walls" flythrough that's difficult to use -- you choose FOV, and direction, and then sort of move your pointer around and you kinda walk through
All in all, good enough to play with, but I gave up trying to put in my new house after two weeks of frustration.
Why we can't have a simple floor-plan editor that's as easy as Visio (or easier, since Visio suffers some problems, too), with a game-engine walkthrough so you can actually, well, WALK through (and go up stairs, etc), is beyond me.
I'm going to try out some of the other packages suggested in this thread, but I'm not holding my breath....
I've run into the same problem with "home CAD" stuff. The home design program I described above also does landscaping and simple furniture design, but it (like other "home cad" software I've tried) is extremely difficult to use. CAD software all seems to be based on volumes, simple shapes, and kinda-sorta managing to manipulate those items in a 3-D space.
I'd like to find a "Wood CAD" program that lets me grab a 6' 2x4 from a pallette, chop a foot off the end, nail it to another, etc., etc. -- so that I'm not only 'building' something that starts with standard dimensional lumber components, but it'd be within the realm of possibility for the software to produce, based on what I started with and what I ended up with, a step-by-step set of assembly instructions.
I've got a lot of woodworking I have to do for the new house (finishing a basement, shelves and desks for a server room, closet organizers, etc.), and I'm going to be doing all the design the way my father did -- on quadrille paper with a sharp pencil. At least it'll look professional, even if I can't do a realtime 3-D rotation on the paper.
Why not just use the Sims? you could even model your family in the house.
If you felt like it, you could remove the doors and see how your family would die and become ghosts...fun fun.
Well, there's the 6 or so programs you can buy for Windows in the $25-$50 price range at any CompUSA or major mailorder vendor, like "3D Home Architect" and "Home Builder 3D" and "3D Home Designer", from companies like Broderbund and IMSI. Places liike Circuit City and Best Buy also carry a few of them, as should your local big-box discount chain like Wal-Mart.
Or were you looking for a (free) Linux alternative? There's really nothing at all like that in the free-Unix space yet. There's okay 2D and 3D CAD software out there, but nothing with an interface for easy, amateur floorplan design, rendering geared toward easy, quick views of room interiors and walkthroughs, or the huge texture and object libraries the commercial Windows packages have.
Cliff, do you even read these Ask Slashdot submissions? Have you ever been in a store that sells consumer software? What's next from Ask Slashdot? "Word Processors that Can Use Multiple Fonts?" "Does anyone make color printers?" "Anyone have instructions for rotary telephones?"
http://qeradiant.com
I've modelled an entire 20,000 sf office building with it with realistic reasults.
The interface is nice and quick to learn.
Plus, you can chase your freinds around in it.
A teenager modelled his school and also did a Quake mod without weapons for it.
Sigs are for propeller heads.
My company produces a 3D Architectural CAD package called Sketch that is available (in part) on SmartHomesite.com.
We have tried to make Sketch easy enough for your significant other to use. Let me know what you think...
I do everything the voices in my head tell me to...
It is specifically for designing #d views of places. My friend used it to design models of a building and layouts of what the place would look like had they chose other buildings. It has furnature and you can reshape the furnature. It has textures so you can panel a room, paint it or whatever and you can then get snapshots of the rooms. They make more than one package and one may be right for you. It is worth a look. I know my friend like it a lot.
Only 'flamers' flame!
Check Atmo for a quick download link that may bypass Adobe's registration page. Atmosphere is a generic 3d world builder plus standalone browswer and web browser plugin, and it's free (builder too) so you can see if it's good enough for your purposes without risking any ca$h. It's not directly intended for what you're doing, but I've seen some pretty cool apartments and homes done in it so it should be possible.
They used to have a DOS/Windows program that had a 2D editor to build the rooms, drop the furniture in, etc - then would shell out to a version of REND386 to display the 3D version for a "walk-through". It was limited to a single floor, but the models it used (.PLG) and the 3D world files it created (.WRL) conformed to standard REND386 formats - and so could be used in that package as well - a cheap and easy to use virtual reality world building package, in effect.
Something similar to this might be able to be done in Linux - seems that a few people have the "scratch" - someone is bound to itch it sooner or later.
I also seem to remember an article back a couple of years on /. about a company or university in Europe (UK?) using the Quake or Quake2 engine to develop walkthroughs of large architectural structures - seeing as how both engines are now open source, it wouldn't take too much (ok, it would take a bit - but less than from scratch) to create an "easy-to-use" application to interface with them for floor-planning and walk-throughs...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
> * Very difficult to draw the floor plan -- snaps
;-)
> when I don't want it to, doesn't when I do;
> sometimes walls get totally screwed up; difficult
> to draw angled walls
Difficult to do angled walls? You sould like a contractor!
-Pete
My wife had the same question. She hit on the solution of a used software store. There's a local Seattle store called Half Price Books and Software where she picked up something for about $5. It wasn't a perfect program (what Windows software is?), but for $5, you forgive a lot.
If you're designing a whole house, I suggest downloading and learning GtkRadiant, the Quake level editor. I'm building a fairly detailed model of a house we're (really) building, and the visualization is awesome for us non-Architects.