3D Home Design Software You Can Use In Your Classroom

Fuzz Martin 0:00

Hey, Mrs. Martin. It's really nice outside, can we please go outside and do our podcast today?

Shanna Martin 0:07

I guess. We have all your work done, then we can go outside!

Shanna Martin 0:32

Thanks for listening to the Tech Tools for Teachers Podcast, where each week we talk about a free piece or two of technology that you can use your classroom. I'm your host, Shanna Martin. I'm a middle school teacher Technology and Instructional Coach for my district.

Fuzz Martin 0:44

And I'm a producer and husband Fuzz Martin and I make sure that we have the proper building blocks for the show each and every week. Clever. Here we are outside on the patio. Today. On the deck. We had a discussion. Yes, this is a deck.

Shanna Martin 0:59

Yes. We're outside on the deck today because it's beautiful. And we didn't want to record in a basement or in an office. Yeah. So there'll be birds tweeting and there's airplanes flying overhead.

Fuzz Martin 1:10

There's wind chimes behind us. We have a really like ambient ambiance. Ambient, ambient, ambient neighborhood where we have lots and lots of birds. We have lots of wind chimes.

Shanna Martin 1:23

The birds start at 4:45 every morning. Yeah. With your window open. It doesn't matter if you were sound asleep. Because the bird condo complex is in the pine tree behind our house.

Fuzz Martin 1:34

It is it is last night though we had an owl that was really loudly I like I thought they were gonna come in the window.

Shanna Martin 1:44

Shouting in our window,

Fuzz Martin 1:45

I had to check my daughter's room to see if they dropped off a letter for her to go to Hogwarts. Alas, she's too young. So here we are episode 154. The Tech Tools for Teachers Podcast were in the last week of your school. I know some other schools go ended already are done.

Shanna Martin 2:03

Yep. And some will continue on for a couple of weeks. I know out in Connecticut, they're going at least until like June 13, June 18 or so. So yeah, we're like wrapping it up. So here in Wisconsin, the law schools are finishing up this week. And then a couple of next week and a few next next couple of weeks, we're all gonna hopefully take this break or some we'll take a break and then start again, like early August just because of how things go. And I know many of you teach summer school. So I'm hoping this week's tool, either will get you through the last few days, or would be a super fun project to do in summer school. Yeah, I

Fuzz Martin 2:40

totally, totally agree. And the last time that we did a similar episode to this, we got a lot of

Shanna Martin 2:46

Yeah, everybody loves these kinds of slides. Yeah,

Fuzz Martin 2:48

exactly. So like,

Shanna Martin 2:50

demand. Yeah,

Fuzz Martin 2:51

what will I cuz it's fun, not only for your students, but it's also that you could use

Shanna Martin 2:55

Yeah, so basically, like, when I was playing around with those, I'm like, Oh, well, we're just gonna like play around. But also, when you're on your deck in the summertime, not thinking about teaching and maybe, you know, planning your dream house, you're inspired after the new movie, or maybe you want to just redo your home. That is what you can do on these sites as well.

Fuzz Martin 3:18

Maybe you're taking of a, you know, an interior designer hobby,

Shanna Martin 3:23

or some other job.

Fuzz Martin 3:26

So, gotta afford that teaching habit,

Shanna Martin 3:29

right? Both sides today are going to highlight different ways to do like 3d house design. The site I've used in the past I've talked about as floorplanner, which has always been like a hit, everybody loves floorplanner. Well, you can always use floorplanner. But you can also check out these two sites, which also have super fun 3d design components to them. And you can use it with your students, I would say middle grade and up or definitely as a teacher, because they're really fun to play. Yeah, exactly. And one of them you can order the furniture right from but okay, we'll get there. So the first site we're talking about today is called planner five d.com. So P L A N N E R five, the number five, d.com. And this site is awesome. It is a house planning site. It plans you with your projects you can choose from like their general design, or your own like new project so you can choose you pick new project once you sign up. So both of these are signup sites. They're pretty easy. This needs your email per usual so you can save your information stuff for a plan or five day you can start from scratch. They have a little wizard you could upload, upload a plan so if you're an adult and one uploaded plan you can but for kids starting from scratch is the best way to do this. You also if you really are inspired, you can hire a designer to your home for you. But these are so fun. I have a few students this year in particular that are really into home design. I've never I mean, I always have kids that love playing around in 3d home design, because it's fun. It's fun to make your dream house, it's fun to make restaurants or like, it's just fun to build projects this way. And you can do these for like storyboarding. A lot of times I have students use 3d planners like to build a house of a character from your book. This does not have to be a design class, you can absolutely use this in like a design class. But you can use this in all kinds of content areas.

Fuzz Martin 5:24

Like a setting for a slide drop.

Shanna Martin 5:26

Absolutely. Or like when we're talking about like the Titanic, like can make a room on the Titanic, we talk about like classes on the Titanic, like, what would that look like? So you can just use these all different ways. It doesn't have to be, you know, just to design a site, right? Or design house. But they are so fun. I have a student who's very arches, and she's like, Oh, can I put archways in my Fallout Shelter? I'm like, Sure, yes, you can.

