In this activity you will follow along with the steps to create a simple house shape. After completing the activity you will be let loose to personalize your house further on your own. During the activity you will learn how Architects design a house by creating a simple floor plan using the house you create.

Step 1: Introduction

The first step in design is to visualize the steps required to complete the house shape seen below.

Let's start by evaluating the components that make up the house design.

Instructions

When looking at the image above, several characteristics should stand out.
The red rectangular shape that make the walls.
The green triangular shape that makes the roof.
The arched doorway.
Through the arched doorway you can see that the building is hollow.
Continue to next step.

Step 2: Create the Outer Shape of the House

Let's start to create the walls of the house with a box shape.

Instructions

Place a Box on the Workplane and size it to be 40mm by 20mm and 10mm tall.
Continue to the next step.
Stuck?
HINT:
Remember, you can hover over any of the white dots on the model to double check the dimensions of the block.

Step 3: Create the Shape to Hollow Out the House

Now we need to create a shape to cut out the inside of the house to make the walls.

Instructions

Click on the red Box to select it.
Select Duplicate button on the menu bar near the top left of the screen.
This will make an exact copy of the block in the exact same position.
Use the black dots on the model to shrink the shape 1mm in every direction.
Use the white dot on the top to increase the height several millimeters.
The change in the height is simply to help with shape selection, by making the smaller Box taller it can be easily selected because it sticks up above the original Box shape. The results should look like the image above.
Continue to the next step.

Step 4: Hollow Out the House

Once the model is properly positioned properly, the inner shape can be used to cut material out of the original Box shape. This cut will hollow out the house and essentially create all the walls at once.

If one shape is set to be a hole and another object is not, grouping the objects together will cause the hole object to remove material from the other objects it is grouped with.

Instructions

Select the inner block and use the Shape dialog in the upper right of the graphics window to change the shape from red to a Hole. When complete, the inner block will be transparent, like the image above.
Select both shapes and click the Group button on the menu bar at the top right of the screen.
The result of grouping the inner and outer shape is shown in the image below.
Continue to the next step.

Step 5: Add Shapes to Make the Doorway

For a house to be functional there must be a way in. It’s time to create a doorway.

To do this, we will group two objects together in the final shape for that door, we will make that shape a Hole, position it, and then group the shapes. These are the same steps we completed in the previous steps to hollow out the house, but this time we will create the door.

Instructions

Place a red Box shape and a Round Roof shape on the Workplane.
These shapes will be combined to make the door shape. The shapes at their current sizes are much too large for the house, but at this size they are easy to work with. We will work on positioning the models at their current size then scale down the final door shape so it will fit the house.
Select the round roof shape and use the black arrow on the top of the model to lift it off the workplane 20mm, so the bottom of the round roof is at the same level as the top of the red box.
Continue to the next step.

Step 6: Align the Door Shapes

The shapes should now be positioned vertically, but they haven't been centered horizontally. Once they have been properly aligned they will look like an arched doorway.

Instructions

Select the red Box shape and the blue Round Roof shape.
Select the Align tool from the menu bar.
Using the alignment dots that are laying flat on the Workplane, click the middle black circle on each side.
The black dots should turn grey to indicate that the shapes are aligned. This can be seen in the image above.
Once the shapes are aligned on top of each other, click the Group button on the toolbar to combine the shapes into a single door shape.
Use the Inspector window to set the door shape to a hole.
Continue to the next step.

Step 7: Cut the Doorway Opening

To complete the door we need to scale the door shape to be small enough to fit on one of the walls of the house.

Instructions

Select the door shape.
Hold the SHIFT key on the keyboard and click and drag on one of the white corner dots to scale the object.
Note: Holding the SHIFT key down will cause the scaling to be proportional, meaning it will scale the shape from all directions.
Scale the door down until it is small enough to fit into the wall.
Select the wall shape and the door shape and align them so the door is in the middle of one of the short walls.
The image above shows where the door should be roughly positioned.
Once positioned, and with both shapes selected, Group the objects together to cut the door opening in the wall.
Continue to the next step.

Step 8: Adding the Roof

With the walls and doors complete it’s time to add the roof. Adding the roof can be done by dragging the green roof object on to the workplane, then raising it off the workplane 10mm to match the top of the walls, and then aligning and sizing it.

Instructions

Place a Roof shape on the Workplane.
With the Roof shape selected, use the black arrow on top to lift the shape 10mm up off the Workplane, so the bottom of the roof is aligned with the top of the walls.
Select both shapes and align the roof to the middle of the house and to one end of the wall shape.
Once aligned, select only the green Roof and use the black dots at its base to begin sizing it to be slightly larger than the walls, so the roof hangs over the edge of the walls. Note: In Architecture the overhang is called an Eave and is used for both styling and protecting siding on the house.
Once properly aligned, the house should look similar to the image below.
Continue to the next step.

Step 9: Group the Roof and Walls

You can finish the house by grouping the roof with the walls.

Doing this will turn the building a single color, but the multi-color option can be used to maintain the original shape colors even while they are grouped together.

Instructions

Select both shapes and group them into a single object.
Note: Grouping the shapes should make them both the same color. Depending on the order the parts were selected your house will either be completely red or completely green, either is perfectly fine.
To keep the original shape colors within the new group, select the new shape and expand the color panel from the Inspector window.
At the bottom of that panel you will see a checkbox called "Multi-Color".
Check this box to maintain the original shape colors within the new group. After checking the box the color indicator in the Inspector panel will show all the colors that are in the group as stripes.
Congratulations! You have completed your Tinkercad house.