Sweet Home 3D Review: Decorate a Virtual Model of Your House
Download and Installation (4 out of 5)
Sweet Home 3D can be downloaded from the developer’s website. Once you have the file on your computer, all you have to do is open it and start creating! Remember though, you have to build a virtual model of your house before you can start decorating it! If you want it to be accurate you will have to know the measurements of all the rooms in your home to began with!
Features (5 out of 5)
Sweet Home 3D is loaded for freeware. You can make a virtual model of your house and decorate it with over 50 common household items like beds, chairs, tables and sofas.
The wall building feature comes with a handy icon that tells you how many feet long the wall you are making is as you click and drag. This is nice since you don’t have to guess. Also, after you build one wall the next wall starts automatically, so be careful or you may end up with strange walls you’ll need to erase!
If you have never used a 3D modeling program before, or any kind of art program on a computer, you may have problems figuring out how to work it. There are a lot of controls you have to master to build a faithful model. While wall building is simple, the room builder and dimension adder are a bit more advanced. However, you don’t actually need to use them to build a virtual model of your home. As you build walls in 2D the 3D version of them is rendered below. it is a really neat effect to see your creation come to life.
Once you are done with the room you can place furniture in it. There is a nice list that is available (about 50 items), and you can even download more from the developers website via a link in the application. While it might not be your exact furniture, the dimensions can be changed to fit your furniture to give you a good idea of what will and won’t fit where. You will have to know the measurements of your furniture though.
Usefulness (4 out of 5)
If you are thinking of redecorating or just want to play around with it, Sweet Home 3D is a nice piece of software to use. While it isn’t overly intuitive it isn’t extremely difficult to figure out either, and it is easy to get the hang of. There is even a users manual if you are having trouble (the manual is on the website).
The only problem I can see is that you need to do a lot of measurements for the results to be accurate. If you don’t want to spend time doing this, you may not find it useful at all.
Overall (4 out of 5)
In these difficult economic times you may not have the funds to redecorate, but that doesn’t mean you can’t pretend! Sweet Home 3D can help you make your dreams a reality (if you do have the funds) or just let you play with the idea, and all for free. Recommended!
