What Was The First Computer-Aided Interior Design Program?

There are many different approaches to interior design, but many professionals use dedicated software tools to help visualise the best place for modern luxury furniture to be placed in order to ensure it has the maximum impact on a room.

Whether it is just about ensuring a new sofa harmonises with an existing open plan space or a complete remodelling, anything that helps you easily visualise what it will look like is essential, and for decades, computer software has been a major part of that.

Some tools are as simple as providing a map with different furniture locations, whilst others can use augmented reality or VR headsets to create a vivid look of what a potential interior design project will look like, as well as allowing quick changes to be made based on suggestions.

However, what was the first tool to allow this, and how did it change interior design as we know it?

From Sketchpads To Drawing Rooms

In some respects, the history of computer-assisted interior design coincides with the development of computer-aided design (CAD) in general, particularly in the ways in which computer tools helped with designing unique and ambitious pieces of furniture.

In that sense, the earliest tool that could potentially be used for interior design purposes was Sketchpad, a tool made by computer graphics pioneer Ivan Sutherland as a PhD student in 1963 that even had the alternate name Robot Draftsman.

Whilst there was an even earlier CAD drafting tool made the previous year that was operated using dials cobbled together to control the pioneering video game Spacewar!, Sketchpad was both more widely available and easier to use.

Rather than relying on dials and switches in a manner remarkably similar to an Etch-a-Sketch, Sketchpad was the first CAD tool (and the first computer program ever) to use a graphical user interface, as well as a light pen to allow designers to physically draw onto the screen.

Exactly how this was used in interior design is unclear, but it would inspire tools that were dedicated to modelling building interiors and exteriors.

Arguably the first of these was the Building Description System, a tool designed to allow designers to not only create digital technical drawings but alter them and add additional information such as materials and budgetary implications.

This tool, along with other similar early tools such as Sonata and RUCAPS, was limited by the sheer cost of the computers used to run them. 

This meant that only larger design houses could afford the equipment, and as a result, it was primarily used for office buildings and industrial complexes where precise designs were required.

This began to change with the development of AutoCAD in 1982, which was a similar tool that could be run on personal computers, and then the development of Radar CH in 1984, a three-dimensional tool that would later become known as ArchiCAD.

Once it became more widely available to architects and designers, the benefits could also be provided to far more people. Whilst not every interior designer uses software, it can be an invaluable tool for showing exactly what is possible with your space.