My Virtual Home - software

Has anyone used this to see what their new house would look like or what colours they might like to have?

I am wondering if its worth downloading or it might be a bit too difficult to use?

If you have used it and picked up some tips - please feel free to share

I found MVH very hard to use and ended up using Google SketchUp instead. Much easier to use and there are heaps of training videos out there as well as a huge array of models to use.

Does google sketchup cost anything? Also, does it have paint colours you can use, I think my virtual home you can use dulux colours??

MVH is not too hard to use, just takes some getting used to, I have built 3 houses in the program (we had a shortlist of 3 houses) and it good to get a feel for what the house will look like. Just note that the colours that you select realy aren't anything like the real thing, so you really can't use it for colour selection.

Sketchup is no cost...hahaha but you will find something else that consumes your time LOL
Beware... can be addictive.

I find it very helpful.
I can produce a 3d image of a form structure ie benchtops etc.
in an hour or so.. then everything is exact to the mm.

'cept nothing much you buy these days is to the mm ..

Onc

Our house is a custom build so seeing what its going to look like would be awesome (although imagine if I spotted something we wanted to change but it would be too late for that )

Main reason was for colour selection need to pick a roof colour in a couple of weeks and still dont know what we are gonna go with

We found MVH reasonably easy to use, cheap (no more than $5), and great for seeing the project in 3D and walk around all the rooms. The only sad thing is that you can't print out the results, or even the floor plan (as far as we can work out.

Another good thing is links directly into various manufacturers' databases, such as bricks, tiles, colorbond, etc.

As for colours, absolutely nothing on the Internet or on a computer should be used for colour choice when it comes to building - always get real samples.

[quote="cyberman"]The only sad thing is that you can't print out the results, or even the floor plan (as far as we can work out.[quote]


Have you tried using screenshots and then pasting into MSpaint? From here you can save it as a new image file.

Simple as hitting "print screen", then opening mspaint and "paste" (or ctrl-v)

As long as you can see it on the screen, you can save or print anything this way.

thanks for the suggestion, but screen resolution is only 72dpi while normal printing is at least 300dpi, and even my biggest screen is not as big as A3 paper that plans are usually printed on, so the print quality would be woeful when enlarged to A3.

Yeah I understand that - and we are getting sample pots of paint to have a look at the colours in "real life" but I really want to see my house with a couple of different colour combinations, being dune roof with say surfmist render and some grey then the opposite with a surfmist roof and then dune and white render. I guess its going to give me a general idea and give me an idea of whether my choices are going to look too busy.

I have downloaded MVH and I will have a play with it on the weekend. I hope I can work it out ok!

You could also try 'Snipping tool' if you are using vista

Yep using Vista but have no idea what the snipping tool is... Could you possibly point me in the right direction??

I have uploaded my floor plan, think I have put the boundary pegs in for the right size but when i add a room, how do i customise the size of the room?

Press your Start button in bottom left. Then in the search window type "snipping" it will bring up the link