3D Floor Plans for a new build

thebackbar

Hello,

I'm in the process of building a new house.

I was hoping to get a 3D floor layout created that I could edit myself, i.e. get someone to do the hard work of laying out the rooms to match my drawings etc and leave me the easier work of dabbling with different colors etc ? is this possible ?

Now i appreciate that i might be naive, with regard to the cost of 3d modelling software and the expertise need to use them.

Thanks

stevie_d

If it's a simple enough floor plan, and just for your own use rather than construction docs, a weekend , less even on Sketchup will get you going sketchup.com/

PrzemoF

I think that's what you're looking for:
http://www.sweethome3d.com/download.jsp
http://www.sweethome3d.com/gallery.jsp

Dudda

The architects office I work in regularly takes in Transition year students from various secondary schools for their work experience. I'd give them a house to design and draw up in SketchUp. To give you an idea of learning time most of the students have learned from scratch and drawn up the house in less than two days in SketchUp including furniture and applying materials.

It's very quick and easy to learn with a huge online support community and it's free to use. Get the person who did up the drawings to send them to you in AutoCAD format.This way you can import them into SketchUp and then just extrude up walls and it will be done in half the time. Do this before the 8 hours of pro version trial runs out as you loose the import feature when the trial runs out. It's the only major thing you loose when the trial goes and can happily modify the house when the trial has expired. Import furniture through the 3D warehouse to save yourself even more time.

The alternative is to build the model in Revit or similar programme but these are very expensive and a lot more knowledge and detail is required however the end result if much better.

severeoversteer

get the drawings done up for you, have a sit down beside whoever is draughting them and get him to change things as you want them,

he can provide videos of walkthroughs and interior views email them to you and you can have a look and give him feedback

shouldn't take too much hassle to get a design that you like

Emm.Murphy

As mentioned above, sketchup would be free and easy to learn. I'm a sketchup mentor in CoderDojo, teaching 8-11 years old. They have no problem using it for various projects.
I'm happy to help, just pm me.