Blueprints Home Plans Inspiration «12...Next Go

juleseast3003

Does anyone use these for inspiration when building. I'm a bit rubbish at building my houses generally look like boxes. Are generally massive and the CFE work at lot of builders use confuses me. Love to watch speed builds though

MemoriiValentine

i know how you feel.you could always look up actual house plans and go based off of those.kinda like this maybe ? https://www.houseplans.com

juleseast3003

That's a really cool site. I always try to build too big when big isn't always the best. I wish I could master all the cool building tricks

06Bon06

I also have used houseplans but with improvement I have started building houses without houseplans.

I think everyone starts out with massive houses and one way I prevented that was by placing cheap furniture then placing the free floors under it to map out the general sizes, the build walls. It stops you from using bigger spaces than you need.

Kylieb191

This is the house I made with a house plan




http://www.familyhomeplans.com/plan_details.cfm?PlanNumber=50323#image-slideshow

creativemetaphor

I don't use other people's floor plans so much, but I do often make my own floor plans ahead of time and layout everything before I start building in the game. Graph paper is perfect for this.

SimKeats

I used to have a problem with box shaped houses. Then I realized it didn't really bother me that much, its just what I tend to prefer. But I grew up in an Eichler so I'm rather partial to mid-century modern architecture, and honestly I'm pretty fond of the ultra modern styles in ITF too.
To be a little more clear, open floor plan, tends to require a rather large chunk of fairly box shaped house.

If I build a house from scratch, I usually always start with a foyer/entryway that will have enough space for fairly large stairs/tube elevators, and depending on the size of house, hallways branching off, and go from there. One helpful trick in making it look more house-like, is to make the rooms based on how much/what furniture it will have, and making sure your sims will have enough space in the room to interact without having to run across the house to the nearest empty space big enough for whatever animations they need to perform.

06Bon06

^ adding to this, something i learned from builders is to treat the outside as its own room meaning add walls and change the shape to where it feels right to you. Most pretty houses have what I call useless walls lol.

king_of_simcity7

I have made houses based on houses that I actually know. This was something I did a lot less pre TS2, especially in the TS1 days and early TS2 days and sometimes I actually find it hard to build without planning in advance

lisasc360

Right after I had brought The Sims 3, I had built a house in my game from a blueprint that I found online. I had a list of different sites for blueprints saved to my Favorites list. Then I had to replace my PC, so I had lost the house that I built but I still have the design for it as I had copied it to graph paper for later use.

I ended up building houses that I am familiar with such as my childhood home, my grandmother's trailer and my in-laws house. I have built houses without planning them out as they just pop up in my head on how I want to do them.

justbrice

I feel that blueprints would help, especially if your not a good builder like me. I was thinking of trying it out, but I don't know if it will come out right. The house is bigger compare to what it looks like in the picture.

ThePinkBookGirl

I have a few house plan magazines that I am hoping to use as the basis for some buildings in the Sims. Before I bought the Sims, I actually had a house plan design program and would use the houseplans to play around with building things. It was a lot of fun. I have also found books at my local Library with houseplans, so that might also be a good place to look.

I use the blueprints in Sims 3 mostly for Resorts, as I'm normally too distracted with other things to bother making a decent resort from the beginning As I gather funds, I go back and adjust, but I find the blueprints help create a basic shape to start from.

king_of_simcity7

@ThePinkBookGirl I have built some large hotels before but they take ages so I know what it is like trying to perfect a resort.

Oh, and welcome to the forums

06Bon06

These are 2 of the houses I build using online blueprints, so it helps a lot. The only hard part is the measurements but you have to wing it so it looks good in game

creativemetaphor

Another solution is to have your boxy house - which is a perfectly legitimate style - and do other things to make it seem less boxy. Add a covered porch or pop out the entry, decorative elements on the roof like pop-out gables (whether you have an upper floor or not), or just take one room or one section of a room and bump the wall out one square to break up a long wall. If you have a second floor, offset some of the walls (out or in) for different effects. You can have a perfectly square main floor but if you have a very different layout on your second that will really break up the visual impact.

king_of_simcity7

@creativemetaphor What I used to do was extend houses over time, starting as a small shed and then adding to it. I actually miss doing that these days as I used to end up with some very interesting houses.

