Building advice and tips needed

Boom344

I built 3 houses so far, and all of them look pretty much the same, like boxes with windows. So I need some advise and have a question or two I need help with. First, I know some people use floorplans from real life houses. To those that do I ask you this. When you look at the diminsions of the room you're building, How to you make it the same in game. I know there's a graph on the floor but how many feet is 1 square if your looking at the one bigger square with 4 smaller squares inside it. Or should i calculate by each of the smallest squares?

I'm assuming most of the pros here do use some kind of blueprint but if you don't I'd like to hear from you too. How do you come up with a house and not have it look the same as the last one? I been looking at houses in the gallery and online and i know the design features i'm aiming for but i just cant pull it off. Maybe I just need more practice. Any help and tips would be appreciated. Happy simming.

PurpleKachina

I have never used any kind of blueprint, except for the ones in my head lol.
But I have used pics a couple of times for inspiration purpose.

But usually I just picture a house that I could find myself living in. And then I go along with it.
Usually I have keywords associated with my picture too. It's hard to explain since all of it happens
in my mind, so to speak. Experimenting is also important because you cannot always create what
you have in mind. But you can most likely create something very close to the picture you had.

Well, I dunno if this helps. Just have fun with it

aquilifer

Manssom wrote: »

Experimenting is also important because you cannot always create what
you have in mind.

That's very true. Sometimes I'll build all day long, and end up bulldozing everything because it's just not right. Sometimes I just play around with a small idea, and then it blows up into an entire building. I usually start with a small idea, and then try to build around it. The Public Library started as an idea about steps which end on a foundation right next to steps which end on the ground. The Icicle started by playing around with the idea of domes. The frozen roofing on both that and the Ice Palace actually started as an accident; I clicked the wrong roofing option, and poof, an idea was born. I never have a clear idea of what the final building will look like when I start. I just build a small part that I like, then add onto it, then add onto that, until I'm happy with the whole thing. In fact, I'd be pretty surprised if many of the prominent builders on here ever tried to follow someone else's floor plans.

There are, however, some fundamental ideas that I try to apply to all of my buildings. One of the most basic is a "rule of threes." You can't have more than three of the same thing in a row. If a wall is so long that it needs four or more windows, then you should break up the line of that wall somehow. I'm a castle builder, so that usually means I add a tower. Then I look at my towers. How many are of the same shape and height? If I have two or three that are the same, then this new tower has to be different. But there are lots of other ways to break up a wall than by adding a tower. A porch or a balcony work well. You could add a room to the side of the house. Throw in a diagonal wall, maybe. I've been playing around with outdoor stairs lately, and that's fun. You just have to play around a while, and realize that, first, all of the prominent builders only got that way by practicing and making a lot of mistakes, and second, we still make tons of mistakes and bulldoze a lot of our own work. The fact that you only see a polished finished product on the gallery doesn't mean that it didn't go through twenty renovations during our build process, or start out looking like a box with windows.

PurpleKachina

aquilifer wrote: »

The fact that you only see a polished finished product on the gallery doesn't mean that it didn't go through twenty renovations during our build process, or start out looking like a box with windows.

This is so true I think many times you can tell by just looking at pictures that the creator put
a lot of work and energy into their creation.

I would also like to add that even the smallest details can make a big difference.

aka_moi

You don't look at measurements, so much as scale. One door equals one square: use the door size to guess how many squares a room is. And be flexible. A floor plan is a starting block, you won't be able to recreate 100%.