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Instructor
Original Poster
#1 Old 23rd Jun 2018 at 12:25 AM
Default Building from Blueprints
Say I have some real building blueprints I want to build from and I know the real life feet (written in blueprints), how do I 'translate' that into sims 3' little and big squares?
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dodgy builder
#2 Old 23rd Jun 2018 at 12:50 AM
This has been tried and tested several times before. 1 meter is 1 tile usually. Size doesn't fit most of the time though. Like say a 6 seat diningtable takes 2 tiles width, 1 tile for chairs and 1 tile for walking. That is 6 tile width for a table, but still I know some times 5 tiles with is good enough.

With a dishwasher it requires often a bit more than a tile width, and 2 tiles for opening the machine.

It's much easier to find the size of a room depending the objects in it. If you use real world measurement, it frequently iis too big or too small.

If you find it useful though, 1 meter is fairly close to the game.
Instructor
Original Poster
#3 Old 23rd Jun 2018 at 1:00 AM
Quote: Originally posted by Volvenom
This has been tried and tested several times before. 1 meter is 1 tile usually. Size doesn't fit most of the time though. Like say a 6 seat diningtable takes 2 tiles width, 1 tile for chairs and 1 tile for walking. That is 6 tile width for a table, but still I know some times 5 tiles with is good enough.

With a dishwasher it requires often a bit more than a tile width, and 2 tiles for opening the machine.

It's much easier to find the size of a room depending the objects in it. If you use real world measurement, it frequently iis too big or too small.

If you find it useful though, 1 meter is fairly close to the game.


I understand the difficulty but I can use that to give me some basic guidelines to go off of.
Department of Post-Mortem Communications
#4 Old 23rd Jun 2018 at 2:04 AM Last edited by Don Babilon : 23rd Jun 2018 at 2:40 AM.
As it's an American game, I'd go with 1 tile = 1 yard and a small tile would be 0.5 yards or 1.5 feet or 18 inches.

Although, given that 1 wall is 4 tiles high and the "average" American ceiling is 8 feet high, one tile might even be as small as 2 feet.

So anything between 2 and 3 feet is probably the best approximation for 1 standard Sims tile.

When I try to transfer a real-life floorplan into Sims dimensions I usually use the "toilet indicator", if the floorplan has the toilets marked. 1 toilet is 1x1 and that's my metre for calculating the rest of the room. But I'm from Europe and so inch, foot, and yard don't tell me anything at all or give me any idea with regard to their size.
Instructor
Original Poster
#5 Old 23rd Jun 2018 at 3:51 AM
Quote: Originally posted by Don Babilon
As it's an American game, I'd go with 1 tile = 1 yard and a small tile would be 0.5 yards or 1.5 feet or 18 inches.

Although, given that 1 wall is 4 tiles high and the "average" American ceiling is 8 feet high, one tile might even be as small as 2 feet.

So anything between 2 and 3 feet is probably the best approximation for 1 standard Sims tile.

When I try to transfer a real-life floorplan into Sims dimensions I usually use the "toilet indicator", if the floorplan has the toilets marked. 1 toilet is 1x1 and that's my metre for calculating the rest of the room. But I'm from Europe and so inch, foot, and yard don't tell me anything at all or give me any idea with regard to their size.


Thanks, I can really use the advice on this from experienced builders!
Department of Post-Mortem Communications
#6 Old 24th Jun 2018 at 7:37 PM
Sorry for this nerdy post now, but I think I have figured something out.

In-game a one-step height has an exact numerical value when using the setimportedterrainoffset cheat. It is 0.1875, and I suspect that this is metric, i.e. 18.75 cm.
At least when converting 18.75 cm to inch I get 7.3818898 inches and, according to the 2000 International Code Council recommendations, unit rises (height of a step) should not be more than 7¾ inches. 7'' is also what you usually find with when googling average step heights.

Now let's continue this train further. One unit or module of Sim stairs contains 4 steps. That is 75 cm or 29.5276'' or 2.46'. The height of one wall is 4 stair units or 300cm or 118.11'' or 9.8'.

So that means we have some value for the height of a wall: 9.8 ft (300cm) and the height of the standard foundation 2.46 ft (75cm). That's pretty high compared to the average American wall height but would be a) consistent with the numerical values found in the game and b) the standard 7+'' height for stair steps in the real world, too.

