Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Sweet Home 3D is a freeware program that is very easy to learn and use. It is no substitute for a professional CAD program and does not do exteriors, but it does what it is advertised to do and does it quite nicely. I say it is freeware because you can go to their home website and download the exact same program and furniture collections for free, but you have to download each and install the program and import the collections. By buying it through Amazon, you get the program and all available furniture collections packaged into one installation program and you provide the developers with a little cash for their efforts. If you are not sure if this is for you, start at the Sweet Home 3D website and try it as a Java program that runs online in your browser. You can try it out, watch the tutorials linked on the website, and read the how-to's and decide if it is what you want. What the program allows you to do is draw the walls of a floorplan and add in windows and doors in a very easy drag and drop fashion. You then add in the floor and drop in furniture. Next, select the color of each wall, the floor, and each item of furniture. You can even add in dimensions and print it all out as a floorplan. To see what it looks like as built, switch to the 3D screen and you will see it as if you are actually looking at the completed room. You can walk through each room and see it as you would see it in person. If you can't find an item of furniture or a door or window you need, you can install the free Sketchup Make program, search the Sketchup 3D Warehouse and import any 3D model, or draw your own in Sketchup (steep learning curve, but worth it). Then you can export the Sketchup model as a Collada file and import that file in Sweet Home 3D and use it in your floorplan. On a final note, I have used Sweet Home 3D for two months now on Windows 7 and have never experienced a crash or error, so I appears to be a solid program.