In 3D mode, zoom and pan features allow you to look at the design from different angles. Once you have designed your rooms or floor plan you can toggle between a 2D or 3D view of your design. It features a simple tool set with which you can create whole rooms, walls, drag and drop windows, doors, skylights, plumbing fixtures, furniture, stairs, people, cars (even an Alpha Romeo) and more from a library. Reviewsīelow are reviews for the following programs (the stars indicate our rating for each product).įloorplanner is a simple, basic and free floor plan software tool. If you are creating full construction drawings for a new home design, you may be better off looking at some of the more full-featured house design software packages that will make it easier to create multi-story designs, add roofs, show cross-sections, elevations and framing details.Ĭreating full construction drawings certainly is possible using a program such as Google Sketchup but you will need to have the skill of a draftperson and residential designer or architect to create properly dimensioned and accurate drawings.

A light blue rectangle is where my stock tanks will go, etc.Īnyway that is how I use Excel to build things.48 page book, Print or Digital Software for New Home Construction A slashed line may not look fancy, but it does not need to be, I know it is a gate. Excel really helps me find the critical information I need to build something.

In my case I use my own lumber so all these numbers crunch down into the yellow highlighted numbers: to build this barn I need 276 logs 12 feet long, and 12 logs 14 feet long. I like that! The third photo shows those drawings worked up into material lists. Then I can change spreadsheet pages and work up the numbers on what it would cost to build. The second photo is the same Excel spreadsheet zoomed in. I can scroll right down and look at the smallest 4 x 6 foot sheep pen, or way out like this and get a few acres into view. This is a quick overview of my proposed sheep barn, the different colors representing phases of build, manure storage etc. But a quick drawing to post on Permies or for my own quick reference.I use Excel. It is very limited, but I use paid for programs for drawing buildings, blueprints and houses. To this old duffer it looks like the old 1/4 inch graph paper that we used to have and so I can draw scale drawings with that. If you set the column widths to 3 and leave the rows at 18 it looks like 1/4 inch squares.

Freeware floor plan design software