3D FLOOR PLAN from CAD file (under 10 Minutes) with Assets Browser Blender 3.0

Hi Blender community. It is surprising that besides advertisement, gaming and product design, so many people are using any 3D application just for architecture visualization. No doubt it's a huge market. That's why so many big players are fighting for space. But is it sufficient to use Blender for this purpose with its free tool sets? So, in this video, we are going to make this 3D floor plan from a CAD file with quickly and accurately in a non-destructive way so we can change anything anytime according to the client demand. And second, we are also placing all furniture and stuff with the new assets browser for a speedy workflow. So let's get dive in. First, to import a DXF CAD file, we need to enable a add-on that comes with Blender. Just check this on in the preferences tab and import your 2D CAD file. It's huge in scale. Yes, we can scale it down, but we will use dimension instead, which is currently showing in the meter. So first, we need to change this in feet and inches from the unit settings. Now, because we know the length and breadth of our plan, we directly type the dimensions 25 feet and 40 feet. It's perfect in size now. We can also double check this by measuring it by measuring too, exactly 40 feet. It's good to move floor plan in a new collection and disable selection so we will not accidentally select this. To make walls, we will start with a single vertex by merging this plane into a center and creating a vertex. Snap this vertex to corner and extrude it to the next corner. This way we will able to create an edge. Now we can extrude this edge with extrude modifier, but there is no extrude modifier in Blender. Instead, we will use screw modifier with zero rotation angle and 9 feet screw height. We can flip the normals if needed in the modifier panel and start extruding more. Give this wall a 10 inch thickness with solidify modifier and even thickness checked on. And outer wall is ready. For the inner wall, we will duplicate any vertex and separate this with ctrl p and give a thickness of 6 inches only and rest is just extruding according to plan. By doing this, we can change thickness and the height of the ceiling anytime. To create a ground floor, simply copy the outer wall and remove any modifiers. Fill this with the F key and slap a solidify modifier and floor is ready. Alright till now we are done with the modeling, it's time to add door, windows and furniture. But practically speaking, we should never model this by ourselves unless client is going to pay for it. After all, time is money. So to add windows, enable Archimesh add-on and add window. This is a pre-made window. Yes, we can easily open this. All parts are parented to empty so we can move it. It comes with a mesh box which is set to display as a wireframe. This box will be used for boolean operation. We can make this wider for thicker walls. We will not directly use this window for boolean to make hole. Instead, we will put this outer box in a collection and use that collection for boolean. This way only one boolean modifier is required for all doors and windows. Just copy this and it will make the hole automatically. Same with the doors. Add a door, place it on wall and add this box to same collection and boolean happen automatically. Just placing all doors and because it's being copied in the same collection, the boolean modifier using the entire collection. It's not good to create edge loops for doors and windows because then you end up with lots of mesh like this, which is not easy to edit. Alright, after placing big windows, we are pretty much done with doors and windows. And also we can hide this collection anytime. Now it's time to chill and enjoy the process of adding furniture in our house. We will do this with the help of new assets browser. But where can we find all the models for free? Archive3d.net. Why? Alright, number one, it has a countless number of models to choose from, a huge variety from bed, sofa, chair, lights and plants, everything with hundreds of pages. And secondly, you can instantly download without any sign up or registration, no need to create any account and everything is free. Alright, but how to set up our assets browser? In a nutshell, when we have our model ready, we simply mark it as assets in the blend file and then save that blend file into a new folder where we are saving all the assets blend files. Then you have to tell Blender that where is the folder located so Blender can access all the assets. We can name this library like arc library or whatever. And there we go. All our assets are ready to use. Just make sure all the models are merged into a one piece and the center point is always on the ground. Alright, back to our scene. First, we start with the bedroom, search for bed and just drag and drop, switch to Eevee for better lighting, then a TV rack, just drag and drop. So easy. Just like that, we go with the chair and corner plant. I don't know, but it feels like a Minecraft game sometimes. Alright, now feel this how easy it is to test a material in Blender right now. Just drag and drop to try out a different look. So effortless. One important thing, objects are always placed at the level of 3D cursor. So shift right click to place 3D cursor and drag and drop models in the orthographic views. Moving to the living area, just put your 3D cursor on the ground and now drag and drop a sofa and place it near the wall. And that's it. Right now, we cannot drop objects in 3D view. This happens if you drop an object directly in 3D view. So always place them from top orthographic view. Now come to the dining table and chair. We can copy this chair using 3D cursor as a origin. And yes, only Blender has a 3D cursor. Let's place some objects on the dining table, some foods and dining plates. Moving on, we can try different pre-made kitchens that we downloaded earlier. This one is looking much better. We can change any material of any object like this dining table. A simple drag and drop will replace the existing material. We can try different looks just on the go. One more important thing, it will replace only the first material in the list. Like this coffee table has first material is a book material. So it will replace only book material. Hit undo and move wood material to the top and then drag and drop new material. The wood material will be replaced. It is very important to place plants in house to have some cozy and living vibes. For bathroom, often clients demand different material on walls. So we are making a different plane, same size of bathroom floor and extruding this upward 9 feet and give it some thickness and that's it. Because it's a separate object, we can slap a new material. Make a door hole with the same collection. And because we are using a box mapping for our texturing, we don't need to UV unwrap any material. After placing all the sanitary in bathrooms, we are pretty much done. And finally some paintings here and there for good looking house. And we are done. I mean seriously, I am so surprised to see the potential of a free software. Maybe after Blender 3.0 release, the assets browser will be a game changer for the industry. So we are almost in the final. Now for the rendering part, I am going to show you two type of famous rendering styles. First, how to render this type of render. From a top view, create a new camera, set this camera type to orthographic, rotate and position this. You cannot zoom in by moving the camera closer. But we can use this orthographic scale. And the next render is kind of a google sketchup style. We will switch our render engine to not ev, not cycle, but surprisingly workstation. We will change to studio light and with the texture display on. And very importantly, check the free style on. And we can also use cavity and shadow. Hit render and there we go. Alright see you soon with more innovative tutorial. Bye bye.