Designing Your Home on the Computer
Written by James Kroeker, Senior Draftsman
So you have an idea in mind for you dream home? Or perhaps you want to remodel? How about that new garage you've always wanted? You have a general idea in mind, but still would like to 'refine' it? Unfortunately, you cannot go to the supermarket, buy a "101 home plans" magazine, rip out your dream home house plan, submit it to the building department. And, of course, you want part of this house, part of that one, and maybe a little of the other. It seems that even if it were 1001 home plans, there just isn't one that perfectly suits your needs, much less meet the State requirements for construction.Now, thanks to modern technology, and all the free time you seem to always have (grin), you can design your own preliminary plan. In doing so, you can save a bundle of cash when it comes time to do the actual construction drawings. Then, when you want to make a change that occurred to you in the middle of a dream last night, you can, all by yourself, (saving even MORE money).
Over the next few months we will be using a fully operational cad program called SoftCAD3d Lite (link to software at http://www.softcad.com ) to design a preliminary of a garage. This program is absolutely free and one of the best looking free and complete products I’ve seen on the web so far.
So dig up your old sketches, bring back to life your old ideas, and let’s get them down on paper...or in the computer, in this case.
The program also has two documents that you can download for instructional walkthroughs of the software. Go download the main program, and both documents; start familiarizing yourself with the program. Be ready by next month as we start our first project together.
That's all this month, I look forward to next session’s lesson.
James
Senior Draftsman
Fred J. Becker, Architect
http://www.teleport.com/~fjba
(Check out The 3D Architectural Renderings site. There you will find: an image gallery, panoramics, walk-through motion videos, and even downloadable models.)
Fred J. Becker, Architect's E-mail
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