Here are some tips to help you work faster and smarter in Sweet 
          Home 3D. 
        
           
            | General | 
           
            |  | Use splitters displayed between the panes of the furniture 
                catalog, home furniture list, home plan and home 3D view, to resize 
                these panes. | 
           
            |  | To test Sweet Home 3D features without risk, remember that 
                all operations are undoable except the modification of imported 
                furniture in catalog.  | 
           
            | Furniture catalog | 
           
            |  | To add more than one piece 
                of furniture to home at a time, select more than one piece in 
                furniture catalog. | 
           
            |  | To open a category of furniture, double-click on it.  | 
           
            |  | To modify an imported 
                piece of furniture, double-click on it. | 
           
            |  |  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. | 
           
            | Home furniture list | 
           
            |  | To sort home furniture, click on the column title matching 
                the sorting criterion. At the first click on a column title, the 
                furniture list will be sorted in ascending order, at the second 
                click on the same title, the furniture list will be sorted in 
                descending order, and at the third click on the same title, the 
                furniture list will be sorted in the order furniture was added 
                to home. | 
           
            |  | To reorder furniture list columns, drag and drop column titles. | 
           
            |  | To find where a piece of furniture is placed in the home plan, 
                select it in the furniture list. | 
           
            |  | To modify a piece of furniture, 
                double-click on it in the furniture list or in the home plan. | 
           
            |  | To modify more than one 
                piece of furniture at a time, select them in the furniture list 
                or in the home plan and choose Furniture > Modify.... | 
           
            |  | If you want to handle a set of pieces of furniture as one 
                piece, select them and choose Furniture > Group. A group 
                of pieces of furniture appears as one piece in the furniture list 
                and can be moved, resized and rotated as if it was one piece in 
                the plan. | 
           
            |  | When you choose Edit > Copy or Edit > Cut, 
                the selected items in furniture list are also copied in clipboard 
                as a text at CSV format, that you may paste in a text editor or 
                a spreadsheet (this feature may not work under Linux). | 
           
            | Home plan | 
           
            |  | If you have a scanned image of your home plan at your disposal, 
                import it as a background image 
                of the plan first. This feature speeds up the drawing of walls. | 
           
            |  | To define precisely the scale of the imported background image, 
                enlarge the background image wizard pane.  | 
           
            |  | If you want to set different colors on the side of a wall 
                shared by adjacent rooms, divide it in multiple segments at its 
                creation or by choosing Plan 
                > Split wall. | 
           
            |  | To build the sloping walls of a garret, choose 
                different heights at theirs start and end points. | 
           
            |  | When you choose Edit > Copy or Edit > Cut, 
                the selected items in the plan are also copied in the clipboard 
                as an image, that you may paste in an other application (this 
                feature may not work under Linux). If you prefer an image of the 
                plan in a vector graphics format, choose Plan > Export to 
                SVG format... out of the menu. | 
           
            |  | Use keyboard arrows to move precisely selected furniture. | 
           
            |  | Lock the base plan to select and arrange furniture 
                without being annoyed by the other kinds of items displayed in 
                the plan. | 
           
            |  |  If you want to select an item which is hidden by other items 
                in home plan, select it in the furniture list ; you may also 
                select it in plan with a selection rectangle that includes it, 
                into which you unselect the items that hide it with a click while 
                maintaining the shift key pressed. | 
           
            |  | Use alignment lines to help you draw walls, rooms and dimension 
                lines precisely. | 
           
            |  | To duplicate selected items in plan, drag and drop them while 
                keeping the ctrl key pressed (or under Mac OS X, the alt 
                key pressed). | 
           
            |  | Magnetism set in the preferences 
                pane can be temporarily toggled in the home plan, by pressing 
                the shift key. | 
           
            |  | To help you draw walls and place furniture, change 
                the point of view and/or the transparency of walls in the 3D view 
                of your home. | 
           
            |  | To align furniture, select them and choose one of the items 
                Furniture > Align from the menu. Pieces of furniture 
                are aligned on the first selected piece. | 
           
            |  | To change the visible part of the plan without moving the 
                scroll bars that surround it, use panning mode by selecting Plan 
                > Pan menu item. When an other mode is activated in the 
                plan, this mode may be activated temporarily with the space 
                key.  | 
           
            |  | Choose Plan > Zoom in or Plan > Zoom out 
                to change the plan scale, or roll the mouse wheel forward or backward 
                while keeping the ctrl key pressed (or under Mac OS X, 
                the cmd key pressed).  | 
           
            | Home 3D view | 
           
            |  | Choose 3D view > Display in separate window to place 
                the 3D view at a different place of the screen or a second monitor. 
                To attach the 3D view back to the main window, choose 3D view 
                > Display in main window or close the window displaying 
                the 3D view. | 
           
            |  | Press the shift key to slow down the effect of mouse 
                moves and mouse wheel in the 3D view. | 
           
            |  |  If you can't see some furniture in some rooms, modify 
                the transparency of walls.  | 
           
            |  |  If some walls, room floors or furniture are too bright, modify 
                light brightness.  | 
           
            |  |  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. | 
           
            |  | In Virtual visit mode, the images generated at the 
                best quality level with the Create photo and Create 
                video panes are illuminated with lights placed in the middle 
                of the ceiling of each room. You 
                may change the distribution of lights in a room by subdividing 
                it in smaller rooms ; you can also add lights to an existing 
                room by creating rooms that overlap it partly. | 
           
            |  | If you want to get a better rendering of the 3D view, export 
                it to OBJ format and import the OBJ created file in an other 3D 
                program like Art of Illusion 
                or Blender. |