The only real advantage of the Pro version vs the 2017 version in my opinion is access to Layout. The free version is enough, and you can get a no limits trial of the Pro version. Sketchup is much more beginner friendly and plenty powerful to design a house. I learned autocad in high school in the early 2000's. I used it to design my custom house that I'm building now. Thanks a lot for reading the giant wall of text! I think I can handle the learning curve, but I have no intention to model a lot of things myself, so it'd be better if it had an easily accessible library of 3d models that are free to use.Īny other software recommendation is more than welcome, and I'd say that I'd like to stay under $100 total (last resort, I'll do it in the Sims 4.). I heard that Blender was pretty good but had a steep learning curve. My goal is to have something that would look nice, that I could share with my family so that they have a good understanding of what I'm trying to achieve, and possibly, with an architect or a builder, to get that house actually done eventually. The terrible lag I had while following the super simple tutorial 'how to design a house in ten steps in Sketchup', which had 4 walls, a floor, a roof, and I added only a few items inside.Limited functionality of the free version.The giant 3D model library (thanks so much to everyone who contributed/contributes to it, that thing is pretty awesome).I have no issue paying for a good software that I use, but as a hobbyist that will likely 'design' the one house and never use it again, $300 seems bit steep for a one year subscription. I tried Sketchup Free briefly, and it seems to be pretty easy to use, but it lags terribly and I hate the fact that I can't navigate the camera easily (WASD or even the arrow keys). Hey y'all, I have a few ideas in my head that I'd like to model for the house I'd like to build/have built.

Google sketchup house design