Tutorials / View Tutorial
By Illiana on Jul 21, 2009 • Building Split Level Entry Homes!
Slide 1 / 26
Step 1
Begin by raising the terrain where you want to build the house up by 4 clicks. Doing this will ensure that our lower level will get sunlight from windows
Slides in this Tutorial
- 1 Begin by raising the terrain where you want to build the house up by 4 clicks. Doing this will ensure that our lower level will get sunlight from windows
- 2 Sweep the terrain flattening tool from the raised area across the general area you want to build the house on.
- 3 Move inward from the front edge of the raised area about 4 spaces. Then, place 2 sets of modular stairs.
- 4 Remove the stairs, and once again get the terrain flattening tool.
- 5 Now we are going to build the “scaffolding” for our stairs and entryway.
- 6 Now, build a temporary building up 3 stories high all the way around the outer edges of the scaffolding, and surrounding it.
- 7 Scroll all the way down to your basement again. Place a wall piece diagonally one space inside your wall, and about 4 spaces away from the basement step area of the scaffolding. Place one set of stairs down next to it and get ready for your first cheat! YAY!
- 8 Now, we are going to close off our inner walls before doing the major work! Build a one square wide wall on the outer edges of the scaffolding that is inside the building.
- 9 With our walls in place, we can now proceed with the operation. Mwahaha!
- 10 Now, we are going to turn off the cheat for a bit. Don’t worry! We’ll be playing with it again!
- 11 If everything has gone smoothly, you should now be able to place a “porch” on the front of the home!
- 12 Choose your doors and place them.
- 13 Time for that CFE cheat again! YAY!
- 14 Turn OFF the cheat by opening the cheat box window, and typing in:
- 15 Hey! Didn’t we just turn this cheat off?! Well, yeah…but now we have to turn it on again. Welcome to CFE! Hehehe!
- 16 Almost done! Now, we are in the “cleanup” stages. Our stairwell is built, but that doesn’t mean we are done. We have to be sure we can build in our new house.
- 17 Scroll up to your next floor and do the same thing again. Easy peasy!
- 18 Scroll up to your next floor and do it one more time!
- 19 Scroll up to your top floor and enclose it completely if you haven’t already.
- 20 Turn on the CFE cheat again and starting from the outer edge of the back wall, sweep the flattening tool towards the front and OVER the entry area. You should be able to completely cover the building in one go. If not, just keep on a’sweeping.
- 21 Now it’s time to flatten our top wall. “But…it’s already flat!” I hear you say. Well yes, but it also VERY tall. Unless you WANT to use this floor as well, we should really shorten it a little so the roofs don’t make your house look goofy.
- 22 Think you know what’s next? I’ll bet you don’t! LOL! Using your “lower terrain tool”, click each of the corners of your depression down 2 clicks. Once all corners have been lowered you should once again have a flat square.
- 23 Turn on the CFE cheat again. Sweep the flattening tool from the depression underneath your temporary walls.
- 24 Now, put that flattening tool on top of your just dropped walls, and sweep it right over your entire top floor! Mwahahaha! Look at all that GREEN!
- 25 You now have a flat roof on your home.
- 26 Final test? With the CFE cheat on, remove the entire wall directly above the doors and replace it. You may find that your walls drop! That’s fine! Scroll all the way to the top of your building, and once again sweep the flattening tool from the outer back edge of the building over the entire top floor.
We can adjust it to fit once the CFE work is done.
This will give us the lower floor area of our split home.
Starting from the bottom stair area, sweep around until you have a general hole in your raised section with 4 spaces in front, and 2 spaces all the way around.
Place a set of set of stairs or two leading from the raised area to the ground about where you want your entryway to be. I chose the left side rather than the center so that when my house is finished my simmies don’t have to walk all the way around the stairwell to traverse the house. You can place them wherever you like. Just be sure there is room on either side of your stairs for building.
Starting from the basement area build a wall that is six spaces wide with your placement stairs lined up in the center. The shorter “room” (left in this pic) will be the stairs that lead to our basement, and should be on the outer edge of the scaffolding setup, the longer room (right side) will be leading to the upstairs area.
Be sure your scaffolding has the little room bump out you see above as that is going to be our entry platform.
We are doing this so that once we begin doing our CFE work the walls will not have to be “filled in” or fiddled with too much when we are done. They will just drop down and fill in any gaps we create automatically. Cool, huh? Don’t worry about the shape of the “building”. Once the stairwell is done, you are free to shape and design the entire rest of the house as you see fit. The stairwell just has to be built first!
Open the cheat box by typing…
CTRL-SHIFT-C
…all at the same time. Now, in the little box at the top, type this in EXACTLY!
boolprop constrainfloorelevation false
This turns on the CFE cheat, and allows us to adjust walls and ground areas with no restrictions.
