If you are planning to build a new house, you probably have an image of the one you want to build and lots of opinions about how a good house should function. You can even see parts of the house in your mind’s eye. Nevertheless you may still find it difficult to accurately describe the house to someone else.

The ability to visualize in three dimensions is a challenge for many of us. Trying to describe the sizes and shapes of rooms can be frustrating. Like the proverbial blind person assigned to the task of explaining what an elephant looks like, you can describe the relationship between the kitchen and the living room and the feeling you want to achieve in the vaulted great room. What may be problematic is explaining how the whole house will look when all of your ideas are combined and assembled under one roof.

The first sketches of your house may be a few primitive shapes that you and your designer draw in the dust when you meet at the building site the first time.

When the basic form of the house and the functional plan have been agreed upon, a designer prepares all the graphic details and

New computer programs that model solid forms are particularly helpful for those of us who are “three-dimensionally impaired.”

Computer graphics have revolutionized the way design and construction information is communicated. AutoCAD and computer drafting programs, created specifically for architectural design, allow designers and drafters to assemble a virtual, three-dimensional model of a building.

A model can rotate on screen so both the interior and the exterior of the house can be viewed from many different perspectives. These programs are particularly useful in the development of a timber frame home design because they allow frame components to be viewed at the same time the architectural plans are being developed.

Martin Musson, a timber frame design technician, explains that the image of a 3-D solid model that appears on a computer screen is actually a section through a virtual building. “Imagine,” says martin, “that behind the screen, inside the computer, there is a whole timber frame structure even though only one “slice” of it is visible to you.”

Timber frame companies, whose tools include specialized timber joinery equipment, use computer programs that are designed to insert joinery information

Other companies draft building plans and shop drawings using two-dimensional drafting programs. In the fabrication shop, joinery is drawn directly on the timbers and then cut using portable power tools.

In skilled hands, computer-drafting programs produce work that is predictably accurate. This is a tremendous bonus for timber frame craftsmen who must install a precut timber frame on a pre-built foundation that is likely to be many miles from the

Whereas construction documents drawn by hand or in two-dimensional AutoCAD programs may require many pages of plans to be redrawn.

Without a doubt, a word processor can record words much faster and with greater clarity than most people can write by hand. But regrettably, the computer does nothing to improve the content of the writing.

Whereas the crisp, straight lines of an electronic drawing may give the false impression that the work on an undeveloped plan is complete.

It’s only logical that the process of designing a modern timber frame home incorporates hand-drawings that please the eye as well as the latest innovations in computer-assisted design programs that ensure accuracy.