home design software

this tutorial demonstrates creating a floor plan in live home 3d. the first thing one needs to do before creating a floor plan

home design software, is to set the scale and measurement units for the given project. you can do that by clicking on the square with the measurement abbreviation

between the two rulers. i'll use feet and leave the scale as is. click ok to get back to the workspace. now, the first thing we need are walls. there are several tools in the program for drawing them.

clicking on the room button activates the room drawing tool. double click on the button to keep the tool activated even after completing a room. then, just place the cursor over the area where you want the room to begin and click and drag

to begin drawing it. as you see, the program displays the length of each wall while you draw. straight wall and arc wall tools are necessary for making more complicated projects. say, if a room is not really square

and has an arc wall, then here is how we may draw it. activate the straight wall tool by clicking on its button. place the cursor over the area where you want the wall to begin, to begin drawing a wall. clicking once creates a corner, allowing you to draw a wall

in some direction. to cease drawing, just double click on the end point. now switch to the arc wall tool and connect the two endpoints of the straight walls by clicking on them. move the cursor to the middle of the wall and bend it in the necessary direction. once you've done it,

make a click to complete the drawing. to make the arc wall smooth, adjust the segmentation slider in the object properties tab of the inspector. if you need to shift a wall later, all you need to do is simply select and drag it. you can change its angle by selecting the end point

and moving the cursor, or set the wall length and thickness via inspector. please note that you should not create gaps for doors and windows when drawing walls, as creating an enclosed area automatically creates ceilings and floors,

and displays area measurements for each room. doors and windows are later added by dragging and dropping them onto walls. other important tools in the 2d view are the ones that draw custom floors, ceilings and openings, which are all created in the same way. just click on the corresponding tool

and click on the canvas to begin drawing. contour points can be added and removed even after drawing the floor or ceiling. you can see there are area measurements for each closed room. you can add custom comments by double clicking on them

and typing in what you need. for example, room names. you also have the option of filling the rooms, walls, and other building elements on the 2d plan with color and/or pattern

in the 2d properties tab of the inspector. the dimension tool allows to measure the distance between two points and display it on the 2d plan. the annotation tool basically creates a text box for custom comments. note that the text properties

of annotations can be controlled using the fonts dialog that is brought up from the 2d properties tab. now let's take a look at stories. stories can be added and removed in the building properties tab of the inspector. you can add stories above

or below the current story. let's add an upper story. by default, the new story has the same exterior walls as the first. this can be easily changed by moving and resizing the walls. to display the floor plan of a particular story,

simply click on the representation in the inspector. you can also make any story the ground floor. any stories below will become part of the basement. deleting a story is as simple as selecting the representation and clicking the trash can button. once the floor plan is complete,

you can always review it using the pan and zoom tools in the toolbar. also, note that the project is automatically built in the 3d mode, and any changes made in the 2d view take place there in real time. that's it for working in 2d.

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