Fuzz Martin 5:48

I want it to be safe, classy.

Shanna Martin 5:51

So planner, five d allows you to do this, you pick like create your own design, your own dimension. So like it starts you off with five meters by five meters, you can change it however you want to. And again, this is the free version of it. And then what's nice about this, it's super like user friendly. So I'm not messing around with walls too much like I can just drag it and it goes and it tells me exactly the amount of inches like remapping this for math class. Yeah, like, we can just stretch it just six meters. And then it's very user friendly, where there's not a lot of clicking and dragging and finding things like it's there. What's great is there's a back button. So if you mess it up, you just click back and it fixes it for you. You can choose first floor or you can add new floors. Okay, as you choose do in the bar across the top. And on the left hand side, it's got all those fun extras, do you want to add your doors, you can choose room doors and your doors, glass doors. The one thing I will tell you with this one is planner, five d, they have lots of free options. But if they have a little lock on them, that means it's the premium version. Okay, so just beware, when kids are playing, they're like, oh, I want to use this one. It's not working? Well, that's because you chose the premium version and it cost $2 million. So make sure that you choose

Fuzz Martin 7:00

is it really expensive? No. Okay. I think it was $2 million. But if it was no,

Shanna Martin 7:05

yeah, if you switch over to pro, then you have like a monthly fee kind of deal. So because then you can really buy these house plans if you choose to. And so they've got the furniture options, again, upholstered furniture, arm chairs, there's always options to choose from for designing. And then there's like the expensive ones. And it'll tell you right away like you stumbled upon a premium feature. So that way kids aren't doing things that they're not supposed to do should stops you right away from doing that. So they can pick and choose their design. And they've got like plants you can put outside and they have trees. And they can do a whole like garage setup if they want to outside their room. And it just kind of cool because it gives them the options of designing their rooms or their homes, they can add room by room like design room by room throughout. And then what's nice, is then you click the little 3d button on the top, there's not a bunch of stuff, you have to find, you just click 3d, boom, your room is automatically in 3d on your screen, which is really cool. And then they can see it, they get the screenshot and share their friends and all that kind of stuff, they do then have the option where you can click realistic render, and it will give you the best angle for the render. So it sets it all up for you, you click Save, and then it'll just save it as a screenshot for you. Or it can do a full like rendering of it if you want to look more real. And it'll just say that for you. And then you have that choice. And it'll say like, well, things render, it'll tell you when it's ready. So it's really easy to get your images when you're done. And it's really easy to have access to your stuff. So then you have a little project folder with your renderings, and then your textures and stuff like that. So everything's right there, they can't really, it'd be hard to lose their stuff, which is always a thing with our kids. And so yeah, so they can just like click and create and make their own little dream homes. And then they can print them or share them or use them as backgrounds for whatever they want to an adult characters and later on if they want to. But it's just a cool way to design rooms. And there's a lot of choices with it. And it's very user friendly. And if you give it to kids, you could probably have within five minutes less than five minutes up and running and designing.

Fuzz Martin 9:01

I will say I looked up, they have educational licenses for this. And I wanted to see how much it would cost if you if you see that just to save you some time of googling. It's $9.99 per student per month, which is ridiculous. So unless you are having like a very small stellar class or design class, exactly. This is not for the paid the educational version. It's not for that, but for just students just using it. It's totally used the free version. Yeah. So but very cool. So I need to know what is the fifth D and five d you got? height, width, length, and then 40 is usually like smell if I've learned anything for knows. It's got some bells and then the fifth dimension I would assume would be the time space continuum.

Shanna Martin 9:52

There you go. I got another we are going to make time travel rooms.

Fuzz Martin 9:57

Nice. There we go. To do Your last week of school.

There you go. Awesome. So that's planner, five d, there's a lot of just fun features later on, it's a Quick, Quick Learn, and kids could definitely play around with it and create their own little rooms. Sweet. So another one, these I couldn't decide because I like them both for different reasons. But that one's a quick, like ready to go get it moving kind of site. The second one I have is called home by me home by me it was H O M, E, period, b y period me as the name home by me, okay. Okay. And then when you are so like

that's the URL is legitimate. Yes, dot home.by.me.

