House model in SolidWorks

Does anyone know where I could download a model of house?

Not too worried about detail, just the esthetics are important.

I'm currently designing a metal roof tile and would like to insert the
tiles into a model of house and render it.

Regards

John Layne

 

John.. I modelled up my bach in SW because my wife was having trouble
visualising it off the Architects plans.

You can use that if you like... includes kitchen table and stools etc.

Cheers,

Cam in Kohi.

 

Hey Cam, how did you pull it off of the architects plans? I'm
currently trying to do my own house, and trying to use the 2D to 3D
functionality, BUT, I'm curious what you did for it? Do you have a
rendering of it? Or a screen shot? Also, John, are you putting the
individual textures in? I'd love to see how it's going. My wife would
love to visualize our house as well.

 

Unless you are trying to do some really custom stuff or are looking for
an activity to fill time, I'd look at using some inexpensive home design
software rather than tackle the project in SWx.

The stuff that I used ( was a few years ago ), was $200-300, quick to
learn/use, contained regional building code information, and several hundred
textures provided by materials manufacturers. The rendering engine was 95%
the quality of PW but rendered in 5% of the time that PW needs. The sofware
was simple enough to use that even if your wife had no experience in
engineering/cad, she should be funtional in it within a couple hours.

Sorry that I don't recall the name of the software specifically, but
I've seen similar looking products at best buy, office max ect.

 

Thanks Brian. I'll look into it. Do you remember if the software was
just a rendering type software where you only see the outside, or can
you do a little fly-through into the home? That's really what we're
interested in. I was hoping to really capitalize on the 2006 new
fly-through camera. A virtual tour if you will and I wouldn't have to
buy new software. BUT, maybe that's still the way to go because trying
to get the textures would be a pain.

 

Was "fly through" capeable at a lower resolution. Had to stop and
position the camera to do a render. My sister is playing around with a
similar product made by punch software that seems to be capeable and comes
with textures and completed drop in models of furnishings, plants, ect...
seems I saw that one at office max for about $100.

 

Hate to disillusion you but the rendering I'll be doing is not going to
be high quality one-- It's just a quick representation for a client.
Probably next week sometime.

 

Bartman... I measured up the sketch plan and elevations to make up the model
because the detailed plans are still comming. My guy doesn't know how to
turn on a PC so I knew there'd be no cad files.

It's really pretty simple to model up and doesn't take long because houses
are generally prismatic. I didn't create the weatherboard shape on the walls
or show the texture of the roof, but it was helpful for others to get a
'feel' of the place. Set aside a few hours and have a go.

 

I wonder if anyone around has tried J. Jones app (NhCad, IIRC) to turn SW
models into Quake maps. I downloaded it long time ago, but never tried.
Such an app to turn SW or parasolid models into games maps would provide a
very nice walkthrough system.
.... Or fragging in your own house?

 

John
I've done several buildings in Solidworks for architects round here -
they go nuts for Edrawings! Model in SW, export as STL to Maya and
texture and render in there. Have a look at the galleries at
http://www.djaweb.co.uk
if you still need one, email me and I have a couple of generic buildings
with windows, doors etc that you can have...
Cheers
Deri

 

Hey Deri, those are some pretty good models and renderings. Are all
of them rendered in Maya? How did you gather all of the textures? If
it's possible, I'd love to have you send me a couple to look at. It
would be helpful is forming my house. Cool stuff, Deri!!

 

Most of the textures are taken from photo's - you get funny looks off
people when you're taking lots of pictures of stuff like the sides of
buildings from close up - the roof slates are actually some new Welsh
slate cladding on the side of a local chapel. It definitely gives a
better "feel" and helps put the model in context - you get the right
lighting levels and suchlike - take them on overcast days with no
shadows visible and they work OK.
The rest are bought in from various sources or collected online -
Lightwave have a free collection available and there's stuff like
Mayang's free textures for non commercial use - there's heaps of stuff
online, but it takes some sorting through. The best bet is to get out
with a digicam and blast away and paste them together in photoshop.
Stuff like the trees and cars and things are bought in (dosch designs),
but again there's sufficient stuff online for free to do a reasonable
job. Photo stitching software is very handy for pasting stuff together.
All rendered in Mental Ray from Maya - external shots are set up using a
HDRI dome and final gather, with one light for sun shadows - they take
about 3-4 hours per shot to render at about 6Mp res (dual opteron 248
with 2Gb RAM tho!). As Maxwell have just bought out the beta, I'm going
to see what that can do - first impressions are good.
Best of luck with the house - I'm hopefully about to start a similar
project for myself - extending a 15th Century cottage with an earth
covered annex to give sufficient living space - hopefully a bit "Hobbit
hole" like, but it all depends on the budget constraints and how many
friendly architects, structural engineers and tradesmen I can talk in to
doing the work at a reasonable price!
Cheers
Deri