Sweet Home 3D Help > Editing preferences, plan and 3D view

|  |  | Editing preferences

To edit Sweet Home 3D preferences, choose Sweet Home 3D > Preferences... under Mac OS X or File > Preferences... under other systems. In the preferences pane, the Language drop down list lets you choose the language used in the user interface of Sweet Home 3D, and the button at its right lets you import some additional languages library files with a SH3L extension. The Unit drop down list lets you choose the unit used to draw the rulers and grid of the home plan, and to display lengths and areas. Millimeter, Centimeter and Meter units are available for the metric system, and three units are proposed for the imperial system: the Inch/Decimals unit which displays lengths only in inches followed by decimals of an inch, like in 250.122", the Foot/Decimals unit which displays lengths in feet followed by decimals of a foot, like in 3.1', the Inch/Fraction unit which displays a length in inches followed by the closest eighth inch fraction, like in 15⅛", and the Foot/Inch/Fraction unit which displays a length in feet and inches followed by the closest eighth inch fraction, like in 20'10⅛". In the latter case, a fractional part typed with decimals and an inch value larger or equal to 12 will be automatically converted; for example, if you type 15.75, the program will understand 1'3¾", and if you enter 2'15, it will be interpreted as 3'3". You may also use the / character in the fraction after the inch value, like in 1 3/4, that the program will understand as 1¾". For areas, the Inch/Fraction and Foot/Inch/Fraction units always display the closest value in square feet, whereas the Inch/Decimals unit displays some decimals when necessary. The Currency drop down list lets you choose the currency of furniture prices. When a currency is selected instead of the Ignore prices default option, you may enter a price in the furniture modification pane, display the Price column in the furniture list and obtain the total price of object prices under that list. If the option Use VAT (or Use Sales tax or Use GST according to your country) is selected, furniture prices are considered as pre-tax prices, and you may enter a VAT / Sales tax / GST percentage in the furniture modification pane and display additional columns related to taxes in the furniture list. The Category folders and the Searchable list radio buttons let you choose how the furniture catalog should be displayed in each Sweet Home 3D window. The 3D navigation arrows check box allows to display arrow buttons that will help you to navigate in the 3D view. When enabled, the Aerial view centered on selection option will center the 3D aerial view on the selected items in the 2D plan. If no item is selected or if this option is disabled, the aerial view will be centered on the center of the home, that may vary according to the items it contains. When enabled, the Select visitor in plan at 3D move option will select and display the virtual visitor drawn in the 2D plan each time you make a move in the 3D view in Virtual visit mode. You should unselect this option if you don't want to lose the current selection in the plan and/or change the visible part of the plan at each move in the 3D view. The Magnetism check box enables or disables the magnetism used in the home plan during walls drawing, rooms drawing and furniture placing. It can be also disabled / enabled with the Magnet button found in Sweet Home 3D tools bar. The Rulers check box allows to make the rulers around the plan visible or invisible. The Grid check box allows to make the grid in the plan visible or invisible. The Default font drop down list lets you select the font used for texts displayed in the plan (i.e. furniture name, rooms name and area, dimension lines length and default font of free texts). The Catalog icons and Top view radio buttons let you choose how the furniture should be drawn in the plan (see images below). When the Top view option is selected, the Icon size drop down list lets you select the size in pixels of the icons drawn in the 2D plan. Higher sizes will give nicer plans when drawn at screen, printed and exported to SVG format, but will require more memory to work. The Monochrome and Floor color or texture radio buttons let you choose whether rooms should be drawn in plan filled with the color or texture you chose for their floor, or with a grey color (printed as white). The New walls pattern in plan drop down list lets you choose the pattern in the plan used to fill the walls that will be created once the preferences pane will be closed. The New walls thickness value sets the thickness of the new walls. The New walls height value sets the height of the new walls and of the new levels. The New levels floor thickness sets the thickness of the floors of new levels. When selected, the Check updates at program launch option will check whether some updates of Sweet Home 3D are available or not each time the program is launched, and will display them in a dialog box. This option checks also the availability of some updates for the furniture libraries (SH3F files), textures libraries (SH3T files), language libraries (SH3L files) and plug-ins (SH3P files) that you installed, depending on how they are configured. The value of the field associated to the Save home data for recovery check box sets the delay in minutes between two save operations of the opened homes. These homes are automatically saved in private files, that will be used for recovery purpose at the next launch of Sweet Home 3D if the program crashes. Finally, the Reset the display of tips button resets the answers you gave to the check box Do not display this tip again shown in the tips dialog boxes displayed when you click on some tools. This means that all the dialog boxes where you selected this check box will appear again.
Plan rendering with catalog icons, monochrome floors and walls filled with a hatch pattern | Plan rendering with top view furniture icons, floor colors, and walls filled with black color

• | Preferences are shared by all Sweet Home 3D windows. Therefore, editing preferences will have an effect on all opened windows.
• | When you have many pieces in your furniture catalog, display the furniture catalog as a searchable list. Its category combo box and search text field will help you to find faster the pieces you want to add to plan.
• | 3D navigation arrows are not available under Mac OS X 10.4 and may not be rendered correctly under some Linux systems. Once you'll get used to the navigation in 3D view with the mouse or the keyboard, unselect this check box to hide navigation arrows in the top left corner of the 3D view.
• | Furniture icons seen from top may not be available due to a limited configuration of your system. In that case, the Catalog icons and Top view radio buttons will be disabled.
• | Magnetism set in preferences pane can be temporarily toggled in the home plan, by pressing the Alt key under Windows, the cmd key under Mac OS X or the Shift + Alt keys under Linux.
• | Once a wall is created, you may change its thickness, its height and its pattern whatever the values you set in preferences pane.
• | Updates information can be retrieved only if your computer has access to the Internet. In case of doubts, click on the Check now button to display available updates, or a message stating that no update is available, or an error message stating udaptes couldn't be read.