Creating a Simple Conservatory

Creating conservatories, garden rooms, greenhouses or glass covered extensions can all be achieved within 3D Architect. All that's required is a design and a little patience and it's possible to create some extremely complex structures.

Our guide here will give you an insight into some of the tools and methods that can be combined to create such structures and to demonstrate this we will create a simple conservatory like this:

 

1. Make sure you are in Construction Mode (F12 toggles between Design mode and Construction mode)
2. We will now make a second building as the basis for the conservatory. A guide to creating and using multiple buildings can be found here Training>Written Tutorials>Split Level Home if you need a refresher. So navigate to Building>New Building and create the basic shell of your conservatory (remebering that we only require a single storey for this purpose)
3. You should now have your two buildings, consisting of our completed basic example house and our open shell single storey conservatory building. Now we need to make this building represent a conservatory.
4. The simplest way to replace the brick walls with windows is to use a single window, sized to run the length of the entire wall. To acheive this we will first add windows to the side walls of the conservatory. Measure the internal wall length in advance so that we know how long our window will need to be. Then simply choose the best window type for your own purpose and set the height/length.
5. In our example we left a small wall around the base of the conservatory, and sized our window to ceiling height. The 'window with fan light' type was used as this provides sufficient options and flexibility to draw a single window as multiple panels by using the vertical bars option. This is repeated for both side walls
6. For the south facing wall, I inserted a french door in the middle of the wall, then simply used the same window model to run from the corner to the side of the door (again use your measure tool to get the right settings)
7. The finishing touches for this wall were to use the rounded corner wall tool to round off the angles on the edges and to use another window above the door to complete the conservatory walls. This is easily done by just setting the sill height to be just above the maximum height of the door.
8. The next step is to create the roof, and for this we will need a simple glass panel. You can of course use the panel we provided, however in the next section I will explain how to create and use the panel to form the roof.

Creating the glass panel:

In order to add our roof, we are going to need to create the roof panels ourselves. The technique we are going to use is useful for creating many unusual and ellaborate structures and is not just limited to simple panels. Indeed the techniques used here can be replicated with any combination of blocks, shapes and objects in order to create your own unique items and objects.

For reference, the method outlined here can also be found in the 'Revelead' manual which is included with 3D Architect and Home Designer Expert.

1. In order to create our roof panel we will need to be in Design Mode (remember F12 will toggle between the modes). You can either create the panel in a new project, or use the project you already have open, and just zoom out so you are working in a clear area.
2. The first thing we will create will be the frame for the roof panel. So open your object catalogue and navigate to the 'Rectangular Bar, Lying' object (Objects>Elements>Bars)
3. Drag the bar into your work space and double click it to open the properties dialogue.
4. In this dialogue, untick the boxes marked 'Snap during movement and 'Use as a snap target' as this will make alignement of your window elements easier. Then tick the 'Allow Distortion' box to enable us to enter a custom size. If you don't allow distortion then all dimensions of the object remain linked, meaning they will auto-size when you change one side to keep the current ratio.
5. We will now resize the bar to more accurately reflect it's use as part of a frame. At this point it may be worth making note of the dimensions of your existing conservatory room.
6. Ok so you need to make sure that your panels are going to cover the roof opening of your conservatory. So with our first bar we will set it to the length of our conservatory. In our example this is 4.1m. The width and depth of the bar will need to be set to a realistic level to represent the panel of the window. These are both set to 5cm in our example (0.05m). Click OK once you have resized the bar.
7. You can now copy the bar so you have both sides of the panel. Navigate to Edit>Copy.
8. We need to repeat the process above for the end bars of the panel. You can simply copy the existing bar and rotate it 90 degrees. Then resize it as appropriate. When resizing the width keep in mind two points: Divide the total length you wish to cover by the total number of panels you need in order toget the total width of the panel. Also the width bars are going to be placed inside the two length bars so factor in the width of those bars (i.e. 5cm) when calculating the total width of the panel.
9. You should now have your two length bars and two width bars to create the frame of the panel. Align the bars so that they form a rectangle. You may find this easier if you use guidelines to help with alignment
10. Once all four bars are in position forming a complete frame, we will group them together as a single element. Highlight the four bars together (hold Shift as you click each one) then once all are selected hit the Group button from the left hand toolbar (you can also do this from Edit>Group.
11. You now have a frame, so we just need to fill the frame with a glass panel. We will use a simple plate from the object catalogue (Object>Elements>Plate) and select the 'Plate, horizontal' object.
12. Resize your plate to fit the internal dimensions of the frame you have just created, remembering to tick the 'Allow Distortion' box. Once resized, position the plate in the centre of your frame. We now have our complete panel, we just need to make it transparent.
13. To make the glass into glass, we need to add a material. The materials are accessed from the object catalogue, and the tab on the left hand menu bar of the catalogue marked 'Materials'. This selection offers a different set of materials which have various characteristics designed to mimic the lighting and texture properties of different objects when rendered.
14. So from the materials catalogue, select the 'Glass' folder. From the available types, we will choose 'Glass, simple both sides'. The materials are dragged onto the object in the same way you would a texture. So drag the glass material onto our panel. Do this for both exposed sides of the panel. You can then select both the frame and panel and group them as a single object as we did before.
15. Now we have our complete glass panel for the conservatory roof. Simply drag the panel into position and copy for the total number of panels you require to complete the roof.

Your conservatory should now be complete. One thing to consider is that when you create an object such as the glass panel, it can be added to the object catalogue at any point by simply dragging it into the catalogue window. This will keep it safe for future use.