[Closed] Home design software?

There are lots of basic house design software programmes, but most don’t take into account things like structural regs, building regulations, construction methods etc. Probably best looking at existing designs from kit home providers - the architect has done the hard stuff in terms of the structural engineering, you just need to consider the interior layout/moving internal stud walls etc. and work from there rather than a blank piece of paper. Also method of construction can have a big bearing - conventional, timber frame, ICF or SIPs are the most common.
Started down this route about 2 years ago, planning on self-building on west coast of Scotland - sold our house just before lockdown and moved north. We found a builder on the Isle of Mull with permission for 5 houses in a great location, so we agreed for him to build our house. We completely altered the internal layout to suit our needs - originally it was a 110m2 3-bed ‘upside down’ house whereas we have a 2-bed, with downstairs kitchen/diner and upstairs lounge and bedroom on each floor. We still had a massive input into the design - I designed the kitchen and bathroom layouts, as well as the interior cupboards (lots!), electricals so it very much feels like ‘our’ house - it is massively different from our neighbours and the builder and trades prefers our design to the architects.
Best advise we had is to build the smallest house you need rather than the biggest one you think you need - seen many times with self-builders getting too ambitious with their 400m2 builds running out of money having to make major compromises in terms of windows, kitchens etc because of the huge increases in labour and materials. It is a very rewarding process but even then we still came in at 20% over our original budget.

Buy a A3 pad of tracing paper.

Draw to scale your hard layout, walls etc.

Draw ideas over the top.

Don't get me wrong CAD is a phenomenal tool, I use it everyday, admittedly for a significantly more complex tasks than some 2d sketches. But it isn't though is an aid to ideas generating. I still have a pad Infront of me with some quite detailed sketches, when there is some form of a plan, then I'll model it. It's easier to learn CAD with a plan than learn as you "sketch".

If your goal is to learn CAD then fair enough but don't expect the ideas to flow.

Also dovebiker... Architect worrying about the structural calcs aye? More like architect forgets about the laws of physics and expects the engineer to achieve the impossible.

I’d use paper and pen to start with. How you design a house without a site I’m not quite sure. But crack on

Thanks all.

At the moment it’s just a game, as above no land so can’t do anything with any accuracy it’s just to play with layouts etc.

If I was going to build a house I would be using an architect and other pros who know what they are doing.

In that case. Do some sketching then try and model what you come up with.

I'd try SketchUp for a giggle but for drawings a drafting package it's more useful. FreeCAD for instance. Then of you find you love it you can get a poorly paid career where despite being vital to a projects success no one will value your work.

Learning to draw in planar, perspective and isometric are all good fun and very satisfying hand drawing skills. Being able to sketch stuff well in 3d can really help communicating ideas with people including architects you might employ later.

Or even try building a model in card.

Oh yeah the other thing I forgot to mention.

Despite me tongue in cheek comment about architects...

You're going to need to know some basic architectural requirements.

Things like where you need doors, bathrooms and bedrooms and escape routes.

And basic dimensions, these are what will give you the skeleton to have a play. Like minimum corridor widths, minimum (and standard)door widths and heights. Standard materials dimensions (there is a reason rooms heights and sheets of plasterboard/timber are often 2.4ish) also things like gaps between furniture are handy.

There's various old books that would give you an idea, I like the new metric handbook just for random architectural facts like the basic dimensions of a velodrome 😁.

I'm only talking about a rough idea of the concepts so you have an idea where to start. Or you may find you just start a bit aimlessly.

If all you want to do for now is play and get a bit of inspiration then https://home.by.me/en/ is pretty good for that.

I’ve used it to try out different layouts for extensions and a kitchen refurb - design in 2d or 3d and then drop into first person view to see what it looks like.

Floorplanner is good for layouts. Can also import an image from an existing plan to start from. Then fade it out.

I'd second floorplanner.com, I've modelled the entire downstairs of my house and have gone through multiple iterations of designs. You can get some nice 3D renders and do walkthroughs and things. You can also drop in 3d furniture and things to get a more realistic idea of what it would look like in real life. I paid a months subscription to upgrade my project and then cancelled the subscription, you still get the updated renders but you have to wait 10 minutes between each new rendering.