Once you’ve got your design down pat you can use the Material Painter or the Material Eyedropper to make it more lifelike. The Plant Chooser is particularly good, enabling you to search not just by name but by characteristics – so if you want a particular colour of foliage or want plants that will attract butterflies and birds, you can search specifically for plants that meet those criteria and add them to your plan. The Terrain menu enables you to create a realistic or fantastical landscape to sit your building in, and you can customise it with everything from plants to water features.
The app is just as interested in what’s outside your dream home as what’s in it. Many of these objects are provided free by the developers or by manufacturers who see them as an opportunity to advertise their products, but some are chargeable: expect to pay $2.99 for a typical collection of lights, cupboard doors or mirrors. If realism is your goal you can expand the collection by getting extra objects online, so for example you can download particular garage doors, lighting ranges or potted plants. They’re organised into clear categories – architectural, backdrops, exterior and interior features and so on – and include everything from speakers to spiral staircases, chandeliers to computers. Home Designer Suite 2020 also includes an extensive library of predefined objects that you can drag and drop into your floorplan. As you’d expect there are predefined objects for essential items such as doors, windows, stairs and electrical outlets (if you’re outside the US, these might not be appropriate: for example the UK symbols for power outlets are different than the ones the app provides). The Build menu makes it really easy to create almost any kind of structure, with options not just for walls but for fencing, decking and railings too. The app also includes standard CAD drawing tools and shapes and text boxes. They also snap to each other, so when two sections of your wall meet the app automatically creates an angled join. Dimensions are displayed as you draw, and unless you specify otherwise your drawings snap to the grid. To build your first structure it’s just a matter of choosing the section you want to add, so for example to draw an exterior wall you’d select Build > Wall > Straight Exterior Wall and then position it by drawing it on screen. While the interface might appear a little frightening at first, it’s actually very easy to use. To create a structure, create each floor in the Floor Plan view and then switch to 3D to see the results (Image credit: Carrie Marshall)
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