More pics

I put together more pieces and discovered more things ...

• the floor plan tool is good for quick sketches, but the dxf files it produces are less than perfect in sketchup (e.g. the floors tend to get lost).   I think I am going to end up using it to make general plans, then when I think what I have is close enough, I'll need to do modeling from scratch in sketchup
• for some reason, even though I told floor plan to make my walls 10' high, they ended up at 8'.   This is ok for quick planning, but I would like something more accurate at some point.

So, more pics:

The main floor with the addition, but not yet the bridge.  I can see from this that it would be "nice" to stack the doors on top of each other.  I don't know that this matters (unlike windows), but it seems more tidy.  :-)

Also, this shows what I think is true, that putting in the addition requires digging.

 

 

The lower level from a top view, showing the contents (e.g. bedroom & garage).

 

Minor triumph

I am beginning to tell myself something I have known at some level, but which is percolating up to consciousness, which is -- the harder something is to do, the more triumph one feels when it is accomplished.

Of course, it is good if the thing accomplished is actually worth the effort.   However, the human unconscious has a way to handle this problem.  If something exacts a high cost, then the mind decides it is valuable.   I didn't make this up, I read it in a book, possibly Outliers or another one written by Malcom Gladwell or possibly another of that ilk.

At any rate, I have achieved something that isn't large, but it took a bit of effort, so I am declaring a moment of triumph.  Voilà

 

Simple, huh?   This took learning to do all these things in Sketchup

• set axes
• move a particular handle of the model to an absolute location
• group models
• put models on layers (controls visibility)
• rotate the model around the desired axis
• show dimensions

I also figure out how to make a dynamic model that scales only around the axes I want, and how to scale this weekend.

Plus, how to model in my cad program so I get a dxf that pretty much works for me.

Here's the main floor.  I'm working on how to remodel my current house, so it only includes part of the as built house.  Note how nicely the main floor sits on top of the basement layer.  That's what absolute positioning & dimensions will do.

A little iguana

I have an album by Mick Ronson, named Slaughter on 10th Avenue.   I think it is the only album he ever did.  The second track is called Growing up and I'm fine, in which he seems to sing that he now has a little iguana to love and how great she is, etc.   What I want to know if why he is in love with an iguana.   I mean, they are great, but not usually the subject of rock songs.

 

 

Add more floors to my model ...

I imported the rest of my present house from the Floorplan drawing.

Here is the main floor, perched over the basement. The funny overhanging look is because I didn't do anything to show that there is actually any support for the house in the crawlspace, which is what is under the front part.

Here is a top view ... [The stairs are just blocked in as a box.]

Here is a view with the top floor on. It isn't very accurate because all the walls are shown as going up to head height, when the only outer walls that go up that far are the dormers. Also, again, the stairs are a box.

I don't know how much work I'll put into making this accurate. I mainly care about getting the parts that need to be worked on accurate & most of the existing house will stay as it is for now.

House on a slope

I decided to start using Google SketchUp to model my house.   With the pro version, I can import dxf files, which my house drawing software (Floorplan) exports.   Floorplan doesn't import dxf, which is too bad, but it is easy to draw houses with it, so the combination works pretty well.

SketchUp also has an integration with Google Earth -- bring up GE, select a location, then pick import from GE & volia, the location comes into SU.   It is just a flat plane with an image on it by default, but -- hit toggle terrain, & GE's understanding of the 3D surface appears in SU.

So, I built a model of just my basement (just the part that is habitable, not the crawl space) and brought it, plus my lot with terrain into SU and mucked around until the model of the basement sits in more or less the 3D position relative to the GE view.  Here's a pic:

 

 

Sure, it is a box set into a hillside, but the slope is reasonably accurate & so is the position on the earth (as accurate as I am likely to get anyway).   This is cool because part of the owrk here is to dig, which means deciding where & how much digging to do.

 

 

Learning experiences

I went though my closet to clear out some old stuff, including clothes I made & then didn't like.   Here are the pictures of what went away.

 

A sack, made out of faux handkerchief linen.    It's a bit too transparent to wear on it's own, but it wasn't designed to wear alone.

 

This was the pattern it was made from:

 

 

And this is the overdress I made.

 

 

 

The problem is that the one good thing about my figure is that I have a waist.  Wearing a sack totally hides that & only mades me look like a blob.  At least, that's my story.  :-)

 

Here is another one with the same problem.   I got compliments on it though.  It's a learning experience as they say -- as in, it seemed like a good idea at the time, but not so much, really.