Video:How to Use Design Workshop Lite

Transcript:How to Use Design Workshop Lite

Design Workshop Lite is a mighty and yet affordable home design tool. Its high functionality can be a little bit intimidating. Especially when you have no or only little experience in 3D design software. I'm Marc Stephan for About.com and I'm going to show you how to use Design Workshop lite.

Become Familiar With the Design Workshop Lite Layout

Let's assume we are owners of a classic block house and we toy the idea of adding a patio to our home. But before we start modelling our house we are going to have a look at the application environment that Design Workshop lite offers. Across the top of the screen you will find the standard menu bar. The tool palette is located on the left. In the center of the screen you will find the document window with its location bar across the bottom. Within the document window you can see the 3D cross-hair, a north arrow, and grid lines.

Experiment With the Design Workshop Lite Tools

Now let's start modelling our house. Click on the Block tool and drag out a rectangle on the floor. Now keep the mouse button pressed and use your other hand to push down the Option key (which is the Alt key for Windows). Now you can drag up the height of the block. Look at the V field of the location bar to see current height of your block.

In the next step we want to add a roof to our house. So we are using the Block tool again and draw another block on top of our first block. As you can see there are dots on each edge of the block we have just created.We can use the mid-edge dots to change the shape of the top block. To do so click on the selection arrow in the tool palette on the left. Then click on one of the mid-edge dots and drag it into the middle of the block. Do the same with the opposite mid-edge dot. Now that looks like quite a nice house.

You can use the Eye tool to admire your creation from any angle. Set the View in the View menu to Shading to see a more detailed version of your graphic.The next thing to do is to build the patio. Select the Block tool and draw the patio. Use the location bar across the bottom to check on the overall dimension of the patio.

Use Design Workshop Lite to Create Realistic Features

To have a realistic model of our house, we have to make sure that those two solid blocks, that shape our home, are actually hollow. So we select all parts of our model that are supposed to be hollow by using the Arrow tool. In the Edit menu we will find the Wallify command. Once we click it a dialog box appears that allows us to set the thickness of our walls. Our massing block turns now into four walls.

As long as we do not have any windows or doors we cannot talk of having built a realistic model of a house. So let's do this pretty quickly by using the Opening tool. Just move the cursor where you want to have a window and start dragging a rectangle. A house has usually more then one window. In order to save time we can duplicate the window several times. To do so, choose the Arrow tool and select the window. Then go to the Edit menu and give the Duplicate command. You can use the same technique to duplicate any Design Workshop object. Before we finish let's have a look at our very first 3D model. Now you know the basic steps that help work Design Workshop lite.

If you'd like to learn more about home design software, visit About.com. Thanks for watching.