My Sweet Home 3D

Intro

Sweet Home 3D is open source interior design software that helps you draw the plan of your house, arrange furniture in it and visit the results in 3D. http://www.sweethome3d.com/userGuide.jsp

Communication

Hi,

Thanks for your interest in Sweet Home 3D. There's already some documentation to learn this software available at http://www.sweethome3d.com/userGuide.jsp http://www.sweethome3d.com/documentation.jsp#videoTutorial I don't understand what your workshop could consist of....

Regards, -- Emmanuel PUYBARET

Download

http://www.sweethome3d.com/download.jsp

Notes on download:

edit

Sample First Time Use - Screenshot

First time use appears attractive - floor plans are easy to draw up and dimension, and components including doors can be dragged and dropped in. Very user friendly for the first try - including easy edit and length modification, undo, copy/paste, etc.

Source

Sweet Home 3D is an open source SourceForge.net project distributed under GNU General Public License.

Aquaponic Greenhouse Design - Sweet Home Use Case

I would start by explaining that we do modular buildings - similar to pre-fab, but everything is fabricated on site, rather than in a factory. The walls are made of 4x8 modules and the roof is made of 4 x 16 modules. After modules have been built in the workshop, they are installed on site and coupled together - like legos.

I chose SW3D because it's so easy to use and understand, it enables libraries to be created and used with little effort, and it allows precise placement of objects through numeric coordinates. This precisions enables us to test the feasibility of modules and structures before building them. Although SW3D wasn't created for this specific application, it turned out to be - in my opinion - the best software for the job.

The role SW3D played in this project:

- I started by designing and creating a library of building materials (using the Furniture Library Editor): dimensional lumber, glazing panels, plywood panels, hardware, etc.

- I then used this library of building materials to design each module: walls, roof, doors, windows, etc.

- Then I created another library of modules (walls, doors, windows, roof) and used it to design all the different greenhouses that appear on the infographic - as well as the one we actually built.

- The models were also used to create step-by-step build instructionals. Here are a few examples: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1iBafXmmKzyz4b8nHtTgYm_HvbQB8Y-B8as2sZFPhe6U/edit https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1gJ99JOO-j-jZ5MAhV2EnEbj4ZB1mVX8obU3LD0Kfq6M/edit https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1KxCLCzjSa09GVEFnQm2krHxCWodSzqZ36fw3xyj4t-0/edit

- All the SW3D files are publicly available on our repo - for people to use and modify - and we'll continue to add more.

- I'm also using SW3D to model functional components, such as the chicken coop (https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/0B0NG-lv1ELQvUFMyTHRfOG5ZcVk). Following our modular approach, several parts of the chicken coop are themselves modules - the floor, doors, nesting boxes, etc - which can be assembled into different designs.

This would be a good opportunity to mention OBI - although it's a shame we don't yet have a website...

If it were me, I'd mention that we'll be using SW3D as the main design and documentation software for OBI. My plan is to make publicly available both the building materials and module libraries and encourage people to use them to design additional modules and structures. I'll also publish tutorials on how to use and add to the libraries. The idea is to create a vast library of building modules that people can recombine to design their own buildings.

What additional features would make this easier:

In the end I was able to model practically everything in SW3D, but had to use Blender as auxiliary software and, in some cases, had to jump through some hoops:

- The major challenge was to rotate objects on the z axis. To do this I had to export the model to obj and then reimport - in order to use the rotate feature of the import function.

- In some cases this didn't work, since the feature mentioned above only rotates by 90º increments and, in some cases, I needed to rotate an object 3 or 4º (the roof slope). In those cases, I had to export it to obj, import into blender, rotate, re-export, re-import into SW3D.

- Even on the x and y axis, SW3D only rotates in integer increments - so to rotate at the precise angle necessary for a roof slope, I also had to use Blender.

- The other big challenge was the inability to view an object from the bottom - or to turn it upside down by rotating on the z axis. The ability to show what a module looks like from the bottom is necessary for the instructionals. To get around this, I exported the object and re-imported it upside down.

It would be fantastic if the SW3D developers were willing to add to the z axis the same functionalities of the x and y axis - namely, rotation and the ability to view the object from the bottom. I will continue to use SW3D for all future designs and all of these issues can be worked around through import/export operations and with the use of additional software. But it would sure make our work so much easier - and help us encourage adoption of SW3D - if these operations didn't require work arounds.

Please thank them for their work. They created an awesome software and - although our use of it is not what they may originally have had in mind - it turned to be just the right thing!

Sweet Home 3D Blog Post

• Can you briefly explain your project and what is the Global Village Construction Set?

In a world desperate for a cultural shift that can offer us a future beyond the inevitable crash of consumer civilization, those who have a better vision and those who have the knowledge and skill to bring ideas into fruition are finding it easier than ever to connect and make amazing things happen.

We have before us the great potential for the emergence of the ‘maker culture,’ a culture where communities make what they need out of what they already have, using ideas and plans developed, tested and shared freely via open source.

Among the ranks of organizations who are actively bringing about this kind of societal transformation is Open Source Ecology (OSE), a NGO and hive of engineers, architects, inovators, farmers, and forward thinking pioneers who are condensing 250+ years of industrial knowledge into a single set of machines and tools that will allow individuals to accomplish industrial level infrastructure, machining, farming and energy projects on a small, local scale, using locally sourced and repurposed materials and biofuels. It’s called the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS).

• How Sweet Home 3D takes place in it ? Why and what for do you use it ? (regarding also Sketchup and FreeCad that you quote on your website?)

• Has your green house that you send to us been built in real? Are the salads tasty?
• What sort of help do you need now? Maybe you can ask to our community?