I guess most of us have done this at some time: create a 3D representation of your room or your house. Here's an in-depth tutorial on transforming an architectural drawing into a full 3D image.
Karan writes:
In this tutorial you’ll learn how to create a 3D floor plan model from an 2D architectural drawing. Karan Shah will show you some simple, yet effective techniques for constructing the walls, windows and doors following a basic interior schematic in Blender. With the model complete we’ll add materials and textures, and do a final render of the scene
Link
23 Comments
Exellent tutorial. It is still too bad all the dimensions are eye-balled. In my line of work I will need accurate distances of everything. Still very impressive. I learned a lot.
It is really not precise enough for any serious architecture in real scale..
Are there any plans to finally intergrate .dwg importer in blender?? It would make this kind of work really simple and precise.
I know many people use Sketchup just because it has autocad files importer..
Most architects or interior designers can make a DWG file from their software. Then open it in inkscape, and save it in SVG format. SVG format can be opened in blender. You will have precise 2D drawing and will not have to eye-ball.
From a quick scan this appears to be a pretty good tutorial for beginners to blender and 3D in general.
An alternative way would be creating a box and changing it's properties to match the wall dimensions (example: 2.5m high, 10cm width, 3m long). Next just snapping all the walls together.
Nice tutorial! and not a video one, easy to browse quickly. In answer to the previous comments,
you can directly export a dxf file from the dwg based cad software and
import it to Blender in precise units (without adding the Inkscape
step).
http://blendermama.com/importing-2d-cad-files-as-modeling-reference.html
Or, you can do it wery well as described in Karan's tutorial, only scale the image correctly first and use precision tools while modeling. I'd rather do it this way myself, much easier than taking the trouble to import meshes.
Great tutorial but without quick snaps and measures you can not concentrate on design but on construction and it's frustranting besides being unproductive.
I do hope this whole comments section won't turn into an innacuracy rant, when the solution is as simple as DWG->SVG (in Inkscape) -> Blender
there is a measure tool, press "N" then open "mesh Display" then check "edge length" - then under the scene tab choose either metric or imperial
Without quick snaps and measures? The mentioned standard measure-tools, the measure addon, face/edge/vertex-snap between different objects, a hundred handy ways to use the 3d cursor and Active Element-pivot, the math-in-typing-fields feature, numerical input during any transformation... compared to other 3d software I've used I feel spoiled rotten by Blender when it comes to accuracy.
I'm sure there's a bunch of stuff missing from CAD level software, but complaints probably need to be a bit more specific to be picked up by developers.
@Andrius, @Blendiac: DWG to SVG with Inkscape? Really?
I think the next big upgrade/change in Blender is to make it CAD ready.
Over the years, modeling tools have been developed, the animation system was upgraded, composting nodes were added (project Orange), a way to deal with fur & hair was added (project Peach), the Game creation tools improved (project Apricot), the user interface was revamped (project Durian), and now it has a motion tracker and will be Visual FX ready (project Mango).
I think it's time for Blender to be CAD capable (project Gooseberry??).
It needs serious snap tools (not the awkward shift+s), move from reference (avoid the unintuitive and unpredictable snap to 'closer'), use m for move and L for layer and left click to select, the units tool reworked (we do not use 'yards' or 'miles' for imperial units) with the standard being mm and m for metric, inches and feet for imperial, and should not switch from inches to feet or yards once you set it to inches. Also there should be a setting as to using decimal or fraction format in imperial.
What else?
Oh yea, a way to deal with arcs (a new mesh object called 'arc' or circle) where you can snap to it's center, and make loop cuts accurately in any angle of the arc or circle.
My CAD wish list is long. (how about dimensioning?), Improved curve editing so they work like standard SVG editing, with 2D Boolean operations. Also trim intersecting lines would be great.
There is something that Blender does better than AutoCAD, and that is 'stretching' or moving while constrained in the x, y or z.
A branch of blender with CAD tools would be fine by me, but for what I do I don't need many of the snaps and measuring tools. What blender has already is sufficient. Serious architects don't use 3DS Max for architectural work, they use Viz. I'd prefer an architectural branch to software bloated with features I don't need.
I find blender's snap tools are actually really good.
Make SURE your using/know how to use all the parts to the ctrl key snap tool.
-Use the axis locks, xyz keys and shift for inverse.
-Snap even works with scaling and rotating.-Utilise it with all the pivot point settings (active, individual origins, 3d cursor, median etc).-Utilise all the snap targets(closest, center, median, active) and elements(edge,vertex,face,grid etc) available.
-Also use the view direction.
I find only use shift+s for 3d cursor positioning and setting selection to 3d cursor.
Some things I would like to see though which are useful all around, (although you can do these things currently by creating guides and snapping to them it's a bit of a pain);
+Scaling(after creation) elements to exact length/diameter
+Show and set edge rotation (to world/local, xyz)
+Cutting tools with set angles/lengths etc
+set exact angle between 2 edges
+snap to edge on exact axis
Btw, G is perfectly fine for grab/move, there's no reason to take the key twice the distance away from the WASDXRSEVZF(ctrl,shift,tab,alt), position for such a high frequency operation.
(amazing set of hotkeys btw they make sense letter wise and are all essentially the highest frequency actions without moving your hand)
Although if you absolutely must you can change that in the preferences as well as the rmb/lmb selection setting.
Blender import CAD files in DXF format, so accuracy is guaranteed
Hey, that's even better. Thanks for a tip.
Just a quick tip - Instead of extruding the walls, use the solidity modifier. This makes it MUCH easier to make changes to walls later on. All internal doors can be booleaned same as windows so you don't need that Up to the top of the doors + Up to the ceiling walls approach.
I used this when making a rough plan of my house extension.
Yay, combining this with openstreetmap.org indoor routing will give some cool results on a completely open source base :)
Uh, in the scene tab, go to units, set imperial, enter .0254 in the scale tab
Now whenever you are in the 3d viewport, any numerical input you use for transformations will be in inches.
3D Floor plans: http://www.3dfloorplanz.com , created in 3ds max / vray
When I re-created my apartment, someone told me that I can draw a 3D floor plan in some design software in Floorpad and I really like it. Drawing the floor plans was simple and I quickly learned it. Without installing - free online. I recommend to try on http://www.floorpad.com.
Check out the picture below.
where to download the software?
On https://www.blender.org/download/ ;-)