Free (or cheap) software for visualizing a house design

Question

I am moving to a new apartment and I want to plan the arrangement of the rooms before I move in.

Is there any software that I can use to design an apartment, that can create 3D visualisations of the rooms?

I know that Auto cad does that. Unfortunately, I can't afford to spend about $4000 on this for a one-time design.

Answer 1

Sweet Home 3D, A free home design software that allow you design your house interior design floor plan which helps you placing your furniture in the house. Beside that, Sweet Home 3D will help you with the arrangement of your house and shows you what your future housing arrangements will look like in 3D and 2D floor plan view.

SmartDraw is an easy floor plan design software to sketch floor plan, house plans, landscapes, decks, kitchens, bathrooms, office spaces and facilities. It comes with dozens of floor plan examples make you instantly productive and customize it to suit your floor plan needs. Plus more, You get thousands of ready-made graphics for furniture, kitchen and bathroom fixtures, lighting fixtures, cabinets, office furniture, wiring, plumbing, HVAC, security systems, plants, landscape elements, and more to put on your home design plan

source

Answer 2

Google SketchUp is a 3D modeling program designed for architects, civil engineers, film makers, game developers, and related professions. It also includes features to facilitate the placement of models in Google Earth. It was designed to be easier to use than other 3D CAD programs

Answer 3

Personally, I would leave the CAD programs.

The cad programs are meant for professionals and if you have not used them before, you will be spending hours just trying to do the basics.

I would use a program designed for this where you can just type in your measurements and place furniture and other items as you will get it finished in no time at all.

An overview of house design software - http://www.housedesignsoftware.org/

Here is one company that looks good - http://www.punchsoftware.com/index.htm but I cannot see any free trials.

Here is one that I know a family member used and loved - http://www.3darchitect.co.uk/

Whilst most of these are for interiors, a few are designed for blueprints from scratch such as Arcon 3d in that last link - http://www.3darchitect.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=53&Itemid=85.

I am not saying CAD software is bad, if you want to design a object or something with weird dimensions from scratch, they are brilliant! But if you want to design a house, you are better off with a off the shelf package

Answer 4

If money were no object, I would use Autodesk 3ds Max, or the extended version they built for architects that came with a huge library of commercially available surface treatments, furnishings, appliances, and light fixtures. Its tied tightly to AutoCAD, specifically for interchanging models. But it requires a near-infinite budget, and that doesn't meet your terms ;-)

I haven't played with it very much yet, but Blender looks like it has all the rendering tools you could need to do this. One thing that might not be present in Blender (it was pretty unique in Max) is a light that model's the Sun's position in the sky at a given date and time for a given location on Earth. That helps greatly with modeling the shadows in summer vs. the available light in winter.

Answer 5

Note that if you need only a "one time" use, you could also see with the evaluation versions for the professional software. Autocad has a 30 days trial, for example.

Probably you will have watermarks, or not be able to generate high quality images/renderings, but to have an idea, it should be enough.

Answer 6

Check out Flow Architect Studio 3D from link text

You can design whatever you want with it and build a virtual walk from your project.