Doing stuff with flats
So, as you may know, I'm trying to buy a flat. And, being the control freak I am, I want to know what I'm getting into. So I've been modelling some of these places to get and idea of what I can do with them. Obviously walking through the real place and taking pictures is a good place to start, but that doesn't really give you a feel of what it will look like when you tear down a wall or put in your own furniture. So I've been using a couple of home design software packages to model the places and put them through the ringer as it were.
The biggest problem I've been facing is that they're all just CAD software. You put objects in an environment and move around. There's little more to it, and there's little in there to simplify the sort of thing you'd actually want to do in home design. Sure they use realistic wall sizes and furniture, and realise that walls are usually vertical, but usually that's where the optimisation ends.
The walkthroughs on these things are terrible. Your bog standard FPS game does a better job of moving around environments than these. And they're better at giving a sense of immersion as well.
What I want is to say to the programme that I'm 175cm tall - let me just walk around the place. I don't want to walk through walls, or accidentally end up hundreds of feet away an unable to find my way back. I want to be able to just walk up stairs. I want to be able to sit in chairs. I want to bump my head on low door frames. It's all stuff the program should know how to do, just no one's appeared to have bothered to do so.
For that matter, it'd be nice to be able to say "I'm in a wheelchair" and let me move around the place, showing the correct PoV. It'd be pretty obvious where the obstacles like stairs, narrow corridors or overly steep ramps are. Similarly seeing an infant or toddler point of view would certainly help making the place baby-safe. There's so much potential there. Perhaps I'm just buying the wrong software or I'm just not the market they are looking for. If they want to sell to people to make pretty static pictures or print out flooplans then I can see why they skimped on the walkthrough part. But I'd really like to have some software designed for a normal person.
The biggest problem I've been facing is that they're all just CAD software. You put objects in an environment and move around. There's little more to it, and there's little in there to simplify the sort of thing you'd actually want to do in home design. Sure they use realistic wall sizes and furniture, and realise that walls are usually vertical, but usually that's where the optimisation ends.
The walkthroughs on these things are terrible. Your bog standard FPS game does a better job of moving around environments than these. And they're better at giving a sense of immersion as well.
What I want is to say to the programme that I'm 175cm tall - let me just walk around the place. I don't want to walk through walls, or accidentally end up hundreds of feet away an unable to find my way back. I want to be able to just walk up stairs. I want to be able to sit in chairs. I want to bump my head on low door frames. It's all stuff the program should know how to do, just no one's appeared to have bothered to do so.
For that matter, it'd be nice to be able to say "I'm in a wheelchair" and let me move around the place, showing the correct PoV. It'd be pretty obvious where the obstacles like stairs, narrow corridors or overly steep ramps are. Similarly seeing an infant or toddler point of view would certainly help making the place baby-safe. There's so much potential there. Perhaps I'm just buying the wrong software or I'm just not the market they are looking for. If they want to sell to people to make pretty static pictures or print out flooplans then I can see why they skimped on the walkthrough part. But I'd really like to have some software designed for a normal person.