I stink at building in the game.. any tips?

various sites have building tutorials.
some of them::
-this site's wiki.
-"Tutorials" link in "Create" menu on top of screen.
-the Mike Inside site.

Do it a lot. The more you build, the better you get.

Remember that you're building for the requirements of a household of sims, not a household of humans. They have similar but different needs.

Roofs are hard. Accept it, and don't beat yourself up about it. Someday you will finish a house and realize that you made a pretty good roof.

Here's a bunch of videos on making great houses. I learned a trick or two from them.

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?...ims+2&FORM=VDRE

I find using real-life building plans helps. Start with simple plans. They can give you a pretty good idea of how to lay out a house. Don't go big and bold yet, don't get fancy-schmancy with the cheats yet and don't pick a plan with a lot of fancy roofing. Just try a simple build.

Look at houses around you. Your own house, or a friend's. Get a sense of the layout.

Some say boxy is bad. I say not necessarily, and if it works for you, fine! Many houses are boxy. But most houses have some sort of variety ... not just a rectangle with four equal rooms!

And understand this is a learning experience. I'm learning all the time.

I recommend starting with small house plans. Don't stick to it firmly though, you need to be flexible. Sims tend to need smaller bathrooms and wider hallways. When building judge sizes by how many tiles things take in sims. So a stove = 1 tile, a bed = 3 and a bathtub 2 tiles. Look and see the windows on a house or a house plan. If it looks like 3 small ones in a row with a little space on each end you can judge that will probably be 5 tiles wide in sims.

Another way to start is draw your basic box or rectangle then add or take away some tiles in various spots. Good tutorial on this method here:http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=191530 Don't be too ambitious too soon. Start with just a few changes until you feel comfortable.

Roofing is the hardest part but try to not use auto roof. Draw the roof on, they can be drawn to be overlapping and often look best this way, when one is drawn so it goes into the other. Use the roofing slope tool to bring it down a little. 35 degrees often looks best.
Flat roofs are also more forgiving, just use some low fence as edging and it and it will immediately look better. Usually that low grey/white brick fence.

Outside don't forget the terrain paint, some squirted under plants will also give an immediate improvement as will using a path of either brick or terrain paint to your front door. Around pools also use some kind of floor tile. Leaving these things off gives an unfinished look.

My other suggestion is, do not go overly large. A lot of new builders build rooms or pick lot sizes that are too large. A bathroom need room for a toilet, basin and a tub and only needs to be larger if you are doing something fancy. Having a bathroom be 12 square with 3 items in it makes it look like an empty ballroom and the same goes for other rooms. If you end up with a large room think how you can make it smaller or perhaps turn it into two rooms. One side could be an office, nursery or a sewing room.

If you want to post a picture we can give some tips for where you are currently since you may be way past what I just mentioned.

Building in sims - well, it is personal too and there are no rules I like large houses and big bathrooms (even though Jo says they need smaller ones ) and a huge kitchen with the dining table in the kitchen. Many others don't. Ir is going to depend on what yo put in those rooms that will make them work and look good (or not).

First rule is that you have to be happy with the house - it is your game and just because a lot of people like this or that style, there is no reason you should. And the house has to play well - whether the bathrooms are small or not.

I suggest to look at houses that you find pretty - in the game and in real life. What makes it pretty? Is it the shape, is it the front door and windows, is it the colors or is it the garden? I agree with Jo above about the roofing; some of the half walls also look good on flat roofs - and the terrain paint - it is absolutely amazing what a little terrain paint under a plant or a tree can do.

Personally, I like to look at interior decor articles and garden layouts as well. The most important thing, though - enjoy it

Agreed with going with the style YOU want. I've actually seen posts on downloads here from people critical of the downloader's choice of building style.

Well, it's THEIR building style or preference. They thought they might want to share it. Two or two thousand people may like it. Just because it does not suit a downloader's taste doesn't make it a bad lot.

There are builds in my game I made years ago that I still use today. Would they ever be featured here? Not on your life. They're basic, and often unfurnished. They suit my preferences. For me, adaptability and playability are key; function over form. I want lots where I can expand, contract, move walls, add features as I go. I am not fond of moving my Sims around from place to place. I like lots that can go pretty much anywhere and that I can fix myself to suit the style of the hood or the Sims inside. That is what I look for in a downloaded lot.

Some time back, there was a thread on what people looked for in a lot upload. There may be some tips there as well for building your own stuff, and it may be a starting point for you for figure out just what you want in your lots.

