Sweet Home 3D Help > Creating homes, walls and furniture

|  |  | Adding levels

Every home is created with a default level, but Sweet Home 3D is also able to manage multiple levels, with a positive or negative elevation for each level. To add a new level, choose Plan > Levels > Add level or Plan > Levels > Add level at same elevation from the menu. As soon as a home has more than one level, some tabs appear at the top of the plan view and let you select the level into which you want to add some objects. At the end of the tabs list, appears also a tab with a + sign that you can use to create more levels if needed.
New level showing in light color walls and ceilings of the lower level
To help you find your place in an upper level, walls and ceilings of the lower level are displayed with a light color in the plan view. If the selected level is the lowest level, walls and floors of the next level will be drawn in a light color. When magnetism is active, the mouse cursor is magnetized on these walls and rooms to let you use wall or room drawing tools more easily. If needed you may also simply copy some walls, rooms or furniture from an other level to paste them in the new level. Each level has an elevation and other attributes that can be changed. If the top of some walls or some furniture added to a lower level is higher than the elevation of the selected level, they will appear in full color, like the surrounding walls, the spiral staircase and the window on the right in the next figure.
New level showing in full color the high walls and furniture of the lower level
Adding a new level has no direct effect in the 3D view, and no floor is automatically added to separate a level from an other. It's only once you start to draw walls, rooms or add some furniture that you will see these new objects appear at the elevation of the new level.

• | The height and the floor thickness of a new level can be set in the preferences panel. The elevation of a new level is computed by adding the elevation of last level, its height and the floor thickness set in preferences. The height of a new level is equal to the new walls height entered in preferences.
• | Once a level is created you may change its name, its elevation, its height and its floor thickness by double-clicking on its tab, or by choosing Plan > Levels > Modify level... from the menu.
• | The tabs at the top of the plan view list levels in the order of their elevation, then at a same elevation, in their order of appearance set in the level modification pane.
• | Selecting a piece of furniture in the furniture list will select automatically the level it was added to, if this piece can't be viewed in the current level.
• | Each level in a home can have its own background image to draw walls and rooms upon it.
• | The walls and ceilings of an other level drawn with a light color are not printed or copied in the clipboard. They are here to help you find your place and draw faster the current level.
• | Select Edit > Select all at all levels menu item to move all the objects of a multi-level home, modify them or export them to OBJ format without including a ground item at elevation 0. While this selection mode is active, level names are outlined with the selection color in the tabs shown at the top of the plan view, and it's possible to unselect / reselect objects in the plan by clicking on them while maintaining the shift key pressed, or by choosing each of them in the Toggle selection contextual sub-menu. A simple click in the plan or the furniture list will leave this mode.