Period CAD software

[plasticpigeon]

Hello. Does anyone know of software that would enable me to draw a room in 3d, then put in some features, (I'm trying to arrange a bathroom) colour the walls, and then look around it in 3D. These things are done all the time on the myriad of house themed telly programs.

 

[Bathman]

I've used Sweet Home 3D before, it is fairly basic though, fine for laying things out and general arranging but probably no good for detailed positioning

 

[Flyfisher]

Mrs FF used Google sketchup to create a 3D model of our house when we were planning the kitchen extension. It is extremely capable, there is a lot of online support and the results can be excellent, though it can absorb a lot of time (like many computer things really) depending on the amount of detail you wish to include.

 

[kreyszig]

+1 for sketch up, great interface for model building, and probably (haven't checked lately) good availability of stock models for furniture.
For flythroughs or decent quality rendering you can import sketch up models or convert to an importable format (like .obj, 3ds) into something like blender - free and very powerful but the interface is more..technical
That said, I haven't looked at many architecture specific tools

 

[Penners]

As recommended by FF, Google Sketchup is very capable - and it's free!

It's a bit of a steep learning curve at first - but then what CAD software isn't?