
Sweet Home 3D is a free interior design application - OJFord
http://www.sweethome3d.com/
======
keenmaster
I just visited the website and have 3 suggestions:

\- Update the website visuals/design, they seem a bit dated

\- Put the download buttons on the front page to increase conversions

\- Make a mobile version, especially for tablets. Most tablets nowadays seem
powerful enough for your software, particularly the iPad. I'm sure you've
thought of this before, and I have no idea what the competition is like.
However, as a home owner, I can tell you interior design apps have 0% of my
mind space. They should probably have more, especially considering that,
combined with sites like Wayfair, IKEA, and Overstock.com, you can have a
design --> purchase pipeline which is both convenient for consumers and
beneficial for you via referral revenue.

Also, this isn't really a suggestion, but something I'd personally love:
Machine learning interior design. AutoCAD already has ML structural design
tools, and this would be simpler than that. Make it so that a consumer can
enter their parameters (room layout, cost, visual style preferences) and your
"artificial interior designer intelligence" generates 10 designs that the user
can mix and match from. The designs would link to the cheapest seller of each
piece of furniture. Alternatively, the user can manually select the main
pieces of furniture, like the couch and TV console, enter their parameters,
and the virtual assistant will suggest matching "in fill," things like couch
pillows that people usually neglect or just purchase randomly whatever is on
sale. Augmented reality viewing of the machine-generated designs would be the
cherry on top and prepare you for mass market introduction of AR glasses.

~~~
roel_v
I'm sure you come at this with good intentions, but god do I hate low effort
'advice' like this. Basically you're saying 'just make everything better,
that'll be great!'. No shit Sherlock, I'm sure nobody ever thought of that. If
you're going to offer unsolicited advice, at least give specific, actionable
advice of things that are not multi-year projects by themselves. It's like
telling a car designer 'yeah cool car, but maybe you should add some drag
racing stripes, oh and it'd be cool if the car could drive over water, too!'
Uh, thanks, I guess?

~~~
benbristow
It's hard to be specific.

The site at a first glance looks dated and very early 00's. The colour scheme,
the stripy background, the layout, the fact it isn't responsive (well it tries
to be with a burger menu but fails), the GIF clipart (esp. the 'new' graphic
and the flags).

As a prospective customer you might be a bit put off at first glance and think
the software is dated too and go off looking for something newer.

~~~
dragonwriter
> As a prospective customer

The site is selling anything; complaining that the free gift comes in
insufficiently fancy wrapping is tacky.

~~~
keenmaster
Non-profit operations have customers too. I think they’d better achieve their
mission with a nice website, referral revenue to help with upkeep, and an iOS
app for wider reach. People live off of their mobile devices, especially the
people that most need free software. I’d totally understand if they don’t have
the capacity to do any of that though.

~~~
mike_hock
Unless the project itself is about the web, a polished fancy website is to me
a yellow flag that the project is not open source first but trying to sell me
something.

A lot of open source projects that are serious about the actual software have
ugly websites or even nothing beyond a README.md on Github.

------
julienchastang
An interesting fact about Sweet Home 3D is it employs the Java 3D API which
was originally developed at Sun Microsystems. Sun/Oracle abandoned it a while
back but the API is still maintained by a small but dedicated group of
volunteer developers [1].

[1]
[http://forum.jogamp.org/java3d-f3728156.html](http://forum.jogamp.org/java3d-f3728156.html)

~~~
stevoski
This touches on an underrated problem: whatever stack you choose today for
your new product is what you'll be locked into for years if your product is
successful.

It is almost inevitable that after a few years you'll be dependent on
deprecated or abandoned libraries and frameworks.

~~~
dragonwriter
> whatever stack you choose today for your new product is what you'll be
> locked into for years if your product is successful.

For for-profit projects, that's less of a problem than it might seem when
stated that way. If your project is successful, the means of getting off the
platform (or getting the owner to adapt it to your evolving needs, or doing so
yourself, including acquiring any necessary permissions, or solving it some
other way) are provided by that success.

(Heck, that's true if people understand the business case and reserve
resources from the savings for projects that aren't for-profit but are
internal cost saving measures, as well.)

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technotarek
Looks really similar to what you can get out of floorplanner.com which I’ve
used for several personal home renovation projects (full basement finishing
and master bathroom renovation). Very happy with it. I finally got the paid
plan in order to get the high res prints that my city’s permit office needed.
But ~$25 is a lot cheaper than an architect!

