House design software

To create a project for your house yourself, you need to shovel a lot of information. This can take a very long time, because you have to study the intricacies of building technologies. What happens as a result is unknown, since there is no guarantee that you will not miss something. Everything is much easier when using software (software). When it was created, all the norms and features of materials were laid down and taken into account. In most cases, the program for designing houses itself generates a list of necessary materials, and even issues a plan, and sometimes a 3D image. 

Home Designer от Chief Architect

There is a whole line of English-language programs for designing and creating houses, apartments and rooms, which is suitable for both professionals and personal use – Home Designer. It is easy to work in them thanks to a clear interface, knowledge of the English language is minimal. You can design your home from start to finish. Starting from the foundation, walls, roof and ending with finishing materials, plumbing and furniture. The results can be obtained in the form of a general and floor plan, with a list and quantity of necessary building and finishing materials, furniture and plumbing. You can work in the program for modeling a house in three modes:

• standard 3D view (volumetric image);
• roofless view (dollhouse);
• flat two-dimensional image (plan).

The program is really good, there is one drawback – there are no official Russified versions.

The principle of operation and the possibilities for designing walls

First you need to draw the walls of the future house, and then create the rooms. Make it simple. Walls in Home Designer are collected in the corresponding menu (walls). There are several types of walls: external, internal, which can be straight or curved. All of them consist of several layers. For example, an exterior wall with a siding finish consists of: siding, thermal insulation, frame, drywall. This cake can be changed, both the materials themselves and the thickness of the components. What is important, all materials are displayed in the estimate. When changing the thickness or type of material on the plan, the estimate is automatically adjusted.

Choose an external wall from the catalog, create the desired shape of the house, just by holding the mouse button. Home Designer’s home design software automatically measures dimensions so you can easily control what you do. Immediately when creating walls, the program calculates the foundation. If the proposed option does not suit you, choose your own from the list. The new type is immediately calculated by the program, changes are made to the corresponding section of the estimate. If some parameters do not suit you, you can change them forcibly.

To move and change walls, you don’t need to delete and redo them, just click on the desired wall, hold down the left mouse button and drag the wall in the desired direction. There is a second option – click on the resizing tool (on the numbers that stand next to the object whose parameters you want to change) and enter the desired parameters. These rules apply to absolutely all subjects in the program. Then create the interior walls in the room in the same way.

During all the changes to the walls, the foundation and the roof also change, their parameters are adjusted. This is a really good program for designing a house.

Windows, doors, roof

Windows and doors are also a separate menu, which contains different types of these devices. Choose the appropriate type, click on the place where you are going to put the door / window, the program will automatically create openings. To resize or move, select the object and drag or drag to the desired size.

In the modifications tab, you can select the type of window or door, size, position, frame, shutters, shape and materials. They can also be changed at any stage of the design. All changes will be reflected in the estimate. In order not to suffer with the positioning of a door or window exactly in the center of the wall, there is a special tool. It is located at the bottom of the program window. Select the object that you want to place in the center of the wall, click on the button, and it will be centered. Very fast and convenient.

The base and roof frame are created automatically. After you have planned all the walls, marked out the windows and doors, you can do it. In the corresponding menu (Roof), turn on the display of the roof. Don’t like the type you’re offered? Highlight, select from the list the type that suits you best. Replacement occurs automatically, and the corresponding section in the estimate also changes. Changes can be immediately seen in the 3D view. Home Designer software automatically installs roof accessories such as gutters, belts, etc. Naturally, each of them can be changed.

In the course of work, the results of planning can be seen in a 3d volumetric image. This mode allows you to evaluate the shape of rooms, houses. If you don’t like something, you can immediately, in 3d mode, change the design, move walls, insert / move / remove windows, doors, etc.

Possibilities of internal planning and estimates

The program for designing houses Home Designer allows you to do the “stuffing” of the house. There is any furniture, plumbing, accessories, household appliances, sinks, sinks, toilets, bathtubs, tables, chairs, sofas, armchairs, TVs. There are also finishing materials: tiles, bricks, wood, metal, glass, wallpaper, plaster. Stairs are curved, spiral, angled, straight. Stair parameters can be flexibly changed, including the number of steps, railing height and style, material, color and many other options.

Do you want to put up a closet? Select the Wardrobe tab from the menu and place it in the desired location. You can easily resize, change door types, material, handles. The list of options is huge.

Another great feature is the ability to change the color and texture of the material. You can choose from those that are in the program directory, but you can download something of your own. You will need digital photos that you can find on the Internet or on your camera. Download these textures to the user library, save. After that they become available.

Home Designer has another interesting tool called the glass house. In this mode, you see the house you have created in 3D mode, in which all the walls are transparent. So you can evaluate the proportions, the created environment before everything is implemented. There is also the opportunity to “walk” through the virtual home and record your walk in video format. This is also a separate mode.

The function of generating estimates is very useful. You can view the planned cost of materials. The estimate is divided into categories with a description and quantity of materials in the form of a table. Home Designer saves all the information for each item in a category and adds it to the list of materials.

To understand how the Home Designer home design software works, watch the video. It is in English, but even without knowing the language, you can understand what and how to do, how to work, evaluate the capabilities of this software.

