I’m doing a little project designing a house I’m planning on building in a few years time…
After much playing around with lots of different bits of software, I’ve pretty much decided on Blender for the material assignments and final renders and animations (maybe I’ll try one of the free renderers via plugins, not sure yet).
I had thought I could do the base design in Design Workshop Lite (I quite like the interface). However, the DXF export is effectively disabled in the free version, you can’t get a good model out… Apparently the DXF format you can export is not supported by many 3d programs (according to something I read on a message board somewhere).
Can anyone suggest a good freeware drafting program that would let me create the model fairly easily, do simple plan/elevation drawings, then export to a DXF format Blender can understand?
BTW, if anyone has done anything similar with architectural modelling in Blender and has any hints and tips, they’d be much appreciated!
I don’t have any recommendations for a CAD package, but I’ve done 3D walkthroughs for work in Blender in the past. I actually had a 2D image of the layout that I then modeled over top of with blender. I just had the image be a UV-mapped image on a plane. It was accurate enough. So if you started out with a simple 2D layout program (even Vizio would work)…
Also, you can do architectual models directly in blender if you assume each Blender-Unit is 1 foot… Holding down Ctrl while extruding will move a vertex 1 unit at a time. Also you can put in arbitrary distances if you hit N.
thanks for the replies: after a bit more playing about, I think I’m comfortable using Blender to make the base model: once you get used to working with faces and edges and vertices it’s not so bad! The n key hint was v useful, thank you!
But a quick question: I’d like to move groups of vertices by selected amounts. Is there a hotkey for this? N only seems to move one of the selected vertices.
No hot key but you can use Gkey+shift to move with smaller increments.
Gkey+ctrl to snap to the grid, Gkey+ctrl+shift to move in 1/10th the grid size at a time.
If you click with the middle button (MMB) while initiating the move you will restraint it to one axis.
You could change the grid size in the window that appear with shift+F5 and so modify everything to your needs and taste.
If you want load this file of mine and see how I did set many different screens arrangements (the white dash to the left of the letters SCR: at the top of Blender) to have the grid quickly set to different scales both in imperial measures or metric. http://pages.infinit.net/bobois/avion17.blend
For fun, to see the animation just use alt+Akey.
Have fun.
Jean
P.S. Precision is not tnat important for you. At most will you do massing studies in Blender but any architect begins just by that. Fortunately, Blender is much more fun to use that AutoCAD which was never thought for 3D.
For buliding design i use a unit grid system made up of emptys that i name and place on a reference layer. You can have a look at what i mean http://www.shell.linux.se/nozzy/rulerGrid.blend
i own IMSI’s Floorplan3d design suite, i must say its crap.
and its DXF export is also crap.
as for doing a house in blender. depnding on what unit system you use depends on how easy it is. Metric system is PERFECT for blender. it is unbelivably acurate for metric conversion LOL (good old 1-10)
inchs and feet NO WAY.
the best way is for a floorplan-3d coversion. just do it flat then. extrude all the walls vertically and vioala you have a house.
i have done most of my house plan things in floorplan because they have all the standard sized doors etc… and its jsut drag and drop wall ehre LOL but honestly i think blender is easier to use (floorplan 3d actually got me into 3d in the first place so i have it to thank for that LOL)
there is the link for you. it is easy to use unless you ahve already tried it LOL
but if you like to push programs to the limit by customising everything (like i try) then version 5 was REALLY HARD LOL. but you can import your own designed furnature etc… via DXF so you could make an item in blender and import it into the program.
it might be worth a try as the program seems to have come a long way since my days of using it.
This is your opinion and I respect it but, only for the benefit of Leon I must point out that I am a cabinet maker living in North America and that I use Blender for imperial measures all the time with success. I export to AutoCAD to add the measurements.
Thanks for all your hints and tips: looking at the models you mentioned has made life quite a lot easier!
I’ve managed a little test shed design with window holes etc and I think I’ll manage now… I’m from UK and luckily we moved to metric just before I went to school (but we still use miles rather than kilometres!).
Now I have to work out how to get the best results from radiosity! The initial results are looking good, but some strange artifacts around some edges on flat surfaces… Oh well, I’ll worry about that when I come to it!
