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3 Free Floor Plan Softwares To Try

Posted on 08. Nov, 2009 by dimaks in Arts & Media, Technology

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3 Free Floor Plan Softwares To Try – features three (3) floor plan design softwares that I found around the web. By saying free, it actually means that the software may offer free trial and demo version. Hence, you can try some of them and then buy the fully functional version afterward. Let’s get to the list directly!

1. SmartDraw (http://www.smartdraw.com/) – SmartDraw is perhaps the most comprehensive Floor Plan Software that I have seen. With its very rich modules on almost all aspects of home designs, charting and decision trees, as well as event and estate planning, I can say that you cannot ask for more. If you try to take a look, you will be amazed by the diagrams and charts of SmartDraw. Let’s take a look at some of the finished products that you may produce using SmartDraw:

SmartDraw Chart

SmartDraw Decision Tree

SmartDraw Floor Plan

To use SmartDraw Floor Plan Software, just visit http://www.smartdraw.com/downloads/ (Upgrade to SmartDraw 2010) and download the installer file. After which, you may also want to download specific sets of libraries in order to suit your design requirements and needs.

2. Floor Planner (http://www.floorplanner.com/) – our no. 2 of 3 in the list is the “Floor Planner“, an online 2D and 3D Floor Plan Design system. It is known as the “The easiest way to create and share interactive floor plans”. While on the site, Basically, you can choose among the 3 kinds of plans namely “personal“, “professional” and “enterprise“. The “personal” option is free to use, so unless you really want to delve into doing serious and complicated floor plans and designs, you can just stick to the first choice. While the use can be free, the site requires you to sign up for a free account.

Floor Planner Free, Sign up

The photo below shows the drawing canvass for the 2D Floor Plan of Floor Planner.

Floor Planner Drawing Canvass

3. Gliffy (http://www.gliffy.com/floor-plan-software) – our 3rd and last one is Gliffy, an online software for drawing custom, professional-looking floor plans. Gliffy holds a wide library of shapes, which make it easy to drag and drop design items into your drawing canvass whenever needed. Using Gliffy requires a sign up for a free 30-day trial period. With Gliffy, you can also create flowcharts, network diagrams, organizational charts, wire frames and technical drawings, among many others. This is how Gliffy drawing board looks like:

Gliffy Drawing Board

Gliffy Floor Plan Sample

On the final thought, the first one (SmartDraw) is suited for making quite detailed floor plan designs. I think it will go handy if used in designing a manufactured home like that one based in Texas. While SmartDraw looks sophisticated and powerful in terms of functionality and customization, the fully functional version may come a little bit pricey. So it will really depend on your design specifications.

Floor Planner is free in the real sense and is very light in application, given the fact that it offers two (2) equally important features such as the 2D and 3D drawing capability. While at that, the use of  Floor Planner requires continuous connection to the Internet, so that means you can’t work with it while offline. It is running fine on Firefox browser.

Finally, Gliffy came much more basic to me because of its very layman orientation in terms of graphic presentation and functionality. But, as I see it, Gliffy does not offer diagram dimensioning, which is a very basic component of every floor plan design. Other than that, it is smoothly running using Firefox browser.