Yeah, that's the URL like it's owned by me. And that's the URL, something that you need to have your kids do right away is they have to choose what country they are from on this one, okay, because then it sets the page. So that's something that they have to just be aware of, like when you're having them set up, they do need an email, and like their Google to be able to sign in, but then they just have to choose what country they're from. Okay, and then it sets it per country, which is kind of nice. And so you for this one, you choose a little project. What I like about this one is they have like kind of video setup videos and stuff like that. So they kind of show you like they walk you through the process. As a teacher, if you have kids that need a little more coaching. Sure, this site is great, because it gives you like, Hey, this is how you get started. This is where you find stuff, this is what you can do. And that kind of gets you going. They have little inspiration projects and stuff like that, you can choose to create a new project or open a project. And then from there, you have all it just gives you blank screen. We love a blank screen. There's also little people they stick an arrow which I think is funny. And this one, it's love space, it's very simple. So you choose like add a wall at a room, you draw it in as you want to decide what you want to put in there. But the same kind of stuff, pick your flooring, and there's a lot of visuals in this one like build furnish decorate. So then a brand corner so and then once you click it, it doesn't just give you right away to the list of stuff. And then it says here you can choose mosaic tile or concrete blocks or cobblestone I'm gonna choose Cobblestone and then what kind and then apply to my surface okay, what surface am I going to apply it to? I can click on the room and it'll show me how I want my cobblestones be added to my backsplash. And then you can work in 2d

Is that subway tile? Did I see some shiplap?

and so they have 2d mode or 3d mode and then they also have little footprints on the bottom which I love because when you click on the full plans it like you can walk through your house you don't need a door in your house though in your room you need a door if you want to be able to go into the land of 3d So I mean the walking mode because like right now I'm standing outside my room because I didn't put a door in yet. Oh so yeah, and then you can add

there goes your open-door policy

and then to the exterior you couldn't had a garden or a patio or a driveway to this one which I kind of liked. Like he was at the

studio outside on the patio.

I can I should have been in there. And a little, little, little studio.

I feel like our neighbors by the way, I feel like our neighbors wind chime doesn't go this ham, except for right now that we're sitting outside and maybe it's just me.

No, I think it's always just you're aware of the wind chime now that everyone is listening to the wind job. But I also appreciate about home by me is if you choose to I just chose an acacia wood entry furniture. It gives you a product description. Because on this one, if you're an adult and you have it set up right you can visit the store and buy the furniture. But it gives kids like an understanding like this seems so like it like it really read a real description. The entrance hall talks to you and your guests do not miss this opportunity to take care of personalizing. Like the description that goes into this is impressive. And it teaches kids how to write a really like this is a bench. Yeah, they just wrote a paragraph about a bench that makes you want to sit on it.

So it's good for creative writing. That is writing great

descriptive writing, like the site does. I mean, obviously, your 3d design, the kids are gonna have fun playing around with it. But even if they spend two minutes reading some of these descriptions, they're going to learn something from it. So I just appreciate all of the pieces to that and I am so like I made this cute little room. It's got a cute little round table, you can duplicate it, you can check the measurements. Again, math is always involved. You can 3d Check it out. I got this cute little room with my personal garden outside and a little credenza inside. Very easy. You can choose again ground floor. You can lock things in place. You can add a floor if you choose to. And then you can go right ahead and save it and you always have your projects saved. So that's kind of nice, and you can do that. into your little folder of things and then screenshot or shared or presented or whatever you have the kids do, they can do that, which is kind of cool. So again, each one has some different features to it. Home by me has like some outdoor things and just a few more options to it that way more descriptions. And then when you're in planner, five D, it's going to be a little more straightforward when it comes to like design stuff, but it's easy and fast and up and running. So either way, I say middle school high school for both of these, and they just have some fun designing and mapping and end of the year or it could be a whole summer project where they build room by room if you've had summer school. Sure. And you don't know what you're gonna do yet. And as a fun class. They can go room by room each day, building and designing and describing it. Yeah. And that will give you this summer school acting class. It could be Yeah, absolutely. So there's just so many cool things, some fun house design stuff. And at this point in the year we need fun things we do. And if you're not teaching anymore, you can design your dream house.

Virtual flyswatter right now. Fly that decided land on my microphone.

There you go see? Outdoors. Everyone feel one with nature with us today. Yes. I hope you've enjoyed the breeze and the birds. And the wind chimes

the neighbors grilling out. It's fun.

Yeah, it's summertime, folks.

Good. Well, thanks. Thanks for indulging me and let me let me do our our episode outdoors. today. We'll do a fun. We'll do the last one for the season episode 155. Back in the office, the proper studio.

But yes, we will have one more episode this season. We'll do our summer wrap up and suggestions for parents and things like that. On that note, thanks for tuning in. This has been the Tech Tools for Teachers Podcast. If you ever have any questions, you can find me on Twitter at @smartinwi. And if you want to get more information on the links the technology discussed in this episode, you can visit smart in wi.com. If you'd like to support the show, please consider buying me a coffee or to visit buy me a coffee.com/smart and wi or visit Spartan wi.com and click on that cute little purple coffee cup. Your donations help keep the show going. New episodes each week. Thanks for listening, go educate and innovate.

The ideas and opinions expressed on this podcast and the smartinwi website are those of the author's Shanna Martin and not upper employer. Prior to using any of the technologies discussed on this podcast. Please consult with your employer regulations. This podcast offers no guarantee that these tools will work for you as the scribe, but we sure hope they do. And we'll talk to you next time right here on the Tech Tools for Teachers Podcast.