Envisioneer – simple, powerful, but in English

Another simple English-language program for designing houses is Envisioneer. The interface is similar to all office programs, the principles of operation are the same as described above. All tabs are at the top of the screen. Through them you get access to tools. There are these tabs:

• Building – Includes facilities that are needed to build a house, such as walls, doors, windows, and a roof.
• Interior — fittings, accessories, furniture, decorations, lighting.
• Landscape – contains tools for creating and modifying the landscape of your project: trees, bushes, fences and gates, irrigation systems.
• Territory – tab includes tools that you can use to recreate the topography of the construction site. This tool is usually used when creating landscape design of the territory. First, in this tab, you recreate the existing landscape, then make adjustments and start planning the house.
  

• Analysis – provides quick access to a variety of tools required for calculating the work for each of the stages of construction.
• Help – contains a list of terms, as well as a learning management button.

In the catalog panel, we can select any walls and materials, doors, windows, roof, porch, stairs, etc. The program has several types of viewing, you can quickly switch between 3D and 2D. The scale tab will allow you to change it as you need. The navigation tab allows you to walk around the house in 3D, look around and even fly!

For the design of wooden houses from timber and logs

In most programs for designing houses and cottages, such building materials as logs and timber are completely absent. These are such specific materials that you need to write your own calculation algorithms for them. Therefore, a separate software is created to model a wooden house. In most cases, these are Russian developments, but there are also foreign ones.

KZ Cottage

KZ Cottage is a construction program in Russian. Designed to help with the design of a wooden house or cottage from a cylindrical log, profiled timber. You can create walls, beams, openings, pillars. In the program, you can select the shape and size of the log section, build and move walls, beams, install windows and doors. There is also the option to create a log drawing, calculate the material for one wall or the whole house, create a floor plan.

When you start the program, you select the type of material and specify the size. For example, the section type is a log or beam, the size is set in millimeters, as well as the location of the beams, the type of log / beam articulation, its parameters in millimeters. When planning partitions, you can specify their type: with or without a ledge. By default, the program uses the same material as for the outer walls.

When choosing the size of windows and doors, their height must be indicated in the number of rows of logs, and the width – in millimeters. This is the difference. Since window and door openings in a building can be the same size, there is a copy tool to avoid having to recreate them. The copied parameters are simply installed in the place where you click with the mouse.

After creating walls and partitions, they design a roof for a wooden house. It is only necessary to select the materials (parameters of the board under the rafters), the step of their installation, indicate the angle of the roof slopes. The program will calculate the shape and size of the cutouts itself.

The last step is viewing. If everything suits, go to the reports tab, select the ones we need from the list (plan, wall sweep, estimate, log table). The program forms all of them at your request, puts down the approximate cost in the estimate.

The interface is easy and accessible in Russian. Your task is to create a model of the house that you want to get, and the drawings of the logs, wall sweeps, etc., will be done for you by the program itself. At the end, the software will give you a draft design with documents for production and assembly. You will be able to evaluate the finished model in 3d format and walk around the house yourself.

Home Constructor software

To model buildings from timber (ordinary, glued), logs (rounded) there is a program in Russian “House Constructor”. The interface looks similar to similar software. Let’s select the parts to be designed one by one:

• walls;
• window;
• doors;
• stairs (if the house is two-story).

Each tab has several options, choose the one that suits you best – it is transferred to the plan. Identical components are copied in a couple of mouse clicks.

In the process of making changes to the plan, all of them are displayed in the window at the bottom of the screen. A three-dimensional model is being built there at the same time. This is very convenient, since there is no need to switch from mode to mode and you can immediately make adjustments.

To proceed to the design of the second floor, go to the “overlapping” section. After the installation of the ceiling, the second floor appears on the plan. The tab “2nd floor” appears in the upper left corner of the screen. Here we install walls, windows, doors in the same way, and the program itself will put an opening under the stairs in the ceiling. Next, move to the “roof” tab, select its type and angle of inclination. The last thing to be designed is the foundation. In the corresponding tab, select one of the possible options.

The finished project can be viewed in volume. You can look at the whole and floor by floor. Going to the “estimate” tab, we get a list of materials with an estimated cost. If the indicated prices differ from the real ones, you can change them. You can also look at the estimates as a whole: foundation, first floor, second floor, roof – you can estimate the cost of building each of the stages.

Google SketchUp

Google SketchUp is one of the few universal programs in which you can model a house from logs or timber. When creating a project, you can select the type of measurement system – decimal. After that, the program will put down the dimensions in millimeters (not in feet). The next step is to select the type of building material – log / beam and set the dimensions (in millimeters).

Well, then – you will have to manually draw spikes, grooves, set their parameters. Each of the crowns is a separate layer. They are drawn separately or copied already created, making additions. Each crown is best done in a separate layer. This will give you an opportunity to see at the end of the project how much and what materials you will need. But everything is done manually, there is no automatic calculation, there are no bills of materials either. This is better than nothing, but far from being as convenient as in the previous program (see “House Constructor”).

Software for calculation and design of frame houses

Unfortunately, there are no free programs for modeling and calculating frame houses so far. They can be created on platforms such as SolidWorks, SketchUp and ArchiCad. It is easier to work in the second program, since it is a construction program, it contains many parameters and norms, it generates final reports that contain a list of required materials. But complex projects in this program are a headache. But for a relatively simple frame house, it is convenient.

In SolidWorks and ArchiCad, you have to do almost everything by hand, but you can draw complex roofs or decorative elements. Alas, “manual” work takes a lot of time.

There are several other programs that were created for certain design organizations. Often they are without names, they are distributed exclusively for a fee, and the price for them is asked quite a lot. But, since the software is specialized, working in it is a real pleasure. Two such programs in the following videos.