Architects or Artists - Do you draw on your PC?

[Hot White Trash]

I was watching one of the home design shows and the contractor was showing floor plans on his computer. I was wondering if there is software that lets you do this- draw floor plans or even art on your pc. I am looking for a way to draw an apartment and design it using my pc.

 

[rareboy]

There are tons of CADlite programs that allow you to do this.

An actual architect's/engineer's office is loaded with about 20k to 100k of software to draw up your dream house, but I suspect you can find something for about 100 bucks somewhere.

 

[Harke the Boeotarch]

When designing something like a room or a small appartment on a computer, nothing beats 3-D modeling.
Google SketchUp is a wonderful, free program that's easy to use for what you'll be wanting to do.

AutoCad is a bitch and needs to die.
It's very expensive and it tends to give architects RSI through it's user unfriendly interface.
Like ACE000 already mentioned, learning to draw a very simple plan and plotting it correctly in AutoCad is so complicated that it's probably not worth it.

I will never forgive them for releasing a student version of their software that ensured that every single plot had "student version" written diagonally accross it.
If you saved it on a machine with a non-student version, the drawing you might have worked on for sixty hours was still ruined.
They actually made people pay for that.

Finally, if you're good at drawing by hand, that works wonderful too, and is actually still preferred by many professional designers.
If you scan the drawing, you can color it with Photoshop.

 

[Spiff]

Google Sketchup is awesome. You can model just about anything your heart desires much more easily than any other software. It's got a texturing tool that is impressive for its simplicity. And you can easily import 3D components made by others from Google's 3D warehouse. Need to add a door or a window or virtually anything else? Just import one instead of making from scratch.

Although it is simpler than other software, it still has a learning curve. But there are plenty of tutorials which don't require an engineering degree to understand.

 

[Hot White Trash]

Thanks for the recommendations. I also found something called "Chief Architect," but it was way more than I was looking for.

I will check out Google sketchup.

 

[Harke the Boeotarch]

GIMP is a free image manipulation program, which isn't quite as good as Photoshop (which isn't free), but probably adequate for your needs.

 

[Spiff]

Heck, Sketchup's push/pull tool in itself is one of the greatest software inventions ever made. Instantly convert any 2d surface to a 3d shape with your mouse.

 

[Harke the Boeotarch]

Heck, Sketchup's push/pull tool in itself is one of the greatest software inventions ever made. Instantly convert any 2d surface to a 3d shape with your mouse.

On the other hand, trying to create spheres or curved surfaces in Sketchup makes Dante's Hell seem like Disneyland.

You won't usually be needing to do a lot of that, though.

 

[Spiff]

On the other hand, trying to create spheres or curved surfaces in Sketchup makes Dante's Hell seem like Disneyland.

You won't usually be needing to do a lot of that, though.

Actually, not that tough. There are tutorials on those. But if you need a spherical shape, just import one from the 3D warehouse and mod it all you want. Why reinvent the wheel with basic shapes?

 

[Harke the Boeotarch]

Actually, not that tough. There are tutorials on those. But if you need a spherical shape, just import one from the 3D warehouse and mod it all you want. Why reinvent the wheel with basic shapes?

IIRC if you want to make a sphere, you have to draw a circle on the xy plane and then draw a circle on the xz or yz plane above it and extrude it along the curve of the lower circle until it snaps into itself.

Hardly easy.

Now try combining the sphere with the rest of your model and you will see just how hard it is to combine one neatly with the rest of you model.