Learn me: 3D home design software

Does the hive have any recommendations for 3D home design software? I use SolidWorks regularly and if I have some layout thing I want to do I will do it in SW or AutoCAD but I am trying to get a little fancier. I have a friend who wants to add a 3 season room over his patio and he asked me to look at it. I have some good ideas on how I want it to look and SW is going to look like blocks with shading. I would like to do it in one of these rendering programs so it looks really nice. Any input is appreciated.

Whats your budget?

FYI, @work, our team does the photorealistic renderings you may have seen.

How detailed do you want it to be?

If you are just doing the outside shell, Sketchup is your answer.  SU is a lightweight vector modeler with some powerful tools, and it can be used for free.  You can orient the building and do shadow studies.

However, because it works in vectors, everything is modeled in lines and planes,  so a wall isn't a wall, it's 2 planes with a void between them.  This is not a real issue but it does affect how you attack the modeling process.  There are tools in the program to help you get around that.

SU also falls down a little if you want scaled output, though it has a dimensioning tool.

This isn't for real work so budget desire is low, like less than $100. I have done the rendering with SW or using SW as the baseline for people to create renderings from. That is higher end then I am looking to go for this. 

Here is a video from a previous job, I did the machinery so the renderings were made from SW that my team did. This is 10 years old and i just looked at it for the first time in years, video technology moves fast!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWzC3kp03rQ

Maybe just model it however you want, then use Blender to render?  The possibilities there are endless.

Otherwise +1 for Sketchup

In reply to ProDarwin :

Thanks, I hadn't heard of that before, I am looking around the website now, I will give that a try.

oh and Sketchup, I looked at that last night and I only found subscription services for SU, I didn't see the free version that I remember from a few years ago. I will check that again, I was surprised by that.

I don't need to be super detailed, this is so he and his partner can get a better idea of what to expect and maybe evaluate a couple of general design options.

Any GRMers want to do a drawing for a building permit for me?  Simple rectangle addition on post construction?

In reply to New York Nick :

There is a free version that's online only.

I have Home Designer Suite 2021. I bought it to play around with but mostly for my 11 year old daughter who is fascinated by real estate and houses. I'm a 20-year SolidWorks user and I find a few of the functions to be a bit clunky, but my daughter has figured it out without much input from me. A cool thing about it is that you can download catalogs of many different materials, fixture, and appliance companies as virtual objects. So you can put a real GE washing machine, real Armstrong flooring, real Pfister bathroom fixtures, etc. etc. into your plan. It goes on and on - basically you can fill your virtual house with stuff you'd find at Lowes. A bad thing is that the BOM export and costing functions are disabled on the home-use version.

In reply to JamesMcD :

Thank you. I had so many ideas bouncing around yesterday I had to get them on "paper" so I made a SW model to get the main concept out. I feel like I have an awesome concept on this and I want to make sure it presents well (so I can see it happen). Once I get the idea finished out I am going to redo it in one of these so the presentation of the idea is A1.

My students use Revit from AutoDesk.  I believe you can get a 30-day trial for free.  I have tutorials and stuff on www.gwellwood.com/subjects/drafting/ --> Look into "Level 2" of architecture.

It's not as user-friendly as I would like, but it can do whatever you want.

I've used Sketchup, but Sketchup is like painting the Mona Lisa with a 9-pack of Crayolas.

Although, MANY people have done awesome things with Sketchup, and there will be a plethora of tutorials online.