A bad workman...

week 3

For good or bad, I'm a computer geek at heart. I've loved computers since I got my first one at 4 years old; I've got a degree and post-graduate qualification in how to make them 'do stuff'; worked with them in some shapre or form my entire adult life; and generally find a way for them to be an integral part of most things I undertake. Needless to say, working through the planning and design of our extension is no different. Now spreadsheets are one thing (I'll share more on the various ones we're using to track stuff in a later post), but where things get really interesting is designing and visualising the layout.

When I first started sketching out ideas for the possible nw layout of the house, I used my default tool fr 2D stuff - Omnigraffle. If anyone's used it, they'll know it's a very powerful tool for anything from flowcharts to web design wireframing. There are even stencils for floorplanning. It did a reasonable job of getting the basics down in paper, but what I found pretty quikcly was that I needed something a little more specialist; that helped me with the art of laying out a floorplan, rather than just being a (very) good diagramming tool.

I also wanted something that I could use on the go (it's surprising when inspiration strikes you), so I poked around on the Apple app store and found Magic Plan. It's a neat little bit of software that takes some ofthe drudgery out of building floorplans as it includes an augmented reality (woo, get me) measuring tool. What this means is, it can use your phones camera to measure your room in the 'real world' and create you the basic plans from that. It offers a basic 3d rendered view that allows you to 'walk through' the space, and has a reasonable amount of included furniture to make vidualising a real interior pretty good.

I stucj with mag plan for a good amount of time through the early stages of playing with different designs and layouts. The plans you see here and here are all from Magic Plan. I was pretty happy and saw no real reason for an alternative, until I stumbled across one by chance.

The wonders of targetted advertising popped TapGlance in front of me as I browsed the web late one evening and I haven't really looked back since. Firstly, let's get the name out of the way - it's dumb. I have no idea where it came from, it offers nothing in terms of explainign what the app does, and I fully expect them to be missing out on a few users who didn't follow a link as they though the name entirely irrelevant for what they were looking for. Lucki;y I did.

It's not dissimilar from Magic Plan in it's premise - layout rooms; drop funrinture, etc. in to them; view in 3d to see how it looks. It doesn't offer the AR capability to measure out your spaces, but the interface is pretty intuitive to get your structural elements right. Where it really excels though (and where it's really targetted) is in the interior design space. It has a rich catalogue of models for all kinds of furniture (inside and out), and even allows direct import of external models from places like 3DWarehouse, so you can get pretty close to items that match what you have (or want) in your space to really see what things will look like. Great you say, it's MagicPlan++, why would I redraw all my stuff. Well, what swung it for me (and it probably helps that my background in computers is on the graphics side of things) was the rendering. The walkthrough 3D is of a pretty good quality, but the photorealistic rendering of stills is where it really stands above other tools of this type.

As you can see, the quality is pretty good (!). It's a great way to really visualise how your space is going to look, and with the ability to add your own textures; choose your lighting; and generally tweak most things, you can get pretty close to a 'real' view of your new space before any walls have been built (or removed), which is likley to be much more cost-effective.

Incidentally, here's the regular 3D walkthrough view of that sane layout.

Now TapGlance isn't perfect - it takes a bit of learning to get the best out of it; and editing things in the 3d view (to get rotations correct or line things up vertically) can be a little fiddly - but overall it's a great tool to have in your bag of tricks.