~~~
ElCapitanMarkla
Hey that looks fantastic. I wish we had that when we built our place. I mostly
used Illustrator for the initial plan which was ok but that looks like a way
better option.

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haolez
I've used this in the past when looking for a new place to live. I would get
the measurements of the best candidates and recreate them in Sweet Home 3D
with my current furniture. It did wonders to help me optimize the costs of
moving to a new place, especially regarding what I would need to buy because
my current furniture would not fit. I highly recommend it.

~~~
tropo
Finding furniture that will fit, even for the simple case of a sofa going
around a hallway corner, is an open problem in mathematics.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_sofa_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_sofa_problem)

You should buy a Gerver sofa.

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balloob
This app is great. It's widely adopted within the Home Assistant community to
create interactive floorplans to control your home. Example:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebMQwVjVewU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebMQwVjVewU)

~~~
jmiskovic
Are these static renders or full embedded 3D views? Looks great either way.

~~~
lukedjn
They're static. And in case you're wondering: The way it's done is you render
an all-lights-off and an all-lights-on version. You use one version as the
background and slice the other version up into separate rooms. Then show or
hide those room images depending on the state of the lights in the room.

~~~
ken
That would explain why the photons don't pass through open doorways! But in
other cases, they do. I'm confused.

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ars
This program is awesome!

You have to make sure your data is accurate, for example wall thickness
actually matters if you want an accurate drawing.

Split level designs require careful planning on how to separate the various
levels.

It takes a little time to get used to how it "thinks".

Also be sure and install this plugin:
[http://www.sweethome3d.com/support/forum/viewthread_thread,1...](http://www.sweethome3d.com/support/forum/viewthread_thread,1757)
it can be rather hard to make accurate drawings otherwise.

~~~
m-p-3
Thanks for sharing this plugin!

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notahacker
Aside from its designated purpose of producing pretty 3D furniture
visualizations, the 2D monochrome exports are pretty neat if you need to mock
up architect-style floorplans without a proper CAD tool. Can assure you a few
UK Building Regs drawings have been produced using it...

~~~
ehsankia
Right, just last month I was looking for a very simple tool to make a floor
plan with measurements of my house. I'm not sure if there's a better one than
this, but this looks like a perfect fit!

I was kinda thinking of something that maybe uses AR to measure/scan your
house and turn it into a floor plan, was disappointed that it didn't really
exist as far I looked.

~~~
Sendotsh
Do you mean like Magicplan? [0] There’s a few others but that’s one I’ve used
and it works fine.

[0] [https://apps.apple.com/au/app/magicplan-2d-3d-floor-
plans/id...](https://apps.apple.com/au/app/magicplan-2d-3d-floor-
plans/id427424432)

~~~
mcphage
I’ve used that before. It worked well, but I found it frustrating that it
required you to identify corners on the floor, where they were frequently
obscured by furniture, instead of on the ceiling, where they were not.

~~~
Sendotsh
Yeah I was just thinking the other day, apps like those would work so much
better if they let you aim them at the ceiling. Your ceiling edges/corners are
usually a lot more visible than your floor.

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khalilravanna
You know what I always thought had inadvertently had this market cornered? The
Sims. The build tools in those games get more and more sophisticated every
time to the point where people can make some very crazy-detailed, beautiful
homes in The Sims 4. Check out “Sims 4 home building” on Youtube. If I was
going to design a home that’d be my first stop. I wonder if anyone else has
done this.

~~~
OJFord
Ha. Funnily enough that's exactly what led me to find and post OP. I played
the Sims 4 trial recently for a laugh/to reminisce about playing the original,
and wondered if The Sims is what led to my several years' desire to be an
architect, or whether that was why I enjoyed playing it. (It was 85% about
building the house for me - I'd use the 'motherlode' cheat several times so I
could build whatever I wanted.)

