Sweet Home 3D Icon    Editing preferences
 

To edit Sweet Home 3D preferences, choose Sweet Home 3D > Preferences... under Mac OS X or File > Preferences... under other systems.

In the preferences pane, you can choose the Language used in Sweet Home 3D user interface and the Unit used to draw the rulers and grid of the home plan, and to display lengths and areas.
The button beside the Language drop down list lets you also import some additional languages library files with a SH3L extension.

The Category folders and the Searchable list radio buttons let you choose how the furniture catalog should be displayed in each Sweet Home 3D window.
The 3D navigation arrows check box allows to display arrow buttons that will help you to navigate in the 3D view.

The Magnetism check box enables or disables the magnetism used in the home plan during walls drawing and furniture placing.
The Rulers check box allows to make the rulers around the plan visible or invisible.
The Grid check box allows to make the grid in the plan visible or invisible.
The Catalog icons and Top view radio buttons let you choose how the furniture should be drawn in the plan (see images below).
The Monochrome and Floor color or texture radio buttons let you choose whether rooms should be drawn in plan filled with the color or texture you chose for their floor, or with a grey color (printed as white).
The Wall pattern in plan combo box lets you choose the pattern used to fill walls in plan.

The New walls thickness value sets the thickness of all the walls that will be created once the preferences pane will be closed.
The New walls height value sets the height of the new walls and of the new levels.
The New floors thickness sets the thickness of the floors of new levels.

The value of the field associated to the Save home data for recovery check box sets the delay in minutes between two save operations of the opened homes. These homes are automatically saved in private files, that will be used for recovery purpose at the next launch of Sweet Home 3D if the program crashes.
Finally, the Reset the display of tips button resets the answers you gave to the check box Do not display this tip again shown in the tips dialog boxes displayed when you click on some tools. This means that all the dialog boxes where you selected this check box will appear again.

   
Default plan rendering with catalog icons,
monochrome floors and walls filled with a hatch pattern
Plan rendering with top view furniture icons,
floor colors, and walls filled with black color

Preferences are shared by all Sweet Home 3D windows. Therefore, editing preferences will have an effect on all opened windows.

When you have many pieces in your furniture catalog, display the furniture catalog as a searchable list. Its category combo box and search text field will help you to find faster the pieces you want to add to plan.

3D navigation arrows are not available under Mac OS X 10.4 and may not be rendered correctly under some Linux systems. Once you'll get used to the navigation in 3D view with the mouse or the keyboard, unselect this check box to hide navigation arrows in the top left corner of the 3D view.

Furniture icons seen from top may not be available due to a limited configuration of your system. In that case, the Catalog icons and Top view radio buttons will be disabled.

Magnetism set in preferences pane can be temporarily toggled in the home plan, by pressing the shift key.

Once a wall is created, you may change its thickness and its height whatever the values you set in preferences pane.