Quick SketchUp model of the house I grew up in (and am currently in now). Far from perfect, the program started refusing to work half the time at heights higher than 10 feet for some reason, but it’s basically complete.
I didn’t find it particularly difficult once I got through the doghouse tutorial, but there were some strange aspects. The little entry-gate area with the four pillars was bizarrely difficult; the two pillars farther back refused to become their own objects unless I put them a bit farther in than the front two. The roof of that section then become a mess, since I couldn’t just make it all one object for some reason, and push/pull kept saying it was “unable” to go a certain direction. Not sure what I did wrong, but I easily spent half the time working on that part of it.
For time, I cut doing an interior and the wall around the backyard since those elements are superfluous to seeing what the house looks like from the outside. While I’m not sure how interesting my house is, I can see the modeling of more interesting buildings (like historically important ones) to be a very useful tool for preserving moments in history. Alternatively, having a model of a house/apartment/dorm before moving into it could be a very useful too.
Tip for using SketchUp: DON’T USE A TRACKPAD. Seriously, I spent more than half an hour trying to work on this on my MacBook and got nothing done, while another half hour on my gaming setup (with a proper mouse) got the whole thing done. The third mouse button has *all* of the camera controls tied to it, and they can’t be rebinded. I understand why that’s the default, it works well, but it’s also not flexible on that point.
Awesome work, really impressed with all the details! I feel you on the roof issue; it happened the same. Also agree that doing it with a trackpad is hard.