Progress Report

I spent quite a bit of time working on the "How to design houses with Home Designer" section of my web site. I dunno ... I have about 20 pages, or so, and about 50 images (and this is just the size of the second iteration; the first had about a dozen pages and about 30 images). The design idea I picked, which I talked about before, seems to be somewhat more complex than I really want an example to be. Oh well.

As with any design, there are always problems and "issues" to be resolved. I found myself feeling compelled to travel down several potential paths to a solution, just to be complete, but then eventually realizing that each problem would suggest 3-10 different possible solutions, and if I fully discussed each and every one, I could easily end up with 50-60 pages of design discussion. Too much.

To be sure, design is the most important aspect of the problem. There is a philosophy and an approach (actually several), and even though I am not a practicing architect, I have been designing software for more than 25 years (yeah, I'm that old), and in that time I've learned a few things about the design process. In my mind I can assess (and discard) 80% of the ideas I come up with in just a few moments; others may want the benefit of knowing more about design heuristics, rather than to have me simply say: "I chose this solution", or "I chose that solution" without explanation. It's the explanation of the design process that can't be done in a couple of paragraphs. Explaining how to manipulate walls or doors is easy by comparison.

Now I'm thinking about using my friend's wiki software and building a "Home Designer Wiki". This would be mostly concerned with how to do things with the software, and has the benefit of permitting other knowledgable users to post content, as well. Not only that, but it would permit confused users to post "questions" for discussion (though a wiki is not a forum, per se), and have their questions addressed.

Every time I contact Home Designer technical support (they are always prompt and courteous) I find out one more thing that I need to know, but that is not documented about the software. They speak in terms of "the software likes it when you do this", and "the software doesn't like it when you do that". Yeah. Some things it does very well, other things seem to be large challenges. What may be intuitive to you and me sometimes doesn't translate well when you try to model it. My latest issue concerns some columns (made up of walls) that I placed in the perimeter walls of my current house design. According to the "official" source, the presence of these columns caused the bottom frames of my windows to extend past the edge of the windows and clear across the floor plan. They are quite visible in all the 3D views. So, a "problem" with the exterior walls caused windows to malfunction. Here's the image (TBS) that illustrates this graphical artifact.

Incredible, but apparently true. I haven't had time yet, to go back and revise my design to find out if the proposed solution (use soffits for the columns instead of walls) will work, or not. Of course, if it doesn't, there isn't much I can do except to remove windows until these lines go away. Or live with them.

So, that's the latest word on things. As always, stay tuned.