Rapid Prototyping
Written on May 12, 2010 by Katherine W. Prawl
Using a 3D virtual world is not often the first impulse of building designers and architects, but maybe it should be. Here’s one snapshot of a house that was designed in about four hours, right down to the hanging plants on the loggia. Clicking the image will download a presentation (PDF, about 11.5 MB) with more images and details of the proposed house.
By using the “building” tools in Second Life (actually 3D wire-diagram and texturing tools), complex models can be constructed quickly, and with practice, easily. With a length conversion calculator in hand, I was able to build the house model at 1:1 scale. The only complexity was that Second Life uses metric measurements, while most US builders prefer English, so I wanted to make it easy to calculate square feet rather than square meters. The building platform is slightly smaller than one acre (60m square). And yes, I do intend to clean up the roofline for those architectural engineering purists out there. It’s a preliminary sketch, ok?
Oh, and of course I do have the presentation on my iPad. In fact, I created it there using Apple’s Keynote for iPad app, and exported it to PDF. This might come in handy when we talk to a real builder, since we can show him our ideas without requiring him to go into Second Life to see it. The same is true of our Realtor, who will be able to see exactly what kind of lot we are looking for. As a portable electronic portfolio, the iPad would be hard to beat.
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June 13th, 2010 at 1:38 am
Why thank you for following my blog, dear! And how cool is this post?! I really like home design & architecture, so it’s awesome to see how “technology” {or 2nd Life!} is colliding with the blueprints! What a way to see the finished product
June 13th, 2010 at 6:13 am
Thanks, Amanda! I thought your blog was really wonderful, too. It’s fun discovering new folks to follow on other sites we both like. In this case, I found one of your comments on the King Arthur Flour blog, so as well as home design and architecture, we must both like cooking. Anyway, I’m glad you enjoyed my Second Life “misuse”. If you’re interested in more, I plan to move my comments about house design to another blog that may be more suitable: http://katsarts.com/blog I hope you’ll check it out, too.
June 13th, 2010 at 7:05 am
[...] house soon. Naturally, as an inveterate blogger, I plan to write about the process, but aside from one entry on my techie blog that mainly discusses how I generated a presentation of our plan, I have not yet started to discuss [...]