Potentially going to be doing a house renovation – basically a large house getting split into 2 flats (up and down). Any software that I can use to start considering layouts?

Also thinking of converting the loft into a large main bedroom…assuming insulation and windows (and planning permission?).

Need to take a nosey and see what is out there for materials and probably costs…

For just doing layout I like SketchUp – easy to use once you have run through the tutorials (painful if you don’t) and the online libraries contain lots of real life parts that you can drop in.  It isn’t going to do materials or costs though, it’s just a good way of moving things around to see how they look

I designed my house in MS Word. I group together shapes to make things like toilets and just use the measurements to whatever scale I am using.

I call it “WordCAD”

I’d recommend Sketchup as well. I used the free version to build a model of the house when adding an extension and refitting the garage, kitchen and bathroom, and also for designing some fitted furniture. It’s very good for visualising things from different viewpoints, and as mentioned above, there are a lot of useful prebuilt models online that you can just drop in (Sketchup users have modelled a lot of IKEA furniture, Howdens kitchen units, etc).
I also agree with the tip about using the tutorials. It works a bit differently from conventional CAD packages, and if you just try to start drawing, it is not very intuitive at all. I found that reading the basic tutorials and learning a few shortcut keys completely transformed it for me.
There are a lot of of useful plugins, and I think you can actually do bills of materials and stuff like that, but you would probably have to get into the Professional version, which is expensive.

Draftsight is good but probably a bit hard to get going if you aren’t used to it. It’s proper engineering cad so you can input detailed measurements

Onshape? Free, cloud based, very solidworksy.

The ikea kitchen designer I’ve found dead simple. You can enter manually the size of any object you like but once done you can swing it around from all angles and play about with it and save it.

Libre cad is quite a good 2d package one but it sounds like you want  a 3d visualisation so sketch up again. You will not get a BOM from it but if you are just trying out ideas a package that does that would be a over kill. Better to sit there with a spreadsheet to do the estimating.

I used Sketchup to model our loft conversion and extension. It’s very good for getting an idea of layout and scale and the options to place a view means it’s good for experiencing a room at eye level.

If you want to get technical, you could try freeCAD.

I used an App called Roomle – draw it in 2D, then there is a 3D view and walkthrough view available. Very simple & works well. Easy to move walls about.

Draftsight would be my choice although I had some experience of Autocad Life and it’s very similar. I found Sketchup very unintuitive but that may gave been due to the Autocad background.

I use Sketchup for all our set and room plans and generally it’s very good although it can as others say seem counterintuitive at times.  I use a 3D Connexion Space Navigator with it which makes a world of difference for navigating around the model, I’m not really sure how I ever managed without it.

There are loads of good tutorial videos on YouTube as well.

Thanks for the tips…I’ve no experience of using this kind of thing and just trying to mull over potential idea. I need to seriously declutter my current living habits. I fancy turning the bathroom into a wet room/shower room and also fancy adding a staircase up to the loft where I’d make my bedroom and a study-type space…so would be keen to add windows as the view over the hills would be pretty good…suspect that’ll need planning permission. Also fancy retiling the roof with those Tesla solar tiles.

Loads of things but no idea how it could look or how practical/possible it’ll be as I can’t picture it all.

I went through this recently for a large barn conversion. I had a lot of experience with landscaping software prior to trying to find a good house layout package. I tried various packages and ended up with using Home Design 3D iPad app as by far the best tool for quickly trying out different layouts. Obviously if you need to create drawings etc then you would need something richer.

“It’s proper engineering cad so you can input detailed measurements”

Worth noting that you can do this in Sketchup, to whatever precision you require, using cartesian or polar coordinates. I’ve seen people suggesting in previous discussions that it doesn’t do “proper” dimensions, which is incorrect.

Sketchup is should be easy to pick up from scratch, learn to use the layer system from the start, so that you have an outline and then can swap different layouts in and out.

Anyone have any experience of then printing out models of the house layout? Not sure whether to post that here or on the cheap 3D printers thread..

<span style=”color: #444444;”> learn to use the layer system from the start, so that you have an outline and then can swap different layouts in and out.</span>

Very good advice.