Sweet Home 3D Help

|  |  | Tips

Here are some tips to help you work faster and smarter in Sweet Home 3D.
General
• | Use splitters displayed between the panes of the furniture catalog, home furniture list, home plan and home 3D view, to resize these panes.
• | To test Sweet Home 3D features without risk, remember that all operations are undoable except the modification of imported furniture in catalog.
• | Numeric text fields handling numbers support mathematical expressions with the use of the operators + - * / ^ (power) and the functions LN, LOG, EXP, SQR, SQRT, COS, SIN, TAN, ARCCOS, ARCSIN, ARCTAN. The result of the expression replaces the entered text as soon as the focus is lost on the numeric text field, and the entered expression or value is displayed in red as long as it's not correct.
Furniture catalog
• | To add more than one piece of furniture to home at a time, select more than one piece in furniture catalog.
• | To open a category of furniture, double-click on it.
• | To modify an imported piece of furniture, double-click on it.
• | When you have many pieces in your furniture catalog, display the furniture catalog as a searchable list. Its category combo box and search text field will help you to find faster the pieces you want to add to plan.
Home furniture list
• | To sort home furniture, click on the column title matching the sorting criterion. At the first click on a column title, the furniture list will be sorted in ascending order, at the second click on the same title, the furniture list will be sorted in descending order, and at the third click on the same title, the furniture list will be sorted in the order furniture was added to home.
• | When the furniture list is not sorted, you may drag and drop selected items within the list to reorder them.
• | To reorder furniture list columns, drag and drop column titles.
• | To find where a piece of furniture is placed in the home plan, select it in the furniture list.
• | To modify a piece of furniture, double-click on it in the furniture list or in the home plan.
• | To modify more than one piece of furniture at a time, select them in the furniture list or in the home plan and choose Furniture > Modify....
• | If you want to handle a set of pieces of furniture as one piece, select them and choose Furniture > Group. A group of pieces of furniture appears as one piece in the furniture list and can be moved, resized and rotated as if it was one piece in the plan.
• | If you want to move a piece (or a group) in an existing group, select the piece, choose Edit > Cut, then select the target group and choose Edit > Paste to group menu item.
• | When you choose Edit > Copy or Edit > Cut, the selected objects in furniture list are also copied in clipboard as a text at CSV format, that you may paste in a text editor or a spreadsheet (this feature may not work under Linux).
Home plan
• | If you have a scanned image of your home plan at your disposal, import it as a background image of the plan first. This feature speeds up the drawing of walls.
• | To define precisely the scale of the imported background image, enlarge the background image wizard pane.
• | If you want to set different colors on the side of a wall shared by adjacent rooms, divide it in multiple segments at its creation or by choosing Plan > Split wall.
• | To build the sloping walls of a garret, choose different heights at their start and end points.
• | When you choose Edit > Copy or Edit > Cut, the selected objects in the plan are also copied in the clipboard as an image, that you may paste in an other application (this feature may not work under Linux). If you prefer an image of the plan in a vector graphics format, choose Plan > Export to SVG format... out of the menu.
• | To copy the style of an object on other objects of the same kind without displaying their modification pane, select the object, choose Edit > Copy or Edit > Cut, then select the objects you want to modify and choose Edit > Paste style menu item.
• | Use keyboard arrows to move precisely selected furniture.
• | Lock the base plan to select and arrange furniture without being annoyed by the other kinds of objects displayed in the plan.
• | If you want to select an object which is hidden by other objects in home plan, select it in the furniture list if it's a piece of furniture ; you may also select any kind of object by placing the mouse cursor where the objects overlap, then selecting the hidden object in the Select object contextual sub-menu. Finally, you may also select an object in the plan with a selection rectangle that includes it, into which you unselect the objects that hide it with a click while maintaining the shift key pressed.
• | If you want to deselect an object among the selected ones in the plan, click on it while maintaining the shift key pressed. If the object is hidden by an other one, you may also choose the hidden object in the Toggle selection contextual sub-menu that replaces the Select object sub-menu when you press the shift key.
• | Use alignment lines to help you draw walls, rooms and dimension lines precisely.
• | To move selected objects along the horizontal or vertical axes, use keyboard arrows or drag and drop these objects, pressing the shift key after you start dragging them.
• | To duplicate selected objects in plan, drag and drop them while keeping the Ctrl key pressed (or under Mac OS X, the alt key pressed).
• | Magnetism set in the preferences pane can be temporarily toggled in the home plan, by pressing the Alt key under Windows, the cmd key under Mac OS X or the Shift + Alt keys under Linux.
• | To help you draw walls and place furniture, change the point of view and/or the transparency of walls in the 3D view of your home.
• | To align furniture, select them and choose one of the items Furniture > Align from the menu. Pieces of furniture are aligned on the first selected piece.
• | To change the visible part of the plan without moving the scroll bars that surround it, use panning mode by selecting Plan > Pan menu item. When an other mode is activated in the plan, this mode may be activated temporarily with the space key.
• | Choose Plan > Zoom in or Plan > Zoom out to change the plan scale, or roll the mouse wheel forward or backward while keeping the Ctrl key pressed (or under Mac OS X, the cmd key pressed). In the latter case, zoom is centered at the mouse cursor location.
Home 3D view
• | Choose 3D view > Display in separate window to place the 3D view at a different place of the screen or a second monitor. To attach the 3D view back to the main window, choose 3D view > Display in main window or close the window displaying the 3D view.
• | Press the shift key to increase the effect of mouse moves and mouse wheel in the 3D view.
• | If you can't see some furniture in some rooms, modify the transparency of walls.
• | If some walls, room floors or furniture are too bright, modify light brightness.
• | If you don't know where the virtual visitor is located, roll the mouse wheel with the mouse pointer in 3D view, it will automatically select and show the virtual visitor in the home plan.
• | Use 3D view > Store point of view... to store the main points of view, where you'll be able to go back directly later with the 3D view > Go to point of view menu. The time, date and lens set in the photo creation pane box are also stored with a point of view. If necessary, choose the 3D view > Delete points of view... menu item to select the points of view you want to remove.
• | By default, the images generated at the two best quality levels with the photo creation and video creation panes are illuminated with lights placed in the middle of the ceiling of each room and the sun at daytime. You may improve lighting by deselecting the Add ceiling lights check box in these panes, changing the current hour / date, changing compass orientation, adding other light sources and/or adjusting their power.
• | You may export the 3D view to OBJ format and import the OBJ created file in an other 3D program like Art of Illusion or Blender.