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?
Re:I used POV-Ray (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I used POV-Ray (Score:3, Informative)
Others have suggested Moray, which is a CAD-like modelling program meant to be used with POV-Ray. It isn't free like POV-Ray is, but it is inexpensive, and well worth the price. Still, even Moray isn't the greatest
Or for the mac... (Score:3, Interesting)
Lots of Mac CAD options (Score:5, Informative)
But there are better options:
Microspot Interiors, etc [microspot.co.uk]
Sketchup [sketchup.com]
VectorWorks 11.5 [nemetschek.net]
Form*Z [formz.com]
PowerCADD [engsw.com]
VersaCAD [versacad.com]
Cadintosh [lemkesoft.de]
But there is no current Mac version of AutoCAD, Pro/E, or Microstation. Bad news if you're planning on designing a new aircraft carrier on your new Mac Mini...
Re:Lots of Mac CAD options (Score:2)
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.
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: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 l
Re:the most free/popular building design software (Score:5, Funny)
I like to keep my respawn in the bathroom. That way I have an excuse to spawn camp.
Re:the most free/popular building design software (Score:1)
Doom 3?
Could have fooled me...
Re:the most free/popular building design software (Score:2)
Re:Just go to IKEA (Score:3, Funny)
Only on Slashdot (Score:2, Funny)
Only on slashdot would someone be requesting software to perform a task that any woman would do for free or actually pay you to do. Next on Ask Slashdot: "Can someone recommend an open-source software tool that assists me in selecting shoes?"
GMD
Re:Only on Slashdot (Score:2)
This wants a +1 Insightful (Score:2)
Which morons modded the parent down? Repent! Or get married, and learn what women are really all about. (-:
Re:Only on Slashdot (Score:1)
Try:
perl -e 'print "Go with the cheap ones.\n"'
Re:Only on Slashdot (Score:2)
Scrimp on shirts and pants, but buy good solid comfortable shoes for your feet.
Re:Only on Slashdot (Score:1)
Luckily, I've done alright with cheap dress shoes for a few years now, though I'm about due for a new pair.
Moray (Score:4, Informative)
You'll have to find good models for your smaller items, if you want to use models. I didn't use them. There are plenty of models for Pov-Ray, but not a lot for dedicated to Moray. I haven't looked into that side of it much. However, building your basic nighttable/bed/lamp is easy in CSG, just for verifying that your space will fill as you imagine.
Space planning and room "look" was very nice with this, and very quick, since Moray has some crude group tools. Sadly, it doesn't seem to do low-level renderings (non-reflective,etc) and the CSG Evals are still only wireframe (and messy on big pics). Your quickest bet for POV speed is smaller pictures, which are useless.
Export the scene text, plug the camera math into a "clock" POVRay variable and you can spit out a directory of frames, with pretty good quality, overnight on most machines/scenes. There's a cl MPG builder to link them up, allowing for frame pauses and other simple tricks. This gives nice walkthroughs.
It is more labor intensive than the pro tools available, but it costs nothing. You learn a simple modeller, and with POV-Ray you can raytrace shiny things to your heart's content.
Re:Moray (Score:1, Informative)
Wings 3D [wings3d.com] and Yafray [yafray.org] are what you want.
3D Software (Score:2)
The biggest challenge is going to be that your going to need some pretty close approximations of the sizes of all of the stuff in your house, within the nearest half a foot or so. Depending on how you plan to lay stuff out, you might find that you need something even more accurate. With this in mind, your biggest problem
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 Sims or The Sims 2 (Score:2)
Regardless, we had fun messing around with the layouts for what is now our new house, and it was a lot easier than trying to do it all in my head.
Haven't really had a chance to mess around with Sims 2 yet,but it looks
Re:The Sims or The Sims 2 (Score:1)
Duke Nukem 3D (Score:1)
Re:Duke Nukem 3D (Score:1)
Completely agreed that it was a great mag.
Jordans (Score:5, Informative)
There's Quake mapping tools (Score:2)
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: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 an
Re:Re-evaluate your criteria (Score:1)
1) Draw a floorplan. Make sure your dimensions are accurate.
2) On a seperate page, draw your furniture.
3) Cut the furniture out. Then you can try a lot of different layouts with minimum waste. When you've got what you want, tape the cutouts to the floorplan.
I've found it to be better than almost any other option.
Re:Re-evaluate your criteria (Score:2)
Like the parent says: Sometimes a low-tech solution just works better. Of course, the geek quotient is pretty low, unless you use your computer guided cutting tool to make the cardboard furniture profiles.
Re:Re-evaluate your criteria (Score:1)
Nah, [kernel.org] that [mozilla.org] could [openoffice.org] never [mysql.com] happen. [winscp.com]
3D Home Architect (Score:1, Informative)
Re:3D Home Architect (Score:2)
Such as strong statement against level editors. What's wrong with them?
