Bring your dream to life

Thanks to all the digital tools now available, it’s a great time to build things. I have visions in my head of a house I would like to design and build. Dreams are a great place to start a project, but if you really want to figure out how to do it, and what it will actually look like, you have to move it out of your head and on to the drawing board. You can design a building in two dimensions on paper, or on screen, to work out floor plans and views of the different sides of your building. But nothing beats a three dimensional model to really bring it to life.

Once upon a time if you wanted to visualize a structure in 3D you would have to build a physical, small-scale model. Now there are many apps available that let you build virtual models of your dream house that can be rotated and viewed from any angle. A lot of the apps are designed for professionals. That means they have many features to help bring your dream into reality, but it also means they are complex, have a steep learning curve and are expensive.

Picking the right app depends on how much you want to control the process. I have no illusions that I know enough about construction that I can make a plan that I could just hand off to a builder without first consulting an architect. I wanted an inexpensive, or hopefully free, app that would help me visualize my project enough that I could then take the images to professionals to actually create working plans and build it.

The app I picked was SketchUp. This used to be a Google product but is now owned by a company called Trimble. There are several tiers of the program available for different levels of users. I opted for the free, web-based version. This gave me enough tools to create the virtual model I wanted to help crystalize my vision of the house I hope to build. There are three more paid tiers that give ever-increasing options up to the point that professionals can use it. Some of these options include access to more pre-built 3D models, more storage capacity, augmented reality viewing, plugins for more functionality, photorealistic imaging, fully rendered animations for fly-throughs, compatibility with other file types and more.

Even though the free version I chose was not at the professional level, there is still a bit of a learning curve to use it. Fortunately, there is plenty of online help available to teach you the ins and outs of the program. SketchUp has resources on its website that include lots of tutorials, from the basics up through more advanced techniques. They also have a YouTube channel with lots of good videos organized from beginner to advanced lessons. There are also blogs and forums available through the site. There’s even a live conference in Las Vegas you can attend if you really want to up your game. I made heavy use of the tutorials and videos in the beginning, and then referred back to them as needed while making my drawing.

The app works by drawing simple shapes — such as rectangles, ellipses and polygons — and then extruding and combining them to make more complex structures. It lets you put in specific dimensions as you draw them so you can get an accurate model. There are tools and functions that allow you to group, copy and align the shapes to simplify the process. Libraries of materials, textures and colors let you add realism to your drawings. For instance, you can apply clapboard, brick, stone or other materials to exterior walls or different types of wood, tile or carpeting to interior floors. There’s even vegetation, asphalt, water and other materials to build the landscaping around your structure. A great time saver is a library of prebuilt models of doors, windows, furniture and other common building elements. You can search and select the type you want, place it on your drawing and copy it as many times as necessary. Finally, you can adjust the lighting based on your location to see where the shadows will fall at any given time of day and year.

Naturally, the longer I worked in the app the easier it was to use. But there were occasional glitches that would happen that I don’t think were the result of my inexperience. Sometimes I would have to refresh the browser to clear out problems with functionality. Overall, SketchUp was a great tool to help me visualize my dream in three dimensions. Now if it could only help me finance it and convince my wife to let me build it.