Hi Everyone!

Today we are going to talk about what to do when you move.

Now, if you are still in college, it's pretty likely that you've moved at least twice. Or, like me, you are coming to the end of your college career and have moved at least 5 times. Whatever the case, this article is meant to help you make your next apartment feel larger, more comfortable, and simply amazing.

Planning

The key to success here is to plan, to a very accurate degree, what your home will look like. Prior to move in, you should visualize what furniture you plan to use as well as how it will all fit together. I would highly recommend playing around with trimble sketchup, formerly google sketchup, for great accuracy and great visuals.

In order for this to work, you need to have an accurate floor plan of your home-to-be. After you have obtained one, or measured yourself, then you can get to work!

Now, once you've downloaded the program, and are ready to go, the first thing you need to do is to draw a simple floor-plan of your apartment. Basic navigation tools are "O" or hold middle click for orbit,"H" for pan, and scroll wheel for zooming in and out.

If you are only interested in certain rooms, then just draw them. I would recommend drawing the whole apartment for this stage so that you have an accurate idea where all of your doors are going to be located. In all likelyhood you will only need one tool for this part, the rectangle tool. The default hotkey is "R". With nothing selected, then pressing the "R" key, you can then place the first corner of your rectangle. Then type in the width and length of the rectangle separated by a comma. Then press enter and your rectangle should appear.

The next step is to select all the edges of the rooms you would like to raise walls on. You accomplish this by using the selection tool (Hotkey "SPACEBAR") and while holding the "shift" key selecting all the edges. They should now be highlighted in blue.

Next you need to offset that highlighted line to create the plan view of the wall. The hotkey for the offset tool is "F". Once the tool is active, click the side highlighted edge and then move the cursor to the outside of the room. Then, without clicking, type "6"" for your wall thickness, then press enter. Your wall base should appear!

Next, use the the push/pull tool (Hotkey "P") to pull up your walls to the desired height. Usually at least 9' high.

After you have the walls in place, use the rectangle tool to place your window openings. Generally in a living room, windows start at about 3' off the ground. Then, use the push/pull tool again to push out the window openings.

Now the Fun Part

Now that you have your shell completed, you can start playing around with furniture. All you have to do is go the the File Menu>>>> 3D Warehouse>>>> Get Models.

A model search dialogue box pops up. Now simply search for your furniture and click "download model". When prompted, click "load directly into model". Here you can see I have searched for and loaded an IKEA Lack Sidetable. Remember, here you are mostly looking for shapes, not colors, as you can change the color after you've loaded the model.

Once you have found all your furniture you can move it around at will using the move tool (Hotkey "M") and assign materials using the paintbucket tool (Hotkey "B").

Now I'm not going to go into rendering this tutorial, but if you want give the free render program a try called kerkythea. You can acheive some results much better than this one.

Click Picture For Enlarged Views
Until next time! Make your dream apartment!