Hello everyone, and a happy belated New Year. I have never built any type of house on the outside but mainly interior cabinets.
I have been asked to make a few changes from a design perspective to the front of an existing house. We are designing alot of interior cabinets and the client wants me to take a stab at helping them change a few things to the front of the house, mainly just the entry way. I want to basically re create the front of the house and I have all the plans.
Just wondering where to even start? I have never created a roof before but have looked at the roof extension from TIG that looks pretty cool!
I have attached a few screen shots. One is of the front of the house which and entry way and the other image is of the front elevation plan.
Any help would be greatly appreciated as to how to even start all this?? :)
Thank you gang!
If you can import the drawings into Sketchup, and have them scaled equally, at setup like below should be about all you need to reproduce the front of the house.
If you need a high precision model, you may need to follow the dimensions more closely.
Just because a regular client asks you to do something does not mean you should, especially if they are paying you. If you don’t know how residential buildings are framed and constructed - and roofs can be especially tricky - you might think about passing up this opportunity.
If you do go ahead, one approach is to ask the client to show you images of what they like better than what they have, or how they might like it changed. There are a billion possibilities, and throwing out design suggestions without having a direction, knowlege or experience is a recipe for disaster, especially to your client relationship.
Or, sit down with a few colored pencils and tracing paper and just draw what you think looks good. Forget SU. Print out a large image of the photo and go to town by hand. You’ll get better results faster, even if they’re not practical to build. SU can help you visualize ideas, but not actually generate them.
Not sure I would normally recommend advice from Fred Flintstone but this time his advice is spot on!
A couple of thoughts … That portico looks pretty nice and the glazing extends full height of the roof… a lot of cost and impact to change it…
Secondly… you could also post your design issue to Houzz website… they have a Design Assistance section where you might get some more focussed design help… Nevertheless Fred’s advice is very relevant, you could waste a lot of your time and the clients if you don’t have very specific design objectives !
Hi Jay 1
when we have such tasks, we proceed very simply.
We draw a cube with the dimensions of the house. the plans are converted into jpg and then we put them on the house cube or photo like materials. In the case of plans, we draw each view separately. But the process is the same.
The next steps You can find such processes on YouTube.
I take it from this comment and your screenshot that you just need a standard 2D elevation, but then you go on to mention TIG’s roof extension.
You need to start by asking yourself whether you actually need a 3D model (for which SU is ideal) or whether you just need a 2D (flat) image. That can certainly be done in SU but it’s not what it’s made for.
Looks like you already have a (roughly accurate) elevation from the architect’s drawings. You can just import that, square it up, and make sure the scale is right. You can then trace over it.
Thanks guys for all your feedback! Much appreciated. All I am really after is to just show our client some concepts and it does not have to be exact and any renders will not be used to build from as they have a contractor and architect for that who will do required renders for that.
