Blender 4.3

If you are remodeling your home, strongly suggest using Bonsai (previously Blender BIM) add-on to model and plan.

In addition to getting my layout just right down to the ft, and using current materials (ie, hardwood, cabinet placement). I modeled out HVAC ducts and overall system.

I had planned on doing major renovations (including plumbing, electric, networking) and would have modeled those as well since the walls would be exposed. But ultimately, due to changing political atmosphere, decided to put these on hold.

It does have a learning curve but would have been made collaboration with at architects much easier (exchanging ifc files).

How does it compare to Revit, for smaller basic projects like you mentioned (residential house/simple office, with hvac etc)?

It looks like its for people with engineering backgrounds. For me something like Sketchup is lot easier to plan a mockup.

https://extensions.blender.org/add-ons/bonsai/

Blender needs additional add-ons for auto-generated floor plans to 3D scenes.

https://github.com/grebtsew/FloorplanToBlender3d

The learning curve on your own is like a kick to the berries... However, we found these courses, and some after market assets libraries make it workable.

Should wait for the $19.99 deals to take these courses, and pay attention to the stated Blender version during instruction:

https://www.udemy.com/course/blendertutorial/ (low poly model skills)

https://www.udemy.com/course/blender-animation-rigging/ (some overlapping material, more rigging)

https://www.udemy.com/course/blender-3d-sculpting-course/ (stuff is out of date in this one, but if you can tolerate the kids antics... one may learn a lot about retopo and non-human sculpts.)

Textures:

https://blendermarket.com/products/sanctus-library-addon---p... (Awesome... can bake wood, metal, brick, tile, plastics etc.)

https://tinynocky.gumroad.com/l/tinyeye (Fantastic totally underrated eye tool)

Assets:

https://blendermarket.com/products/poly-haven-asset-browser (assets are free on their site too)

https://static.makehumancommunity.org/mpfb/releases/release_... (free low poly random people)

Would also recommend looking at speed sculpts for tips about how to fix humanoid meshes:

https://www.youtube.com/@BranSculpts/playlists

For advanced users, there are also working rudimentary ZSpheres/Metaballs support similar to ZBrush, fabric quad stitching, and volume aware re-topo process tools:

https://bartoszstyperek.gumroad.com/l/ahwvli?layout=profile

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0GW8Na5CIE (how to get blender workflows to work on lower end GPUs)

Rigging tools:

https://blendermarket.com/products/auto-rig-pro (UE5 export helps)

Went through several grand worth of plugins this year for a project, and these paths proved useful.

Best of luck, YMMV... =3

For the average person Sweet Home 3D is a much better choice http://www.sweethome3d.com/

Downside with sketchup is that it likely has to translate IFC into its own format. Could result in loss.

Might be easier up front but lose out on sharing/communicating your designs to different types of people.

Right - if you only care about interior design. Might be overkill.

I am not a professional architect or engineer (in the construction space), so I haven’t tried it. The subscription pricing turns me away.

Seems like it has most of the same offerings as Bonsai just by browsing the marketing materials (support for IFC). Not sure if it’s native IFC or translated to their proprietary format, likely the latter.

With that said, seems like it’s more or less the same learning curve (ignoring price)

Different use case, as far as I can tell.

To put it into web programming terms, Bonsai is for making the backend/structure, while Sweet Home 3D looks more like HTML/CSS/frontend.

Is it possible to model thermal performance of a building with Bonsai?

I haven’t explored it myself, but at least the IFC spec allows you to define thermal properties of materials.

https://ifc43-docs.standards.buildingsmart.org/IFC/RELEASE/I...

I suspect it’s something that’s not offered out of the box though.

Generally I think modeling in the computer without proper detail in measurements and geometry is error prone. I will normally capture a 3D point cloud (can use a Kinect for this) and perform a geometry scaling, then use AI to map it into 3D surfaces compatible with CAD. This will take 1-2 days to model. Then I manually model all the elements in minute and exactly detail. Finally, after all the work is done, I assess the coloring of the cabinets to see how I feel about green vs. chartreuse paint, on a high-end monitor typically used by radiologists to assess human disease. Some people ask why not just hold a color ribbon up to it to get an idea, I say that's a waste of time, not enough.