3-D FLOOR PLANS

Michael Holigan: If you're like most people, you probably can't imagine how a finished home is going to look just from the blueprints or by walking through one under construction. Well now you don't have to. Technology is available where an architect can design your home and then render it into a three dimensional animation that you can view on your computer or on your television set.

Thanks to this 3-D animation created using Archicad software by Graphisoft, (1-800-344-3468) we can take a look right now at how this high tech house will look when it's finished. It's really great to be able to see how the house will sit on the lot, how our choices of roofing and other building materials will look when they all come together, and even how trees will effect available sunlight during the day. And because all the portions are true to scale, it's easy to get a feel for the dimensions of one part of the house in relationship to another. It's easy to see right away where the stairways, doors and hallways are. And looking into the study, you can even see how the morning sunlight will fall through the large windows.

This software allows you to move around and look at anything that you like in the whole house. You're not restricted to any one location or point of view. And you can also make changes easily, and then take a look at how you like them. You can change anything, from the type of flooring to the color of the walls, even adding and subtracting whole rooms is possible. Another great thing about this software is that it also calculates the cost of changes you make.

For home builders, virtual reality animations like this will probably never completely replace building actual model homes. But since it's easy to show customers what a lot of different floor plans will look like, and it's easy to make changes and view the impact, you're going to see more and more builders using it then. You'll be able to take the animation home on a disk or CD-ROM and take your time looking at every detail of your new house.

Episode 42 1996 - 97 Season

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