SketchUp House Lab

At first I thought the process was pretty easy–you just made a cube and then added a triangle on top. That went quickly. The difficulty came from all the little features: the dormers, the windows, the bump-out, etc.

I found the way that SketchUp handles geometry is really unintuitive. When you try to drag around features, it pulls with it any faces which are attached, even if they’re unrelated. Or when you moved a window, it left a huge hole in your wall where the window used to be. Grouping things and copy/paste helped a lot with this.

I originally wanted to make more detailed windows for the front porch, but gave up on that. Same with the bay windows in the back.

I could see this tool being useful in a history class. It would be cool to see a 3d model of, e.g. the Notre Dame or the Colosseum to accompany a lecture.

A tip: Make everything a group!

Alistair

3 Comments

  1. Holy crap, your house looks amazing! How did you get the tiny pole that holds up the roof at the back?

  2. This looks really great, Alistair! I’m especially impressed by the windows – I could only seem to make mine glass, without the dividers or outside edges.

  3. We’ve all been there–we had greater dreams than was manifested in the model. But your model still looks dope, so good job!

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