

There are hundreds to choose from, including electronics, plumbing, plants, etc, broken down by category, and if you can’t find what you’re looking for, a handy search window is there to help you out (although we found that if this is the first time you used it, it might take a while to display anything as it downloads online content in the background. Of course no 3D building design software is worth its salt without offering a vast library of objects and furniture to give your home that lived in feel.

Even better, you can add a basement should you want one. By default you’re working on the ground floor, but click on ‘2nd story’ and any wall you create will be placed at that default elevation (which can also be altered to suit your needs). You’re not limited to creating a single floor dwelling either: beneath the Properties sidebar is where you can control this. Working on multiple levels is extremely easy - you can even create a basement (Image credit: NCH Software) Floor to floor As you add one those next to others, you’ll notice a slight magnetic effect as the walls snap to others, helping you place your rooms perfectly. If you need to speed things up a bit, ‘Rooms’ lets you add prebuilt spaces in an instant. Click on the ‘Building’ tab (top left), choose the ‘Walls’ option, and click and drag to create one.

Building workĪssembling a house is very straightforward. One possible advantage of the blueprint when building walls is you can see the wall’s length displayed alongside it as you create it, without needing to invoke the measuring tool.

Whichever one you select, you’ll be able to access every tool at your disposal. Neither 2D views can be rotated, although you can pan across, and zoom in and out of them. You also have two 2D top down views - one that looks more like a traditional blueprint, and the other is kind of a mixture of the two previous ones: a 2D view with rendered elements viewed from above. The traditional 2D blueprint view is one of three available viewpoints you can work in (Image credit: NCH Software)
