Many businesses, stores, and homeowners struggle while planning office space, store space, and home renovation. There are two main reasons for that struggle; first, they can’t visualize and thus feel how the office/store/home would look like after the redesign. Second, they can’t iterate between various designs in an easy and convenient way.

This “How To” will be the first in a series about how to plan office space, storage space, and home renovation online for free, this post won’t only present the tools you can use but will also present a small tutorial on how to use it and the pros and cons of each of these tools. Without further ado let’s dive into the first tool which is “HomeByMe.com”.

Planning Office/Store Space and Home Renovation Using HomeByMe.com

Preparations

HomeByMe is the first free tool you can use in planning office/store space and home renovation; it’s created by Dassault Systèmes, the same company developing SolidWorks. To start using this tool you’ve to first visit the HomeByMe website and download a client that will connect you to their servers.

After the download is complete, just double-click the downloaded client, and it will install then you shall find a shortcut for the application on the desktop. Launch the application from that shortcut and it’ll connect you to the online service.

Getting Started with HomeByMe

Interface

When you first launch the application you’ll be presented by the following main window:

1. Help and about.
2. Settings.
3. Sign in.
4. Start a new project.
5. Save project.
6. Undo.
7. Create and share pictures.
8. 3D measure tool.
9. Select Level.
10. Pan in 2D and Rotate in 3D.
11. Zoom.
12. Summary.
13. Furniture.
14. Build.
15. Build components.
16. Canvas.

Planning a Store

1. We’ll be planning a store with the main hall and a small changing/fitting room using HomeByMe, this will give you a general idea about the application interface and capabilities (first, I’ll change the measurements via the “Settings, 2” tab from Imperial to Metric, of course, you don’t have to do so).
2. The Store will be 10 m X 10 m. To change the dimensions of the room, you can either drag the walls up/down/left/right or precisely type the dimension you want on the wall.
3. To build the fitting/changing room, you have to select the wall option from build >> walls, and then draw the walls where you want, as seen in the image below.
4. To add a door to the changing/fitting room, just go to doors in Build >> Doors and drag and drop the door you want to the changing/fitting room’s wall.
5. Now, we need to add a door to the store, go to build >> patio door, and drag and drop the door you want to the store’s wall.
6. Now, we need to furnish the store, to do so just click on the furnish tab, and you’ll notice that the view will change from 2D to 3D.
7. Shelves are the main component of any store furnishing and they could be found under furnish >> Office >> shelves. There are two types of shelves there; free-standing shelves and wall-standing shelves. In this tutorial free-standing shelves will be used.
8. Select the shelve you’re interested in and drag and drop it where you want in the store.
9. To edit the shelves’ color or texture; select the shelve you want to edit and a new menu will appear to the left click on “structure” and a new menu window will appear where you can select the color and texture.
10. Repeat steps 8 and 9 to complete the furnishing of the store.

You can use the same methodology used above to plan office space and home renovation. It can be clearly seen that the software is very easy to use and it allows its users to get a glimpse of how the office/home/store would look like with various designs. Finally the following are the pros and cons of HomeByMe.com.

Pros

1. Free.
2. Ease of use.
3. There’s a wide variety of assets that users can choose from.
4. You can share your design online through their portal and you can also get inspiration from other designs.

Cons

1. You can’t use your own assets/designs.
2.  You can’t use your own textures with the existing assets.
3. You need to have an account on the website in order to save your designs.
4. You need to install a client on your device in order to have access to the service.

Verdict: HomeByMe.com is a very easy yet powerful tool that you can rely on while planning office/storage space and home renovations.