Re:3D Home Architect (Score:3, Informative)
Doom! ;-) (Score:2)
Paul B.
Re:Lego (Score:1, Flamebait)
You say yugo, I say legos. Get a grip man. This is being english pedantic way too much.
Ain't no coporation gunna tell I what not 2 speak. (THere, have fun on that. )
Re:Lego (Score:1)
Odd.
I don't really care about my Karma - it'll be what it wants to be ( good ) but I do get peeved over idiots moderating. (Hmm, it'd be nice to have a reply to anonymous moderators function so I could grumble to them instead of on the main thread).
Re:Lego (Score:2)
I can remember reading this piece of bogus corporate PR on a Lego brochure when I was a kid. Something to the effect of: "Parents, when referring to Lego-brand construction blocks, please make sure your children say 'Mother, I would like ever so much to play with my Lego-brand construction blocks, please'".
I knew it w
Re:Lego (Score:2)
P.
Re:Lego (Score:2)
As for your lego rant, I've been playing with Lego bricks since I was a little kid, and the colloquial use has always been "Legos". I still have a pile of them, and I still call them Legos. Saying "Lego Bricks" is too cumbersome, and say
Re:Lego (Score:2)
On more serious matters, you're spot on about having to have quite a lot of bricks. Especially if you're designing a large house, ha ha. For simplicity's sake (and to avoid the need for lots of expensive nonstandard pieces) its best to build to a scale where a standard 4x2 lego brick equates to a standard
Sierra's home architect (Score:2)
a number of non-free options (Score:5, Informative)
Punch! Pro and BH&G Home Designer are each $100 or less, and even those are probably overkill for what you need for redesigning an apartment, but either would get the job done. I settled on BH&G Home Designer (the Pro version, about $500, because it had features I needed for the design approval and permit process). Both have some annoying aspects, but are pretty easy to use to lay out a house or other building. Punch! Pro is probably the easier to use of the two, but BH&G Designer is more powerful, and produces nicer-looking overall results and particularly nicer-looking 3D renderings. The 3D renderings part was important for me not for the design and permit process, but because my wife has a harder time visualizing things in 3D, and the renderings I could create with BH&G Home Designer let me easily show her what different design changes would mean.
One definite advantage that Punch! Pro has is that it lets you design your own 3D objects, which is nice for rendering a particular fixture or piece of furniture that's not included in the library. Making your own objects is definitely harder than just drawing a house, though. And that's where a fair number of the quirks in Punch! Pro reside -- the 3D custom workshop where you create your own objects.
All that said, I'd be interested in hearing about any open source alternatives as the follow-on question by Cliff asks. I've learned enough in the process of designing my own addition (and rendering the current house) that I'd be interested in contributing to an open source program of this nature, too.
Party Planner Software (Score:2, Informative)
I've used an earlier version of this to do office and house layouts. There is a 30 day demo version available.
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.
Re:Trash Paper (Score:2)
On the other hand, you certainly CAN sketch in autocad, and for me it's faste
Re:Trash Paper (Score:2)
Forget "attractive". Sketches are only hard if you're doing them wrong. The whole point of sketching is that you do it quickly, with really simple shapes. You seem to be reading the word "sketch" and substituting "artist's rendering", which is not what he was talking about.
Re:Trash Paper (Score:2)
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 cyc
Open Source home designer (Score:2)
I'd do it, but I'm not a coder. :(
Try this (Score:1)
The free limited Linux version is all I have ever needed up till now. I am about to design a hous for my family so we will see how it goes.
Re:Try this (Score:2)
Why use a computer at all? (Score:2)
In the end I used models build using Lego. Accurate upto 5cm in my models, which was good enough.
My parents are now using cut-out paper models to plan the furniture rearrangements of their new home. Use sticky notes for the furniture if you want to keep your designs
Unless you want perfect lighting/coloring preview and are willing to put in the huge effort, I'd just go with models you can drag ar
Been there before (Score:2)
I used MS VISIO.
When planning for it what I've done is to setup a detailed (to the mm) floor plant and mark all electricity points, doors, windows, etc.
Next, I would draw a top view of all the furniture pieces, again, detailed to the milimiter.
Then, it was just a matter of dragging/rotating them ar
room arranger (Score:1)
SketchUp (Score:1)
We use this tool to concept for our MMORPG (it exports) that is in development, it is incredibly powerful, superfast and so simple, my mother could use it.
In the SketchUp in Action [sketchup.com] section, they have a couple of vids that you might want to check out.
If you are looking for more interior design options, make sure you pull the "components" stuff from thier download section.
Good Luck
BH&G and 3D Architect (Score:2)
There is a downloadable demo of 3D Home Architect available online (I'd link to it, but it seems to be slow right now. Just Google for it). I wasn't very impressed with it though.
I don't know if there is a demo of the B&G product, but their w