Sweet Home 3D: Importing Floor Plans

Friday we finished working on our Sweet Home 3D house design. You should have taken several "photos" of your house and uploaded them to your portfolios.

Today we are going to continue using Sweet Home 3D, but we will be importing a pre-made floor plan.  You can locate floor plans from a variety of locations on the web.  One place to find nice plans is TheHouseDesigners.com -- a site which includes the ability to search for single stories, a certain number of bedrooms, etc.  Another way to find plans is to do a Google Search.  The important thing to remember is that you will need a plan with some measurements so we can correctly scale our models.

We will import the base floor plan, set the origin point [to the upper left], draw the walls, add doors and windows, and then decorate and furnish our house.

When finished, we will post the floor plan and "photos" of our completed model.


INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Locate a floor plan with dimensions and save the image to your Thawspace
2. Open Sweet Home 3D
3. Go to PLAN > IMPORT BACKGROUND IMAGE... > CHOOSE IMAGE
4. Select the image (floor plan) you saved in step 1
5. If the image looks correct, click CONTINUE
6. Adjust the blue line to span across a room with known dimensions (i.e. a room that is 10'6")
7. Enter the number of inches your line represents (in the example 10'6" would be 126)
8. When asked for the Origin Points just leave it at 0,0 and click CONTINUE
9. Draw the walls as indicated on your floor plan
10. Create rooms using the Room Tool
11. Add windows and doors
12. Add colors/textures to the walls, doors, windows, ground, sky, etc.
13. Lock your "Base Plan" to prevent changes
14. Furnish your house
15. Make necessary adjustments (you may need to unlock the base plan)
16. Begin creating "photos" of various locations / points of interest in your house
17. Add your floor plan and photos of your house to your portfolio