With the cheat on, place your flattening tool from the depression the stairs made, and sweep it under the wall carefully. You should see your wall drop down with the ground. You did? Great!
Be sure that you have left 2 spaces for stairs in the center of the “upper stair” scaffold and 3 spaces on the inner section of the “lower stair scaffold”. Make a simple one square room in between the two sections as a support beam. Build this all the way up the top of your temporary structure.
What we are doing is making sure that the stairwell walls hide most of the CFE work, so that when we paint, our marks will be less obvious. (In short, it makes the inside of the house look pretty when we are done. LOL!)
Using the flattening tool, place it at the top of the wall you dropped earlier, then sweep it CAREFULLY onto the platform making sure you do not go past the entry wall, nor the outer stairwell walls you just built. It should ONLY cover the central area where our landing will be.
Open the cheat box (CTRL-SHIFT-C) and type this in exactly!
boolprop constrainfloorelevation true
Now, with our cheat off, we can place a temporary “floor” on our entry landing area, and remove the wall and stair in the middle of our basement. Sweep the flattening tool over the area where the wall used to be to create a nice flat basement floor again.
Do you see how our inner walls dropped down with our landing so that we can put pictures, lights, and whatnot on them when it’s time to decorate? Yup, they work like a charm!
Choose either the lattice foundation or the brick foundation, and be sure to leave two spaces between your porch and your placement stairs. Now, starting from the area 2 spaces behind your stairs, attach the foundation to the entire entry wall of your building. If you’ve done it right, the foundation should place with no problems!
Once the foundation is placed, you can put 2 sets of modular stairs from your “landing” area to the basement. There should be one space between the stairs and the outer wall of your landing. You can go ahead and put a fence there if you want, or wait until later.
Hey! That was the EASIEST step so far! LOL!
Open the cheat box window, and once again type in:
boolprop constrainfloorelevation false
Now scroll down to your basement area and get ready to put up ANOTHER scaffolding piece! Using the “room” wall tool, start from the inner edge, and 2 spaces away, and create a 2x2 room. Attach it to the upper stair area we left open when we attached the entry walls earlier. It should look like the picture I have here on the right.
Don’t worry that your walls are bumping up, they are supposed to. This is why we created them, so they would hide the work we are doing!
boolprop constrainfloorelevation true
Now, put flooring on top of the new room you created, and place a set of stairs going from the top of that room to the landing. This will be your “upper” floor!
The scaffolding below will hide your stairs from the view of your sims, as well as keep your sims from trying to go under the entryway and getting stuck! The ceilings are FAR too low beneath the entryway for use, and are just easier to block off from view. Out of simmie-sight, out of simmie-mind. Hehehe!
Turn on the CFE cheat again, and remove the support wall that sits between the stairs. ONLY remove this ONE wall please. Thank you!
Now, replace it with a new, shiny wall! Once the new wall is in place, turn the cheat off again!
You did turn the cheat off…right? Good! Now scroll up to your first floor, and starting from the outer edge of the building furthest away from the entryway sweep the flattening tool across our temporary building. Don’t worry about the red areas. That’s our entryway, and should be lower than our build area.
What we are doing is flattening our gridlines back to normal again.
When you have finished doing this, it is a good idea to go to each floor and try to test whether the heights are correct by placing one wall. If the wall places ok, you’re good to go! If, however, it won’t let you build a wall, simply turn on the CFE cheat, remove one of the outer walls and replace it, and then sweep the flattening tool from that wall over all the OUTER walls of the home. BUT be careful NOT to sweep it over the entryway area. Don’t forget to turn the cheat off if you end up having to do this! You will once again have to sweep the flattening tool across each floor to be sure the gridlines are correct if you do.
* Bear in mind that when using the CFE cheat anything you do on the lower floors affects the upper floors. This is because CFE works from the ground up. So if you want to fix something with CFE on a 2nd floor, you will also have to go up and fix what damage you caused on any other floors above it as well! So always start fixing with CFE from the bottom and work your way up.
Does your temporary building look like this? I hope so! This very tippy-top floor exists for no other reason than to be sure our walls are flat for adding roofs when we are through building.
You SHOULD wait to do these next steps until after you have finished building your home so you know the general shape you will need the top walls to be in before attempting steps 20 – 26. I will do them now so you can see what to do. You will, of course, simply outline your top floor with another wall, and then finish these steps.
Starting on the actual ground area near your placement steps, put down one square of foundation, and layer walls to match your current wall amounts. I have 3 floors, so I place 3 walls. Then put down one set of stairs. Once the depression has been made, erase the stairs.
