Drawing my house – Which app should one use?

[carlsson]

I'm currently drawing a detailed floorplan of my house in Illustrator (been a former FreeHand user, Illustrator is the closest at hand even though I never liked it).
Then I realized it's 2023, and there surely must be some better app for this today? Something that automatically shows measurements, placement of doors, etc etc.

I was an early adaptor of MagicPlan for iOS, but I have never been able to use it correctly. Probably because I rather work with my Mac than a tiny iPhone.

Therefore, the question is: What app should I use to create a detailed plan of my house?

 

[armhol]

I did this and used 'Live Home 3D pro'. I found it reasonably intuitive but struggled with different ceiling heights. You are really building a 3D model rather than just drawing a flat plan as you are probably doing in Illustrator. This enables many options like outputting a 'fly through' of the property or views of the model from any angle by placing and aiming a camera from any point in space. There is probably a trial available to see if you like it.

 

[carlsson]

Sounds interesting!
Are you happy with it? Have you tried Sketchup? Is Live Home 3d better?

 

[armhol]

Sounds interesting!
Are you happy with it? Have you tried Sketchup? Is Live Home 3d better?

I am happy with it, yes, but I only used it for that one project. The exercise was to make a model of the house 'as is' and then to modify it to see what it would look like after a building project, to test the usable space in rooms and tweak the design before construction began. I used it as it is specifically designed for that purpose.
I didn't try Sketchup and have no experience with it, sorry.

 

[ixxx69]

Therefore, the question is: What app should I use to create a detailed plan of my house?

This is one of those questions where you have to be a lot more specific about what the purpose is (just for kicks, or a little furniture space planning, or designing an addition for your house?), how long awhat are the long-term needs (a month, a year, multiple-years), 2D vs 3D, how much money you're willing to spend, etc.

You've asked the equivalent of "I'm going on vacation - what should I bring with me?"

That being said, without spending a lot of money and required technical know-how on Revit or AutoCAD, I'd suggest SketchUp as relatively easy-to-use and not that costly. It's been around for 20 years, it's developed primarily for architecture, and there's tons of resources on how to use it and content to download (furniture, etc.).

Good luck!

 

[Ruggy]

I've done several plans on Sweet Home 3D which is probably similar to the ones mentioned above. It does a pretty good job and it's donation ware so it's up to you to pay. It comes with a lot of objects and there are loads more you can download. There's a lot of help too.

Sweet Home 3D - Draw floor plans and arrange furniture freely

 

[Big Bad D]

Sounds interesting!
Are you happy with it? Have you tried Sketchup? Is Live Home 3d better

This is one of those questions where you have to be a lot more specific about what the purpose is (just for kicks, or a little furniture space planning, or designing an addition for your house?), how long awhat are the long-term needs (a month, a year, multiple-years), 2D vs 3D, how much money you're willing to spend, etc.

You've asked the equivalent of "I'm going on vacation - what should I bring with me?"

That being said, without spending a lot of money and required technical know-how on Revit or AutoCAD, I'd suggest SketchUp as relatively easy-to-use and not that costly. It's been around for 20 years, it's developed primarily for architecture, and there's tons of resources on how to use it and content to download (furniture, etc.).

Good luck!

I also recommend Sketchup. There’s a bit of a learning curve and has a free version that should be adequate. You can limit view to create a 2D floor-plan, or model in 3D. There are lots of downloadable models for furniture and household features.

 

[Nygaard]

You can somewhat use Blender for technical drawings, but it needs plugins for basic features like measurement callouts. A little unorthodox, but it's free and might be good enough depending on your needs. You can also model as much or as little detail as you want, and make photorealistic renders and flythroughs of your house.

 

[carlsson]

This is one of those questions where you have to be a lot more specific about what the purpose is (just for kicks, or a little furniture space planning, or designing an addition for your house?), how long awhat are the long-term needs (a month, a year, multiple-years), 2D vs 3D, how much money you're willing to spend, etc.

You've asked the equivalent of "I'm going on vacation - what should I bring with me?"

That being said, without spending a lot of money and required technical know-how on Revit or AutoCAD, I'd suggest SketchUp as relatively easy-to-use and not that costly. It's been around for 20 years, it's developed primarily for architecture, and there's tons of resources on how to use it and content to download (furniture, etc.).

Good luck!

Valid point.
The purpose is "only" to have the correct measurements for future planning. Like what size of furniture can go here? How long is this wall? If I place a sofa here, how much space will be available? etc etc.

The problem with Illustrator is that even though I can draw everything in it, it doesn't present the lengths automatically, for example. I imagine that a proper tool have inputs for lengths of walls, ceilings, stairs, doors, windows etc.