EDIT ... here's one: http://www.modthesims.info/showthre...t=accessibility

A knacky tip for me has always been to know the smallest allowable size for two sims to access a double bed. For me, that's a 4x4 bedroom. I take that as a 'small' master right, since there needs to be a double bed, but there's literally room for next-nothing else in that space but the bed (at least until you're more advanced).

If a small master is 4x4, then a small single is 2x3, because a single bed is three tiles long and one tile wide. If those are the small sizes then medium probably flows like 6x8 and then 8x8 for a really large master, and so on. You can kind of adjust in your head as long as you have you have the basic sizes to make things functional. Small full baths are always the same size as a small single room: 2x3. So a larger bath is anything bigger than that. It keeps your houses from looking annoyingly blocky and huge if you can think about the use of each room and the minimum size for functionality. And then you can also get fancy and start to do diagonal walls and 'L' shapes and such using those basic measurements.

If you want all your bedrooms to have a wardrobe as well as the bed, you can make the "minimum" rectangle and append a 2x2 square along one perimeter. This will accommodate any wardrobe or closet. The placement of the 2x2 square creates a jigsaw, which can create a nice little jigsaw with other such irregularly-shaped rooms to create a compact but uncrowded arrangement. Two 4x4 + 2x2 bedrooms could fit together with the closet space on the shared wall; or multiple bedrooms could define the shape of a shared bath, balcony, or patio.

I think the chief mistake that the Maxis builders (which we all deplore so much) made was to outline the entire house first and then try to fill in the rooms on that footprint. While that's an interesting challenge, it tends to produce inconvenient and illogical layouts. If you lay it out room by room, maybe using the old dodge of building around properly arranged furniture, you're far more likely to get both a usable layout and an interesting exterior.

I stink at building too. It's weird when I was a little kid I felt I was pretty good at building (I also kinda think building was easier in SIms1?) But now I feel like I'm really bad at it and i don't seem to get any better. Building is almost stressful for me these days. I think it's because as a kid I didn't care what house looked like and still thought it was a amazing. I remember the first house I built neither had floors nor wallpaper/paint... I'm not even sure anymore whether it had windows...

Funny enough I find it much easier to add to or remodel an already existing house, and I also tend to enjoy that a lot more.

I'm interested @joandsarah and @Justpetro : what's the advantages of small vs. big bathrooms? Are the small bathrooms to keep Sims from congregating there and misusing it for non bathroom-related activities?

To me it depends what you add to a space. One of my houses (that I really do plan to upload here if I can improve the roof-it's a huge sprawling single story legacy house) has a bathroom with a tub up on a stage, a toilet, a 2 tile built shower and a double counter vanity. I forget how many squares it is, but a fair size to fit all of that in. Now if I had simply placed into that space a 1 tile shower, a toilet and a basin it would look lost. So for me it is more of a "Is there a reason for this space?" or is is it just there. Also look to real bathrooms, your house doesn't have tons of space between your bathroom items (unless perhaps you use a wheelchair and need extra space) Also I am not sure how large my idea of large and Petro's idea of large is. Not without a picture. I prefer houses to have plenty of bathrooms and especially toilets to avoid congregational cramping. So an ensuite, perhaps another loo down near the front door and a bathroom just for the kids. Most of my houses uploaded here have as many bathrooms as I can get away with. http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=591365 count the bathrooms, I think I have 5 in that one. :P

Also to go with my above post, that house with a square drawn over it. Now I didn't start it as a square (I built this a long time ago and I believe I based it on a house plan) But if I had started with a square, you can see how I could have done that 'build a square and add to it' method. And yes my photoshop skills are nonexistent.

Ah, well I would actually call the master-bathroom and the other one with the tub in that house "large" for some reason when you said small I had this impression of really, really smol bathrooms and I'd only call the one next to the stairs small.

Also, I just downloaded that house. *puts it in the game*

Thanks Orphalesion. That is my favourite build. Make sure you have the Torox set if you want those columns to show up, it's a master/slave set. No, that isn't what I mean by large. I see plenty of new builders use twice that space with fewer items, that is what I mean by large. The master bedroom is right on the verge of becoming overlarge which is why I added more items.

Do not look to Maxis houses for inspiration, as they are terrible. A perfect example of too much space is Grand Estate, and an example of basic box, with a dreadful roof, is Bohemian Bungalow. Both pictured here :
http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Lots_and..._bin/The_Sims_2
I'm sure you can do better than that.
I agree with others - use a few simple houseplans but you may not be able to copy them exactly, as Sims need a bit more room to get past each other.
Get inspired by pictures of the sort of house you like.
Experiment.
Also there is a group called Mentoring for builders who can post feedback.