While this still doesn't give us any precise numbers as to the length or width of a floor tile it at least shows that the tile must be wider than 2.46 ft (or 75cm) as the standard foundation is not square, i.e. it is lower than it is wide.

The above mentioned 2000 International Code Council stated that the depth of a step should be not less than 10'' and a proportion of 7:10 between height and depth seems about right visually in The Sims, too, leading to the conclusion that one tile in The Sims is somewhere between 2.46 and 3.33 ft. So, yes, the one yard rule does hold.
Mad Poster
#7 Old 24th Jun 2018 at 9:28 PM
I've done a bit of measurement myself and found the results to be consistent with the metric system in that the average Sim is in the 175cm range, like real human beings, that table height is set at 80cm, like real tables, and that when attempting to recreate my real-life house, everything scales correctly. However, since my real-life house seems to be built on a half-meter grid, recreating it accurately was not possible.

Walls are exactly 3 times taller than they are wide. Certain wall textures have tile patterns, and those tiles are either square or square to the nearest pixel. I'm not saying that the game can't be designed with imperial in mind, but it's very uncommon for computer programs (and thus video games) to function in imperial under the hood.

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Instructor
Original Poster
#8 Old 24th Jun 2018 at 10:30 PM
Thanks for the interesting info and the heads up yo help me out
dodgy builder
#9 Old 24th Jun 2018 at 11:42 PM
Mathmaticians has been calculating this before and ended up on meter working nicely. It depends though, if you find this kind of numbercrunching interesting, I'm not sure each objects footprint or needed space, is really that accurate. It just seems to me like a sofa might not always take the area it should in tiles. It might spread out of it's tile footprint a bit, and have to be placed with alt clicking off grid.
Department of Post-Mortem Communications
#10 Old 25th Jun 2018 at 1:13 AM
Quote: Originally posted by GrijzePilion
I've done a bit of measurement myself and found the results to be consistent with the metric system in that the average Sim is in the 175cm range, like real human beings, that table height is set at 80cm, like real tables, and that when attempting to recreate my real-life house, everything scales correctly. However, since my real-life house seems to be built on a half-meter grid, recreating it accurately was not possible.

Walls are exactly 3 times taller than they are wide. Certain wall textures have tile patterns, and those tiles are either square or square to the nearest pixel. I'm not saying that the game can't be designed with imperial in mind, but it's very uncommon for computer programs (and thus video games) to function in imperial under the hood.
So, a wall is indeed 300x100cm, a floor tile 100x100cm, and a foundation block is 75x100x100cm.
Top Secret Researcher
#11 Old 25th Jun 2018 at 5:37 AM
I build using a wall segment as my guide. So a kitchen counter = 1 wall segment, as does a toilet, many windows, most doors. A single bed is 1 wall segment wide, a double is 2. As you draw the outline (perimeter) of the building, you may need to adjust some of the dimensions, since no matter how you measure it, a sim building will never translate exactly to a RL building. If the build is complicated, I use grid paper to sketch the building first.

I use different colored floor tiles to help me plan where on the lot to place the building, and also, to plan out the rooms. This way, sometimes with the help of some furniture placed on top of the floor tiles, I can see where each room is to the other, and whether or not a room is too big or too small. Then it is easy to adjust, since no actual building or roofing has occurred. It is also easy to build using the floor tiles as a guide. Then they are easy to remove.

Good luck!

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Instructor
Original Poster
#12 Old 25th Jun 2018 at 6:55 AM
Quote: Originally posted by attuned
I build using a wall segment as my guide. So a kitchen counter = 1 wall segment, as does a toilet, many windows, most doors. A single bed is 1 wall segment wide, a double is 2. As you draw the outline (perimeter) of the building, you may need to adjust some of the dimensions, since no matter how you measure it, a sim building will never translate exactly to a RL building. If the build is complicated, I use grid paper to sketch the building first.

I use different colored floor tiles to help me plan where on the lot to place the building, and also, to plan out the rooms. This way, sometimes with the help of some furniture placed on top of the floor tiles, I can see where each room is to the other, and whether or not a room is too big or too small. Then it is easy to adjust, since no actual building or roofing has occurred. It is also easy to build using the floor tiles as a guide. Then they are easy to remove.

Good luck!


Thanks and thats some very helpful advice I hadn't thought of! Thanks for the tips!
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