Sweet Home 3D Help > Editing preferences, walls, furniture and 3D view

|  |  | Editing 3D view

Choose 3D view > Aerial view or 3D view > Virtual visit to switch between the two points of view proposed in the 3D view.
Aerial view | Virtual visit
When Aerial view is selected, the 3D view displays your home in 3 dimensions seen from a top point of view. In this mode, moving the mouse to the left or to the right with its left button pressed makes the home turn around a vertical axis located at home center ; moving the mouse forward or backward with its left button pressed makes the home turn around an horizontal axis ; rolling the mouse wheel zooms in or out in the 3D view. When Virtual visit is selected, the 3D view displays your home in 3 dimensions seen from the point of view of a virtual visitor. In this mode, moving the mouse to the left or to the right with its left button pressed makes the visitor body turn to the left or to the right ; moving the mouse forward or backward with its left button pressed makes the visitor head turn up or down ; rolling the mouse wheel makes the visitor move backward or forward. In both modes, the left arrow and right arrow keys have the same effect as mouse lateral moves ; page up and page down keys have the same effect as mouse moves forward and backward ; up arrow and down arrow keys have the same effect as mouse wheel. In Virtual visit mode, you can also use the home and end keys to move up or down the visitor's point of view, as well as the alt + left arrow and alt + right arrow keys to move it sideways.
| User preferences let you display or hide navigation arrows in the top left corner of the 3D view. The left, right, up and down navigation arrows have the same effect as the matching keys of the keyboard, whereas the two small up and down arrows at center have the same effect as the page up and page down keys.
When Virtual visit is selected, a virtual visitor seen from top is drawn simultaneously in the home plan. Its location and its angle is updated simultaneously in the plan and 3D view with each move of the visitor. This virtual visitor is surrounded by four indicators.

1. | The head angle indicator shows the shoulder you can drag to move the visitor's head up or down.
2. | The field of view indicator shows the angle that is currently viewed in the 3D view.
3. | The body angle indicator shows the shoulder you can drag to move the visitor's body to the left or to the right.
4. | The eyes elevation indicator shows the point you can drag to move up or down the visitor's point of view.

When the mouse pointer is upon one of the visitor shoulders or in its back, it changes to indicate you can drag and drop that point to change the head angle of the visitor, its body angle or the elevation of its point of view. While you press the mouse button, a tooltip shows the edited value. You may also change the location of the virtual visitor from the home plan: drag and drop it, or select it and press the keyboard arrows. The location of the visitor and the angles previously described may be set precisely with virtual visitor pane displayed by double clicking on the virtual visitor in the plan or by choosing 3D view > Modify virtual visitor... menu item. This pane allows also to change the field of view of the virtual visitor and set whether the total elevation of the point of view should be adjusted according to the currently selected level, making the virtual visitor go up or down to the selected level. Finally, the 3D view > Modify 3D view... menu item displays the 3D view pane which lets you change the color or the texture of the ground and the sky, the light brightness and walls (and floors) transparency.

• | Press the shift key to increase in the 3D view the effect of arrow keys, mouse moves and mouse wheel.
• | The W, S, A and D keys produce the same effect in the 3D view as up, down, left and right arrow keys.
• | The moves in the 3D view and the modification of the virtual visitor aren't considered as undoable operations, but the current position in the 3D view is saved in a Sweet Home 3D file when you choose File > Save or File > Save as....
• | The keyboard arrows don't have the same effect on the virtual visitor, whether the plan or the 3D view has focus. When the home plan has focus, the keyboard arrows move the virtual visitor in the same manner as other objects in the plan.
• | Moving the mouse forward and backward with its left button and the alt key pressed has the same effect as mouse wheel.
• | The contextual menu of the 3D view lets you select or unselect the object under the mouse cursor. If you enable the Selection and editing in the 3D view option in the preferences pane, you may also select the object under the mouse cursor with a simple click, modify it with a double click, move, elevate or rotate furniture, and add furniture with a drag and drop from the catalog onto the 3D view. Moving furniture with the mouse requires to select one or more pieces first (Shift key may be used to select more than one object in the 3D view). Magnetism (toggled with Alt key or cmd key under macOS), alignment along X / Y axes (activated by pressing Shift key after you pressed the mouse button) and duplication (activated by pressing Ctrl key or alt / option key under macOS after you pressed the mouse button) works like in the plan. Moved furniture remain at the same elevation, and their X / Y coordinates are updated according to the current view angle in the 3D view, while vertical mouse moves are converted to moves along the depth. Elevating the selected piece of furniture or furniture group can be performed by pressing the Ctrl key (alt / option key under macOS) before you press the mouse button and move it vertically, whereas rotating it can be performed by pressing the Shift + Ctrl keys (shift + alt / option keys under macOS) before you press the mouse button and move it horizontally.
• | Nothing prevents the virtual visitor from being inside a wall or very far from home. If you don't know where the virtual visitor is located, roll the mouse wheel with the mouse pointer in 3D view, it will automatically select and show the virtual visitor in the home plan, except if you disabled the Select visitor in plan at 3D move option in the preferences pane.
• | In Aerial view mode, the observer turns around the center of the home in the 3D view and this center is automatically updated each time the objects are moved or resized. This behavior ensures you always see your home entirely with no way to get lost in the 3D view. If you want to use a point of view that won't depend on this centered mode, you may enable the Aerial view centered on selection option in the preferences pane to center the 3D aerial view on the selected items in the 2D plan, or use the Virtual visit mode which lets you choose any point of view. If you want to see some rooms hidden by walls, you may also set the walls transparency in the modification pane of the 3D view.
• | The Adjust eyes elevation according to the selected level option is selected by default and available only if the edited home has more than one level. Unselect it if you want to keep the same elevation whatever level is selected (probably for an exterior point of view).
• | If you want to always see all the levels in the 3D view whatever the selected level is, choose 3D view > Display all levels menu item. To display the selected level and all the other lower levels, choose 3D view > Display selected level menu item.