I like to put the toddler potties in the bathroom rather than in the toddlers' rooms - and since my game likes to give me twins, I need space for two. While I would put in only a bath at first and then add a shower later when the toddlers are grown up, the potty training thing does require a bit more space for both the toddler and the parent training them. And just like in real life, I like at least one plant in the bathroom too

Now I don't mean a bathroom should be as big as a concert hall either, but around 2 tiles wider than Jo's bathroom just suits my play style better. That is why I said it is personal, there is no right or wrong

I like to leave a room for flexibility. If you have a 2X3 bedroom, that only allows for space for 1 child, so you have to rebuild or move if your sims have another baby. Same with a small bathroom with only space for a shower, then you don't have a tub to bathe toddlers or dogs. You don't need football stadium sized rooms, but a 2X3 bedroom versus a 3X3, or even 3X4 bedroom can make all the difference in how you can use the space.

As for boxy houses, I'd prefer a bunch of rectangle rooms to an over-stylized design where the floorplan is shaped like a cat or something. Or even a house with a lot of diagonal walls- it makes it really hard to place furniture in a usable layout.

And I know we all hate on Maxis and Grand Estate is the worst, but the Bonny Bungalow, Small Home and City House from the link yavannatw posted^^ are some of the most common houses in my hood. I have probably a dozen different layouts of each- they're pretty adaptable, even within the original footprint. Ranch Retreat is a pretty good basic design as well. Broken clock, twice a day, and all.

Sims don't need to wash their hands after using the toilet, so I never build sinks in bathrooms. So a toilet and a shower fit into a 2x2 bathroom, but with a tub it's a 3x2 bathroom. Master bedrooms are 4x5, which is made up of 4x4 for the bed and two small dressers next to the pillows, so they can dress immediately after getting out of bed. The other 1x4 is extra space for a crib and a diaper changing table (don't know the English word), or for an easel or orther hobby/nice stuff. Even a robot crafting station (OFB) fits in there!

Like Inspiredzone says, more stuff fits in rectangle rooms than in different-shaped rooms. I like small houses, so it's almost always a box house, and I love them.

While most Maxis houses really do stink (the creators of the game obviously never played them) there are 2 houses in the Downtown area that I like-the Mendoza Avenue ones-They're fairly small, with an appropriately sized backyard. They're good for starters, and they can be expanded for future needs.
What you should remember that pixels need houses that keep their functioning even-the layouts should reflect what needs they have. Usually from a day at work, the pixels will need to have a quick shower and a place to relax, and they usually need to have something fun to do while waiting for supper to roll around.
The 'line of sight' method is a good way to plan a house. I don't like to use hallways between rooms because they darken the interior and take up more room than necessary. The routing path should be simple and avoids everyone jamming up a hallway or one particular spot.

The Bonny bungalow may indeed not be the prettiest house ever made. But I do use it because it works AND it has plenty of space to build in an extra bathroom I have around 10 makeovers of that house in my game.
I also like the Friendly firmanent - I actually have around 10 makeovers of that one too. I uploaded one here: http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=557162
And as for the Grand Estate - while I am not really fond of it, it has come in handy in my hood at times too

The base game's Bonny Bungalow is affordable, has a decently large lot and is easy to expand or add another floor. It makes a great starter house and I use it quite a lot in my game.

The Bohemian Bungalow, on the other hand, is like all the other bin lots that came with Free Time - an uninspired box with a pointy roof like yavannatw said.

The only Maxis house that I really loathe is 105 Sim Lane - the colonial house next door to the Goth mansion which is filled with a lot of tiny odd-shaped rooms that most furniture won't fit in. I usually just bulldoze it and replace it with the biggest "Family Fun Stuff" house, but apparently a couple of people here on MTS have successfully remodeled this disaster to actually be useable.

http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=524710

http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=506504

the Bohemian Bungalow may be an uninspiring lot, but it is really playable. It is also possible to improve it. I have enlarged the lot with the LotAdjuster (the right side and theback does not work, there is a hill there, but the front and to the left side do work). I changed the big bedroom and added an en suite bathroom in it; and changed the existing bathroom a bit, and I actually use it quite often for temporary housing, because many of my sim couples have around 40 000 when they need bigger housing.

If you replace the roof with a flat one and change the green paint, it already looks a whole lot better.

