Modeling My House In Blender

We’ve been thinking about improving our home. Perfect time for a 3D model!

I’ve reached the point where bigger construction changes are needed. So I recently spent some time modeling the house. Below are some of the fruits of that labor.

I went with Blender as I have a good amount of past experience with it, it’s open source, and I love that it’s entirely Python, complete with scriptable hooks into most/all functions (that’s a future post ;)

When modeling a fixed structure like a house, it’s best to start by measuring everything and creating a 2D floorplan. You can then import that into blender and create all of the 2D walls on top of it. (Hard to see, but in the picture below I’ve modeled on top of the walls)

Floorplan with 2D walls

You can then extrude those walls out into the 3rd dimension.

Too many walls!

Things can get chaotic quickly, so I found myself doing some organizing, a Blender feature I hadn’t needed much in the past.

Blender object folders

This led me to some interesting perspectives of my home, like being able to “see” where the geothermal pipes and wells actually are.

x-ray view of the geothermal wells

I was also able to generate schematics to send to architects, a useful power I now have as designing a home with an architect in the middle of COVID-19 is tough.

Schematics of basement

Finally, I started playing around with my own architectural ideas. (I have a lot to learn, but I’m sure Escher would be proud)

A house with too many stairs

Now that I can see through all of my walls, onward to bigger challenges!

Outside view of house

Resources

(I find it hard to learn modeling by reading articles, so all links go to Youtube)

Edward Romano Written by:

I dabble in, and occasionally obsess over, technology and problems that bug me