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ydb
Neat neat neat!! Seriously would have killed for this back when my husband and
I were designing & building our house. Why couldn't the tech disruption have
come sooner? :)

~~~
benburleson
Isn't this pretty (relatively) old software?

I agree, it is great for homeowners to easily spitball reno ideas with a small
learning curve, allowing you to share your vision with your spouse or
architect.

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olgs
Love SH3D and its small team of developers!

I have used it in the past to model some property in 3D and use them on AirBnB
and Facebook listings. The tenants and guests have always said that the mode
was a major reason they decided to visit the property as it gave a clear idea
of the size and proportion of the various rooms and amenities. Thanks SH3D.

------
kakwa_
Great tool and also quite easy to use.

I've actually used it to simulate/chose my furniture and furniture placement
quite recently.

Here the result using the ray tracing renderer:

[https://mirror.kakwalab.ovh/misc/Sejour_5.png](https://mirror.kakwalab.ovh/misc/Sejour_5.png)

[https://mirror.kakwalab.ovh/misc/Chambre_3.png](https://mirror.kakwalab.ovh/misc/Chambre_3.png)

Yes, that's mostly Ikea furniture. And consequently the 3D models are likely
to exists and can be grabbed from 3dwarehouse/sketchup.

------
nthnclrk
I designed my floor plan of my home from scratch using Sweet Home 3D without
any experience with either designing homes or using software like this.

Such a wonderful piece of software.

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nurettin
I used this to demo an internal positioning system. It can export models in
obj format, which you can load and animate in three.js

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usaar333
Interesting how this is just making it to the front page; it's been publicly
released for over a decade.

I used this successfully 7 years ago when moving into a small apartment to
sort out furniture placement. Great product then at least!

------
r00fus
For those who didn't get a blueprint to start (ie, we have a 50yo home - all
that stuff wasn't available when we bought) - how do you recommend doing
proper measurements? Or would you outsource that?

~~~
TeMPOraL
I measured my flat in three steps:

1) I took a lot of photos - every space from multiple directions;

2) For each photo, I manually drew the "wireframe" of the space in Inkscape on
a separate layer on top of the photo - wall/floor lines, doorways, windows,
furniture;

3) I printed out the wireframe layers, grabbed a pencil and a measuring tape,
and started to measure.

Step 2) could probably be semi-automated with some edge detection. Step 3)
could probably be done if I had any recent experience doing photogrammetry.
But fully manual solution wasn't that bad; I did my measurements over the
course of a month, and finally made up a full floorplan in SweetHome3D with
accurately sized furniture in one evening. This let my wife and me design a
new furniture arrangement and buy appropriately sized movables in a single
hour.

For people who, like me, lack the "mind's eye" and spatial imagination, having
the flat digitized like this has immense value.

~~~
ars
> Step 2) could probably be semi-automated with some edge detection.

All 3 steps can be done automatically with magicplan.

However once you get the results you'll probably need to manually measure and
adjust because it's not quite accurate enough. But it's a really good start.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Wow, that's the exact app I wish I had then. But it'll come in handy, I have a
new place to measure up pretty soon, thanks!

------
samcheng
Is there a free / open alternative for exterior / architectural work? I know
there is AutoCAD, and Chief Architect, but they are all quite expensive.

~~~
bronson
FreeCad has an Arch workbench. It's impressive but takes some time to get
comfortable with it.

[https://freecadweb.org/wiki/Arch_tutorial](https://freecadweb.org/wiki/Arch_tutorial)

------
arminiusreturns
Just fyi, and I've run into this across multiple distros, if you are running
on gnu/linux, you might have to use the "SweetHome3D-Java3D-1_5_2" launch
script instead of the standard launch script if you get an error about your 3d
renderer.

I used to use it but since I have moved on to gltf 2.0 and it hasn't
implemented that yet (only export to obj) I have focused on blender instead.

~~~
Blaiz0r
Yes, I couldn't get the latest version to run on Arch at all, had to use an
earlier java version and it wasn't suitable for my needs.

~~~
anthk
It works great under Slackware 14.2, with the LTS java Slackbuild :)

------
rubidium
Used this for my recent home remodel. Definitely in the oldie but goodie
category. Makes me wish for more software like it.

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modeless
What this really needs is a way to import your existing home from photos. Such
a thing would have been ridiculous to imagine a few years ago, but today I
could imagine approaching the problem with machine learning.

~~~
TecoAndJix
I recently downloaded the app “dream.land” after seeing this [1] Reddit post
that uses photogrammetry to give realistic 3D models of whatever you scan (I
did my living room). If you could augment furniture models in real-time on top
of that I think you would be on to something!

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/dzoyav/fo...](https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/dzoyav/found_this_bomber_skate_park_in_san_francisco/)

~~~
modeless
Yeah, something like this, but going a step further to extract a schematic
floorplan with furniture. It's a hard problem to be sure, but the pieces are
coming together in research now. I expect it will be possible in the next five
years or so.