Oh, and welcome to the forums

creativemetaphor

Thank you!

I confess that I actually play the Sims relatively little compared to how much I use it to make houses. I use it to get my architecture fix. I said above grid paper works great for pre-designing but that's because I doubt most people here have AutoCAD. I totally use AutoCAD to design my houses...

I have played games using a very simple starting house and then never moving my family, just making additions and some renovations as funds and circumstances allow.

candy8

I have been building houses since Sims 1 and I still can't build that well. One thing I have noticed and that goes with some of EA's prebuilt houses in the game that if you don't build them big enough your Sims will have difficulty moving around furniture and each other the Sims themselves in the game.

justbrice

candy8 wrote: »

I have been building houses since Sims 1 and I still can't build that well. One thing I have noticed and that goes with some of EA's prebuilt houses in the game that if you don't build them big enough your Sims will have difficulty moving around furniture and each other the Sims themselves in the game.

Same here. I like using some of EA's pre-built houses in the game. Sims 1 had some good pre-built houses. I also like to download houses from various websites. Building a community lot must be hard to build. I read that you have to do certain steps when you build apartments.

CravenLestat

@Kylieb191 Yours is nothing like the original,clearly you can tell the original has 600 watt electronic garage door opener,yours does not.Also if you look closely in the original you can see a single dandelion in the yard yours does not have it.So tear it down and start over

Joke good job

@06Bon06 Love how you made the little porch alcove on the first house by the front door that is awesome And the colorful flower bed is cute. 5 stars And the Wysteria growing is a nice touch.

king_of_simcity7

If you look around the internet you can find some plans all over the place.

This is a 1920s house, although the image is a bit small:



Noal Park in Hornsey in London:



Charlton House, a Georgian house:

5782341b77vl

I built one type of house for my game -

The massive "Burns Estate" (named since Sheila Burns was the first to receive this massive house). The original was built on "Mosquito Cove" lot and only used BASE items (since I only had Base at that time) -


Main house (3bedrm/2bathrm) -occasionally a half bath is added to the 1st floor (or no 1st floor bathrooms if I'm feeling EVIL)

Pool (if space/story permits it)

Pool-house (1bedrm/1bathrm) - normally I end up using the pool house as my own private gym

-- I am currently going thru a mobile-home "phase" right now and building (mostly) 2bedrm/1bathrm (single-wide) trailors for my families.

So far, I've built 5 trailor lots and a few others are in the works. I would have to say Linda vista is probably my favorite of all my trailor lots.

Welcome to the Linda Vista Mobile-Home Park (40X40 lot)


Trailor 1 - (originally, the kitchen/dining area was supposed to be on the upper half of this "split-level" home with the "wet-bar" on the lower ground level. The split-level proved too much of a pain for me - and my short temper - so I just made it a flat floor plan)


Trailor 2 - (this is the 2nd 1bedrm/1bathrm trailor that I've ever built. The 1st was called the "Mobile Flower-Box Home")


Trailor 3 - (Being the newest trailor on the lot, I gave it the horizontal siding and asphalt shingle roofing for a newer look while the others have the metal siding and metal roofing for a much older appearance)

And so you will always find your way back home...


... the famous "Sky Trailor" (It's only a shell with lights inside, but by my calculations, the sky trailor could've been a 3bed/2bath trailor!)

juleseast3003

@5782341b77vl cool do you merge your families and then play with locked doors.

king_of_simcity7

@5782341b77vl Nice houses

justbrice

@5782341b77vl You did a good job on those houses.

5782341b77vl

@juleseast3003
@king_of_simcity7
@justbrice

Thanks.

@juleseast3003 - only if I'm feeling EVIL enough do I lock them in...