Home Design Software.

Does anyone know of a good home design software? It doesn't need to be particularly fancy, and I'd rather not spend a ton. However, I would like one where I can plug in room measurements, as well as furniture measurements, to get ideas for how everything will fit. If it comes down to it, I guess I could use good 'ol graph paper , but I'd really like to find a decent program.


Oh, I forgot to add that I'm not great with computers:&, so it needs to be fairly easy to use, too.

 

did a quick search and found google sketch up

i haven`t used it.. but sounds like something your after

hope this helps ........... and its free

 

I know a lot of people use The Sims 2.

 

I actually thought about using the Sims 2, but decided against it. The only real problem I had with it was that you can't put in actual measurements. Even if you use each square as 1 foot, the furniture wouldn't usually be the right dimensions.

 

Sketchup is brilliant (and free now I think, apart from the Pro version). I use it a lot for 3D visualisations of my buildings, and it's pretty easy to use once you get used to it. Not sure it's really of much use for space planning though (a bit over the top for a really small project, and you may find yourself taking more time to get to grips with the software than you'd like).

It's probably better to get one of those cheap "Home Architect" software packages that sell on ebay for about £10 (although I hate to recommend such stuff as it does me out of work....!), or if you're feeling a bit more adventurous it's (allegedly...., ahem....) easy to get hold of unlicensed copies of Autocad.

The problem with using stuff like Sims as CAD software is that it's nowhere near accurate enough (also, working in metric is much preferable, as working with millimetres gives you much more accuracy than inches).

 

If you want a CAD program you could try QCAD http://www.qcad.org/qcad.html. If you are using a Linux system it is probably in a repository.