Sweet Home 3D has reached the 5.0 release recently with some new features, improvements and bug fixes. See what’s new.

For those who have installed an old release from Ubuntu Software Center, here’s how to upgrade Sweet Home 3D in Ubuntu using the .jar archive.

The JAR executable file as well as 3D models of the application by default are installed in /usr/share/sweethome3d, just replace the directory with the latest .jar and model files will upgrade Sweet Home 3D to the latest.

1. Download the .jar executable file at THIS PAGE

2. Open terminal from the Dash, Launcher, or via Ctrl+Alt+T shortcut keys. When it opens, run command to open /usr/share/sweethome3d folder via root (install gksu first from Software Center):

gksudo nautilus /usr/share/sweethome3d

3. Open another terminal and run command to open your Downloads folder via root, then move the new downloaded .jar executable file to above folder.

gksudo nautilus ~/Downloads

4. Rename or remove the old .jar file, and rename the new one from “SweetHome3D-5.0.jar” to “sweethome3d.jar” (without quotes). So it looks like:

5. You may also check out the file permissions by right-clicking file -> Properties -> Permissions tab, and make sure it looks like:

Now launch Sweet Home 3D and go to Help -> About. Its version should be 5.0.

To upgrade 3D models:

1. First go to File -> Preferences -> click Check Now button to check out available updates.

2. Download the latest models from THIS PAGE, and extract all of them in your Downloads folder.

3. Again open both /usr/share/sweethome3d and ~/Downloads folder via root (see above commands).

When they opened, upgrade models by replacing the .sh3f files in “furniture” folder.

Not clear enough? See the video: