Sweet Home 3D is a great entry-level program for people who want to design their own home. It’s a simple, one-window application that allows anyone, regardless of design experience to create a home plan in just a few minutes.
However, this program doesn’t deliver the heft and depth required to make an actual, buildable plan for your home. Sweet Home 3D is where you start your home design journey, but unless you just want to treat it as a fun game it shouldn’t be where you stay. It is a Java-based application and can run any Linux systems.
Sweet Home 3D: What you need to know
The interface is one window divided into four panes: The furniture catalog and home plan are on top while the furniture list and the 3D view are on the bottom. The simplicity of this layout is convenient because it gives you immediate access to all the program’s tools. However, it can be frustrating because while you can resize and collapse individual panes, you can’t rearrange them or pop them out. This often results in a wonky workflow.
The Home Plan pane is pinned in the upper left quadrant of the interface. This is where you’re going to do most of your work. The tool ribbon at the top of the window has all the basic design tools you need. And when you click on them, a tip window pops up explaining exactly how to use them. So, before you even lay down your first wall or form a room, you know you’re doing it right.
What is new in Sweet Home 3D 6.4
- Improved resolution scale management in the plan for HiDPI screens under Java 8.
- Fixed a bug in redoing dimension line resizing.
- Added IDs to home objects which may be modified.
- Added support for editing home plans in Sweet Home 3D JS with the ability to save modified homes on a JSP server.
- Fixed an issue in JS Viewer which prevented touch management to work correctly under iOS.
- Improved drawing order of transparent objects in Sweet Home 3D JS Viewer.
- Other minor bugs fixes and enhancements.
How to Install
Sweet Home 3D is a Java-based application and can run any Linux systems. If you don’t want to care about the Java configuration of your system, click on one of the links bellow to download an all-in-one Sweet Home 3D installer bundled with Java.
Uncompress the downloaded file and run SweetHome3D application found in the uncompressed directory, possibly using this tip to launch it with a double click under Ubuntu.
Conclusion
If you’re casually wading into home or interior design and don’t want to spend a lot of money, time, and effort just yet, Sweet Home 3D might be what satisfies your curiosity. It’s compact, intuitive, and doesn’t get bogged down in huge object libraries.
