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Architecture / Home Design Software?
shroudedmoon asks: "I'm looking for a solution to create a printable floor plan (line drawing) and 3D walkthrough of a house that I'm preparing to build. I've got a rough design on paper that I want to tweak on the screen, and then show to my architect/father so that he can create the finished and buildable blueprints. I've know there are consumer packages out there like 3D Home Architect from Broderbund, but I've heard that the graphics and navigation are less than spectacular. I also recall a Slashdot article, a couple of years ago, about the possibility of using the editor of one of the 3D shooters (Doom, maybe?) as an architectural tool, but I can't seem to locate it. Just curious if anyone out there has had any experience with anything similar, or which of the current 3D Shooters might have the best editor for something like this."
I use q3radiant for all my 3-D designs. Scale: 1 unit = 1 inch for large items (house, shed), 1 unit = 1/8 inch for furniture. I've got scans of various woods, plus scans for the colors we use (paint, carpet) and a photo of our fireplace for the house model. I even have a perl script to produce a "cut list" for certain types of furniture projects.
> consumer packages out there like 3D Home Architect
> from Broderbund, [...] I've heard that the graphics
> and navigation are less than spectacular
True, especially for older versions. Newer ones are quite good, though. Still, for a quick-n-dirty layout you could do worse than spend $10 on 3D Home Architect Deluxe 3.0 at Wal-Mart. It takes a lot of the drudgery of drawing walls and structures out of using a package like AutoCAD, where making radical design changes can be pretty expensive (time-wise). Plus it can export to DXF, if you want to keep working with a more "serious" tool (I just tried it, and my house plan loads fine in AutoCAD 2004, and all the object entities were preserved). It's got a definite Windows 3.1 interface, but for $10 it does quite a lot. I'm completely renovating an 1890s house and am using it for laying out new floorplans and playing what-if, and it works just fine.
I've tried Broderbund's 3D Home Architect, and I've found that the design is horrible. I tried making a simple floorplan for an apartment so I could see how/where furniture can fit in, and it was such a headache. The obvious thing a user would do is to draw the lenghts of the walls they measured, and then plug in the furniture. But when I did that, I found I was coming up a few inches short, even though I knew certain things would fit. That's because the damn software would draw the walls with the space between the exterior and exterior wall! WTF?!? There wasn't even an option I could use to turn it off. It was impossible (maybe a feature that wasn't documented in the help file) to draw a simple plan with dimensions that one measured to get a feel for a place.
So in response to your question, I have no idea, but I agree with you in that 3DHA is a nightmare to use.
I previously used this editor Valve Hammer Editor 3.4.exe for Half life map making, but it works for Quake and other bsp using games. It has what they call 'furniture' items, which are libraries of pre-built meshes. These may be useful to you or may not (many are lab items for half life ect..). Anyway, this is a nice editor and of course any FPS is nice for previewing the house.
Here's a halflife and other fps tools page url: http://www.valve-erc.com/content/?page=utilities, which you are sure to find useful
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You asked about FPS but I have recently started using Punch Software's applications and like them. One interesting bonus is the ability to print out sections to make a cardboard house so while its not an FPS you could simulate one with some old actionfigures :) Seriously though its great software and comes with a 90 day no questions asked 100% refund policy. Now thats great! I often wonder how many people just use it then return it? Well its a keeper for me.
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I can't sing great praises of it, but I found Cycas to be very capable and it runs well on Linux. I was able to use it for very accurate floor plans prior to moving into my house. I traded emails with a guy that designed (and apparently built from) a new kitchen with it and was planning his dream home with it.
However, expect a certain level of frustration learning any advanced draw program.
It uses POVRay to render and is partially free beer.
http://www.cycas.de/
Well first thing I should say is that I used to work for ViewBuild. That said, ViewBuild is an ass-kicking piece of software for whipping up designs fast.
It doesn't do the floor plans - yet. Since it's very plug-in friendly (everything down to the "Quit" menu option is a plugin - though they're packaged away), I'm sure the guys are working on it. Since this is Slashdot, many of you may be keen to know that it uses Python as a scripting language.
The main focus of ViewBuild is getting a design up as quickly as possible, and be walking around it and editing it as fast as your machine can push it. Some of the stuff people have been building in it is just incredible. It's a lot faster than traditional CAD packages. The difference is that it isn't focused on accuracy. It's more like a drawing package where you're more concerned about how it looks than if two sections are lined up at 60 degrees and are 6.225 feet long.
It has a few geek-cool features as well, though I don't know what made it into the final package. Multiuser mode was really cool. We had a whole group of people wandering around editing the same building.
Python scripting rocked. You could build a plug-in in no time.
It really pushed the graphics hardware. We used OpenGL, and made things really fast.
So, my (probably biased) vote goes to ViewBuild.
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