Drawing a House Plan

Many architectural or "modern living" types of magazines will have sample house plans that can give you an idea of how such plans are drawn, as can some classes in mechanical or computer-assisted drafting. Some of this will about the techniques of construction, dimensioning the drawing, specifying the materials, etc. More important will be your visualization of what you want to build, but this more important step will depend on knowing the basics, such as geometry, which will enable you to communicate your concepts so that they can be built.

I'm getting a whiff you're not an architect or a housing engineer.

If this is so, just take a stationary paper block, a ruler, a pencil and an eraser, and start drawing.

Imagine what you would like to have there and draw it.

Measure what you want there in the right scale, proportional to real dimensions.

Erase and re-draw when you change your mind about something.

When your plan is complete, show it to an architect or better yet, a draftsman, and if it's for a real purpose, show it to a construction engineer.

Soon, you'll get the hang of it, and improve.

Nah, four dimensions, as in the Robert Heinlein short story, "And He Built a Crooked House."

Check out google sketch up. It's a free download and works pretty well once you familiarize yourself with the features. I used it to make patent drawings, it has even more features for drawing house plans. Good luck

Now, I'm not an engineer of any type. Just a know nothing know it all but when I needed to expand my house to accommodate my growing family I just took to the paper and let it lead me.

I had a basic idea of haw much space I had to work with and how many rooms I needed. It took a couple of weeks to figure out all that was needed then a couple more to get everything on paper. In the end it came out great.

I found that the hardest thing was to get a contractor to follow my designs. Not that there were design flaws but it seems that here in NJ (USA) many contractors seem to want to build things how they want them rather than how we want them.

I could go on but...

First, obtain an old copy of the reference textbook "Architectural Graphics", and after you have studied it enough (along with some drawing practices) you can graduate up to Google Sketch or another "canned" DIY house designer software package that's available even at Walmart, Amazon.com or Ebay.....

Just adding my 2 cents in....

I'd search for free/lite CAD software, like

http://www.cadstd.com/

or if you want something with a bit more features

http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/free-cad/index.php?title=Main_Page

Set aside some time and learn CAD.

Any G.D. way you want to. Most folks use paper and pencil. Smart ones draw to scale, that is to let one inch length drawn on paper represent a longer distance - say 1 foot -in the finished house. Paper with a rectangular grid pre-printed lightly on it eases the job. Learning and using he actual dimensions of all the structure components and furnishings to be accommodated will make your ideas realistic. When your frustration level peaks out, hire an architect or at least someone with both building and drawing experience.

Enjoy!