Home, Sweet Home. This Design Software is Free.

If you're thinking about redesigning a room in your home, or you're about to move to a new home, then you've probably wondered whether it's worth buying some room design software.  Trouble is, such packages tend to be expensive, or very difficult to learn.  There's Google Sketchup, of course, which is free, but it's not exactly the most intuitive product around.

So I was mightily impressed to learn about SweetHome 3D, which is a room design package that takes just a minute or 2 to learn.  Fire it up, pick an item, drag it across the screen, and your room plan starts to take shape.  It really is that easy.

And here's the best bit.  SweetHome 3D is free, open source software.  Plus, it's written in Java, so should run on Windows, Mac or Linux.  To make things as easy as possible, there's a combined installer which includes all the necessary Java code, so if you don't already have Java (or you're not sure), everything's still easy.  

The full download is around 30 MB, and can be obtained from http://www.sweethome3d.com/download.jsp.  

If you've got a Hot Find, please let me know.  See http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/submit-product-review.htm.