------
Animats
There's a lot of those. Ikea has one. Here's a list of 25 of them.[1] The
first may have been Autodesk Kitchen Designer, a tool for planning semi-custom
kitchen cabinets. Newer ones use augmented reality on a cellphone so you can
see the item in your room.

The big problem with these is getting a big collection of 3D models of real
furniture and keeping them current.

[1] [https://designingidea.com/interior-design-
software/](https://designingidea.com/interior-design-software/)

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mothsonasloth
Can this support multiple floors and angled roofs?

I am using floorplanner at the moment and I can't seem to figure out how to
put a "half-storey" attic floor.

Plus floorplanner's community forum seems to be dead.

~~~
ken
It's in the FAQ: "How can I create a roof on top of a house? Sweet Home 3D
supports the creation of ceilings seen from below, but doesn't manage the
creation of roofs yet. Nevertheless, you can use various tricks to cover a
house ..."

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cyberjunkie
This reminds me of 3D Home Architect, by Broderbund, the publishers of Prince
back in the 90s! The Print Shop!

~~~
godot
Wow, I had no idea the same company published Prince of Persia and The Print
Shop. The first time I heard of that name was from NES Spelunker in the 80s,
since it was the first logo that showed up in the title screen of the game,
and it was quite memorable for anyone who loved the game.

~~~
verytrivial
Ha! I used The Print Show in an Apple IIc back in the day. My parents must
have loved them for all the paper and ink ribbons I chewed through. I still
see the Brøderbund logo as blazing green on black in my mind. (google, google
..) And Captain Goodnight! Nostalgia overload!

------
retpirato
How does this compare to Homestyler
([https://www.homestyler.com/floorplan/](https://www.homestyler.com/floorplan/))?
This doesn't work on my Chromebook because it says the java is incompatible,
but homestyler works fine.

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thesquib
I like the website. Keep it simple

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degosuke
Previously I've used SketchUp for these kind of things - the free version does
a good enough job and the library of objects is really great. Does anyone know
how these 2 compare? (If not, and someone is interested I might be tempted)

~~~
rubidium
I found this easier to work with than sketch up

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janci
I designed my home before remodelling in Sweet Home 3D and it worked very well

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trumbitta2
I used it several times for making a detailed plan of my home before going
shopping for furniture.

One time it even helped me correct "the expert from the shop" and avoid a
costly mistake on my soon-to-be kitchen.

Highly recommended.

------
tomjuggler
So I used this last time we moved, quick and easy way to check all the
furniture would fit in the new home. I found it easy to use, the 3d rendering
was a hit with my 5 year old son

------
mrbonner
It’s awesome and it is written in Java. Surprise, heh?

------
carlsonmark
My wife and I used this somewhere around 10 years ago when reorganizing our
apartment. It was great!

------
anthk
My SO and me rearraged our future home with that, it's really useful.

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winrid
Read this as "a free inferior design application" I must be tired :p

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retpirato
how is this different than homestyler?

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trump2024
On a different note - are there spec to 3d design apps? I'd love to just write
what I want and see a 3d render.

~~~
OJFord
Do you mean a high level description of doors, walls, etc. or something that,
with a lot of work, you could build up to that, like OpenSCAD?

~~~
trump2024
I just checked openscad. Thank you! Very good ! What other script to render
programs do you know of?

~~~
OJFord
I don't I'm afraid. Good search terms might be 'parametric CAD' or
'constraint', which are inherent features of script-based programs (but not
exclusive to them, e.g. Fusion360).

~~~
trump2024
Thanks for the pointer! I've recently discovered another trick- typing
"openscad vs" in search bar

------
trump2024
There is a myriad of these softwares. I wish there was some standardization
and a text format

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trump2024
So this says the app lets you design in 2d and renders in 3d. Has anyone used
this that could answer a question- can I design walls too? I want to make
kitchen cabinets.

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jordigh
I'm so disappointed that this isn't a 3d remake of that classic survival
horror RPG,

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_Home_(video_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_Home_\(video_game\))

------
d--b
I’m sorry but this looks like crap.

I’ve designed my apartment with openjscad (which I find way easier than any UI
tool when you have actual measures) and rendered it in blender.

Perhaps the rendering part is a bit more work, but in the home redesign space
a few hours doesn’t really count...

~~~
m-p-3
Doesn't seem as user-friendly, and doesn't naturally takes into account wall-
thickness, etc.

