Sweet Home 3D

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET staff on June 24, 2009

Sweet Home 3D offers users a chance to see a remodeled room or a brand new home before a single nail has been driven. With a fairly simple premise and impressive results, this slightly flawed program is certainly something to get the imagination going.

The program's interface is very easy to use. The left side of the screen contains a file tree for every room in the house, and clicking on each room presents a list of all appropriate furniture you can drag into the adjacent box. The area is a grid with measurements corresponding to room size. Below the file tree is a space for each item in the room and its approximate size. At the bottom of the screen is a small box that provides the 3D view. Designing a room is very simple. By dragging furniture into the grid and positioning it as you envision your redesigned room, a clear picture appears below, providing an impression of space that two-dimensional sketches cannot. In addition, there is an exciting Virtual Visit option that lets you walk through your home and its rooms.

While the results of Sweet Home 3D were impressive, we were slightly disappointed with its control. Placing items in the room will take some patience, as it feels rather clunky. However, with a little practice, we are certain users will be able to use this free program to design something impressive.

 
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Publisher's Description

From eTeks:

Sweet Home 3D helps you to design your interior quickly and easily: draw the rooms of each level of your home upon the image of an existing plan, change the color or the texture of each room, and drag and drop furniture onto the plan from a catalog organized by categories (windows, doors, living room, kitchen), in which you can import 3D models created by yourself or downloaded from various Web sites. All the changes made in the 2D plan are simultaneously reflected in a 3D view, and you can navigate in it either from an aerial view point, or from a virtual visitor view point. Finally, you can improve your home plan by adding dimensions and texts to it, print it along with the 3D view, create a photorealistic image of the 3D view with customized lights, create a movie from a virtual path in the 3D view and export the plan to SVG format or the 3D view to OBJ format to import them in other 2D or 3D software. Sweet Home 3D is available in English, Brazilian Portuguese, Bulgarian, Chinese, Czech, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Vietnamese languages.

What's new in this version: Version 3.4 has added multiple levels management and improved drawing magnetism of walls and rooms.

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All User Reviews
  • All versions:

    3.9 stars

    out of 98 votes

    • 5 star: 28
    • 4 star: 41
    • 3 star: 21
    • 2 star: 3
    • 1 star: 5
  • Current version:

    4.5 stars

    out of 4 votes

    • 5 star: 2
    • 4 star: 2
    • 3 star: 0
    • 2 star: 0
    • 1 star: 0
  • My rating:

    0 stars

    Write review

Results 1-4 of 4

  • 4.0 stars

    "Basic but it works."

    February 3, 2012  |   By lilliput2

    Version: Sweet Home 3D 3.4

    Pros

    Great for creating precise floor plans. Being able to see a 3D view is neat.

    Cons

    Manipulating some of the 'furniture' that's preloaded for use was a little clutzy, or maybe it's just me. Wish there were more choices of kitchen cabinet style/sizes; for example, c 'corner base' cabinet.

    Summary

    Better than the so-called tools available on many product vendor sites, e.g., IKEA.

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  • 5.0 stars

    "Great software"

    January 10, 2012  |   By Nostradamus_67

    Version: Sweet Home 3D 3.4

    Pros

    Easy to learn
    Good feature set
    Customizable furniture and texture libraries
    Free

    Cons

    I think the UI could be improved a little.

    Summary

    The best home planning software I could find for my needs.

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  • 5.0 stars

    "Great for designing houses"

    January 6, 2012  |   By ngayanp

    Version: Sweet Home 3D 3.4

    Pros

    -Easy to use
    -2D Designing with 3D results

    Cons

    -Just for designing houses
    -You can't create your own furniture on the program (as far as I know)

    Summary

    For designing houses and the like, this is a much easier software to use than Google SketchUp

    You can design your whole house / project in a 2d view, and get the results in a 3d view; This is particularly helpful when designing houses, as designing in 3D gets difficult when you need to move through walls and placing objects exactly where you want

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  • 4.0 stars

    "Very User Friendly. It's You That Decide The Details"

    January 1, 2012  |   By Old Dog New Tricks

    Version: Sweet Home 3D 3.4

    Pros

    - Offers So Much more than other free competition
    - Very Customizable - You can choose to create a simple 2d plan or (if you're up to it) create complex 3D, 2 storey designs then make a video of your efforts

    Cons

    - Would like to see a fuller catalogue of furniture come with the download. Recognise you can download others, but felt limited by choice.
    - Like a few other reviewers, I also found the controls "clumsy" but not when compared to the alternative of physically moving furniture around to try out ideas.

    Summary

    I liked this software. Unlike most, I found it to be a slow learning process, but it easily beats moving the furniture around to see if my wifes' idea was a good one or not.

    Reply to this review

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Results 1-4 of 4

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