How do you approach building?

I've never done a huge amount of building in The Sims, but I'm really looking forward to it this time. I've been wondering about the best ways to plan lots. Right now, I've been looking up house plans and then adapting them to graph paper.

How do the rest of you plan things out? Do you work freestyle or plan everything out meticulously? Do you work from real plans or do it all from your own head?

Personally I feel it's better coming from the head to let your imagination just flow(freestyle I mean, Lol). I did a lot of house building in Sims 2 and loved it for the sake of saying "I built this on my OWN, for my Sims to live in". But yeah, for me to get comfy, I would go to sky-view and see the big square grid right in front of me. An just think about what square/rectangle shape I would make really(Like make a shape of an "L" or a "T" or etc and so on, besides the basics of a plain square and rectangle). So then next I would divide the square/rectangle shape up of like this room would be small or big so I would divide that room to be it's own with a wall. All of this is in sky-view for my self to plan out the 1st floor. An if your talking about going further to second floor and such. You can come from sky-view and look back up from that view occasionally to know where you are placing and dividing the walls to make the second floor. Then after section off stuff you can mainly start doing the roof to the paint for the inside and out and flooring and furniture. That's what I always do. An you can always think about what shape you would want to do for your imaginary blue-print of the house too. Or get a reference of course, also with Sims 4 that will break some boundaries aka making curved roofs and stuff which makes the whole house look curvy, Lol. But that's my personal take on it, if this doesn't help, hope the others does for you, I wish you good luck.

Also since it sounds like you mean drawing it, hopefully you can transfer what I said on to paper if you can. But again if my stuff can't help, I wish you good luck still.

I liked to start out with a huge rectangle, then just kinda chip away at the edges until I start getting ideas in my head as I go. That's how I used to build in TS2.

This time around, I too am checking out some floor plans, but also trying to pick some nice ones that don't go too far out of the possible boundaries of TS4's build mode features.

In TS3 I would always go to a lot already built and redo it that way, just because whenever I decided to make my own house it would turn out horrible. But in TS4 I feel like I'll actually be able to build my own house perfectly, since you can pull rooms to different lengths, which is a lifesaver! since back in ts3, if you made the walls slightly off, like one was a little bit longer than the other, you'd have to redo everything and whatnot, which was just too damn annoying for me. This meant that I had to always download lots from websites, and I ended up with tons of CC, and my game lagged terribly. I've been slightly improving at building though, so hopefully when ts4 comes out I'll never need to download lots again.

I never plan out the houses I build in the Sims 3. I usually just plonk down a standard shape (square or rectangle) and branch off from it with smaller shapes that I turn into individual rooms. If anything though, I tend to make my houses too big/too spacious and I'm stuck trying to fill the space with furniture and items lol.

That's one reason I'm looking forward to building houses in the Sims 4. If I accidentally make a room too big, I can decrease the size with a few click and drags, and I don't have to knock down a wall, count the squares on the grid and rebuild the wall to make it the perfect size.

I like my building far away from me. LOL I'm terrible at building houses, they always end up looking like boxes. But I think I'll give it a try in TS4, seems fun.

Pffft! I have a degree in Ghetto constructions and a major in Proportion Issues, there's no way my houses would ever go wrong, My previous Sim houses are a testimony to that! *Sounds of buildings collapsing in the distance*

I usually make all my houses too unfuncitonally small for TS3 routing to work nicely because I can't stand having overly large rooms because it looks weird.

When I build a house I sort of figure out what style I want to build (ultra-modern, a cabin, victorian, ranch, etc)
Then I usually will look around at the houses immediately surrounding my sim's lot and see what would fit in with them (1/2/3 stories? big porch? how big are the other houses?). I just sort of start my way at the front porch and work my way back...then like 5 hours later I'm usually wrapping up (this includes furnishing the house).

Building in TS4 is going to be WEIRD for me, i normally never use the drag & drop rectangular wall/room feature in build mode, i just draw all my walls individually. So it should be an interesting transition.

I don't build.
I always took whatever house I really liked and evicted whoever was living in it, and then change the decor to my liking, hahaha. I'm so awful.

I may or may not do the same thing in TS4, even though the new "drop a whole furnished room onto your house" feature is here!

Evict the Goths out to some comically undersized shack

Usually i start with a foyer or a living room as the entrance and then build a hallway and then put the rest of the rooms depending on if i have a one floor house or 2 floor house.

I'm looking forward to what Creators Camp people said is better furniture spacing -- they had just half a space around a double bed and Sims could get in to sleep! Rooms might finally look much more naturally scaled.

On the question: I don't plan at all, which is why I'm *really* looking forward to being able to drag walls, move rooms, and move whole houses!

I envy you guys that can work without a plan. I always end up with bland, oversized houses when I do that. Even with a plan, I find second stories awfully hard. There seems to be to much space in the wrong areas, and I can never get the stairs in a good spot.

I never have any plans with building. xDD I am a terrible builder. Sometimes it turns out awesome and sometimes it's just... no.. xD I will make my least favorite sims live in those houses. compared to others though my houses are very average. xP A lot of the builders around this community are amazing!

I am a lot better with decorating the houses. :3

I'm terrible at building. No matter what I do...NO MATTER WHAT...every house/building I make looks like a box.
Inside? Lovely furnishings, detailed dramas, rich lives.
Outside? Box. Box with windows. Slightly larger box with a box attached on the side.

I just download all of you guy's lovely creations (as I never have the heart to evict someone and steal their home you MONSTERS) and accept that I'm a Sim person not a Build person. ^^

I build the same way i create sims. Ill start with making a wall and changing it ( 100 times ) and i kinda go from there. I'm really good at making mini parks outdoor gardens. The only trouble i run into is wall colors

Yeah I know what you mean about the stairs, Hope they make it easy in Sims 4. For me I would have to place the stairs until it turns green in the spot I want. But then when I click page up to see if it's the right way on the second floor it moves, and I lose my train of thought. An this is when I'm still holding the stairs. An have to do my best to remember that exact spot I had an wanted from seeing it above on the second floor to transfer it to the 1st for the stairs.

What's funny is, even though I tend to make my houses with rooms too big, my sims still never take the easiest route when doing stuff in the houses. Like, sim 1 is going to the bookshelf to grab a book while sim 2 wants to sit down on a couch next to the bookshelf. There's about a gazillion foot of space sim 2 could walk across, but noooope, sim 2 stands and waits impatiently for sim 1 to move away from the bookshelf *sighs*

Hmm. With buildings I know the layout of, I do the entire foundation first and all the walls and make sure they are all to proportion.
If I am making a house from brain I usually build the foundation slowly and make it up as I go along, room by room.

i just start building and plan as i go. so this new system will work a lot in my favor as far as having to adjust foundations and room placement!