Sketchup and Remodelling an Existing Home

[MountainWalker]

So now on to the next project.

We do not like the exterior look of our home and want it to have a more timber framed, rock and wood look versus the vinyl siding that is currently on the house.

I want to draw the home in Sketchup and then try different looks, similar to what the fella was trying to do with his veranda extension.

If you are aware of any sites or forums that you believe would help in this process, by all means let me know.  Also, if you have done something like this, I would appreciate any tips you may have.

I also have all the blueprints for the house.

Thanks

[witterbound]

It depends on how accurate you want your sketchup model to be.  There is a feature of sketchup that allows you to take a picture of your house and import it into sketchup. 

After working with the picture and doing some fancy stuff, you can actually end up with a 3D model that looks like your house on the side that the picture was taken on.

After that you could change the siding, roof, etc to one of the textures and colors in the sketchup libraries, or do something like add a timber frame entry.  I've played around with importing pictures like this into sketchup, but I haven't' perfected it . 

[bigshow]

Maybe this advice is infuriating, but I guess I cant say enough good things about the Go 2 School sketchup tutorials.  I ran thru almost all of them to learn how to use sketchup.  They cover most everything you are looking to do.  If you use iTunes (I'm sure there are other podcast subscription clients), you can subscribe to the podcast and easily view the episode list (the website isn't very good for at-a-glance episode lists).  Now, if you want photo real renders of your house, I'm not too sure there is free software for that - but you can get fairly close using textures in sketchup.  I apologize if you were looking for a quick answer, but if you don't know about these podcasts - you should.  Excellent stuff.

http://www.go-2-school.com/podcasts

oh, and of course Clark Bremer's TF (http://www.northernlightstimberframing.com/su/) ruby scripts if you really get into building timber frames...

[witterbound]

The photo renders are part of the free sketchup.  I don't have the one you have to pay for. 

[happyj]

I looked at this site as well
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=aidanchopra&view=videos

as was stated earlier this site is not very well indexed so it is kinda time consuming running through what someone called it.

good luck