There are a zillion opinions about this topic, and what you agree with is mostly going to be based on what you do in the game. It's a form vs. function thing, and there's a spectrum, really. On the one end is folks who only build/decorate and take pictures and stuff but who never actually play the game. So they don't care about how well the lots play and just want to build eye-catching whiz-bang lots that look cool but are completely impractical from a playing perspective and that can never be placed anywhere BUT the spot they built it. On the other end is people who ONLY play, and they don't give a single flying fart about how the houses look. MOST people fall in the middle of those extremes somewhere, but whether you lean more toward one end of the spectrum or the other will generally dictate what you want to and like to build in your game and how you want to build it. I could go on and on about my own personal preferences (NO MAXIS HOUSES EVER! and NO AUTOROOF EVER!), but what's the point? What I hate and avoid, someone else will find necessary to their playing survival, and it's ALL GOOD.

That being said, if you're a person who wants houses that look good AND play well, I think your best bet is to try to build some real-life houses, and the easiest way to do that is to work from real-life floor plans. This will make you see how houses are generally put together and you can eventually take what you learn and use it to put together your own lots. There are a thousand million websites out there that sell house plans. Google and find one. On that site, search for a small but pretty-enough house that has a roof that's actually easily buildable in-game. Here's one from such a site:

And here's its floor plan:


This is a house that I could play a family of 6 in, easily. (Two parents, four kids sharing the two bedrooms.) Notice that it isn't just a plain square/rectangle. Notice that, between the floor plan and the picture of the exterior, you can tell which pieces of the roof are going to go where. Notice things like the bathroom between the two secondary bedrooms, which makes it convenient when (real) kids have to pee in the night. Notice the laundry room backing up against the kitchen, plumbed areas together. (In the real world, this makes houses easier/cheaper to build. In the Sim world, it helps to make them make friggin' sense.) Notice that the living/kitchen/dining area is central to the house and that none of the bedroom entrances are directly off the living room. Notice that visitors don't have to travel a hundred miles or walk through any private areas (i.e. bedrooms) to get to a bathroom to use.

Now think about playability. This one's actually pretty good except that Sims don't need walk-in closets, so I, personally would use some of that space to make the master bath more decadent because I'm a person who appreciates decadent bathrooms in real life.

So then you translate room sizes. A handy rule of thumb when using real floor plans is that a single window/door or single kitchen or bath counter, etc is one tile in the game. From that -- and bearing in mind how many tiles game objects occupy -- you can estimate how big each room ought to be. For instance, I would make Bedroom 3 in that floor plan 5 tiles wide and 4 deep front-to-back, with an extra 3x1 niche (including the floor plan's closet space as well as its linen closet, which Sims don't need) for a closet. (Or a dresser, if you prefer, but I prefer closets.) This in turn makes the bathroom between the bedrooms 3 tiles wide and 2 tiles deep and the hallway between the bedrooms 2 tiles wide. It makes Bedroom 2 the same size as Bedroom 3, etc. Garages can be an issue because in order to be functional they have to be a minimum of 5x8 tiles, the size of a driveway extension piece. This can throw things off, but in most cases it doesn't. Anyway, from all that info for the entire house, you can determine the minimum size lot it'll fit on. Plunk down a lot of at least that size (You can always trim it down with the Lot Adjuster when you're done, if you use a too-big lot.), and get building. (Put the game in windowed mode, if you don't play that way, so you can have the game and the floor plan open side-by side, if your monitor's big enough, or at least so that you don't have to go back and forth from your game to your desktop.)

Do this a lot to get design ideas and a notion of what works and doesn't work, both in terms of building and playing, in your head. And then, like I said, use what you learn to come up with your own designs that are both attractive and playable.

For me, it's all about playability. There are a couple of things I always do for the way I like to play: I tend to make houses and lots only large enough to hold what I want the sims to do because I don't want to spend any time watching them walk from one place to the next. I like a lot of autonomy, so I'm careful with routing and will rearrange things as I test the house for play to make sure Sims go to the closest table, bathroom, bed, etc. I keep very clear sight lines for myself so often one view of the house will be kept clear of trees, tall furniture, etc., so I will be able to see the action on the entire floor from that view, rather like a stage set. IOW, I don't want to be hitting the swirl button a lot to watch what's going on. In the same regard, I don't like clicking to go up a floor to watch, so I use mainly one floor houses OR I put things on the upper floor that I don't care about, like I might put all the bathrooms or beds upstairs and not bother to go up there when a Sim does as I know they are not doing anything interesting. I also put a lot of furniture/activities outside in the yard for the same reason (the sims don't care if they get wet). One other thing, I like to see my entire neighborhood from one view, so I tend to make things look good from neighborhood view, to move lots very close together, and to make things that I can see on one lot when I'm playing another, like a Sim's business will usually be next door to her house so I can see it when playing her house and so it makes sense for her to walk to it.

I used that house once back in my early days of playing and I still have nightmares. The first floor bathroom is probably 12 square tiles, but all you can fit in it is a toilet and sink because of all the diagonal walls.