Once again, we are going to test our floors. Turn the cheat off, and place a wall on EACH floor of your home that your simmies will be living in. If the wall places, you’re fine! If it does not, simply turn on the CFE cheat, remove an outer wall, and then replace it. Now, sweep the flattening tool over everything EXCEPT the entryway area. Remember if you do this to any floor you will also have to adjust all floors above it to fix what your CFE work has bumped up. Once that is done, go to step 26.
Turn off the CFE cheat.
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41 Comment(s) posted so far
On Aug 4, 2009 pamreg1944 wrote:
Great tutorial! Could it possibly be uploaded as a .pdf as well? It's so much easier to print that way.
pamreg
On Aug 6, 2009 padme242424 wrote:
Thank U!!
On Aug 8, 2009 staceface2009p wrote:
that house looks very beautiful, i'd be happy if i lived there!
On Aug 22, 2009 ragelbagel wrote:
awesome. thanks so much. helped alot
On Aug 23, 2009 shivanjani wrote:
ooo thanks...this is awesome....
On Aug 30, 2009 evil_jigglypuff_21 wrote:
KEWL! Ive been playing with the CFE Code As Well.I hope To Accoplish In Due Time A work Of Art You've Made And Displayed Here Soon. Nice House & Great Tutorial!
On Sep 4, 2009 elliot.le wrote:
Hi there. On step 11, how do I do do the porch? Because it seems like you still have a flat space infront of the house where you can do it, where on the other ones you don't. Many thanks.
On Sep 16, 2009 Blessedchild42 wrote:
Hello, I have tried this and I am oh so stuck. I Love this house and I am determined to make this house. But, I mess up at steps 6 thru 11. Oh! Please can you help me.
On Oct 3, 2009 RULEFE wrote:
Thank you.
On Oct 4, 2009 Blessedchild42 wrote:
Hi there, on step 15 how do you replace the third column. I tried to replace it but because of the rigid edge, it says that it can not because it needs a flat base. Can you help me.
On Oct 22, 2009 A_Chambers86 wrote:
I wish this tutorial was in PDF format. Can you possibly put it in PDF? Thanks
On Nov 2, 2009 soska wrote:
please help! I know im doing something wrong -- step 11 I can't place a porch either? You say that once you remove the stairs and diagonal wall and level the terrain the inner walls are supposed to drop. They dont! And I cant place a porch after!
On Dec 24, 2009 punkymum wrote:
Thanks so much for this easy to follow tutorial. I have now built my first home for submission to TSR using this tutorial as the starting point. Made sure I gave you credit, without this tutorial I'd have been lost. "The Thomas" is available in Residential Lots - Contemporary. Soon there'll be a base game version available also.
On Jan 24, 2010 oxmacie88xo wrote:
this is a great tutorial but i cant seem to get steps 12-16!! please help
On Feb 9, 2010 2fresh4sho wrote:
Thisz is Hott !
On Feb 9, 2010 2fresh4sho wrote:
Thisz is Hott !
On Feb 9, 2010 2fresh4sho wrote:
Thisz is Hott !
On Mar 18, 2010 Koti4ek wrote:
Thank you! It's really easy to follow and very useful tutorial.
On Mar 28, 2010 CRBie22 wrote:
Hey i am also stuck on step 11 bacause i cant get the porch to touch the house, there is a gap between them. but great tutorial
On Apr 25, 2010 pillowmaker911 wrote:
please upload as a PDF!!! LOVE this tutorial
On May 17, 2010 simfanatic101 wrote:
Okay, this is THE BEST HOUSE ive seen! you see, im making a movie for my sims 2 game. Mind if i use this house for my main character in my movie? i assure you that i will say that i didnt make my house on my own. i copied it from someone else. k? I'll say that, this house was originally by you. EXCEPT im going to have the inside different of course. and i'm also going to change the outside a little too. I hope your permission is granted to me
On May 19, 2010 cindyloupickel wrote:
Thank you for sharing. I cant wait to make one of these in my city!
On Jun 18, 2010 mura wrote:
On Jun 20, 2010 adonispluto wrote:
A good tutorial
On Jun 29, 2010 GiraffeLady wrote:
I really like that and would love to make something like it...but I have a small problem. What exactly is the CFE cheat? Like, what does it stand for. It's still on topic because the CFE is needed in alot of the steps.
On Jul 1, 2010 Püsteblümchen wrote:
wow
On Jul 19, 2010 cekwebpage wrote:
OMG it;s awesome. Thanks so much. XD time to out it on practice, Hope it work in Sims 3 as well
On Jul 28, 2010 PrinsesaAko wrote:
thank you so much!
On Jul 31, 2010 BBdoll3 wrote:
I'm sort of late in the game. Were you able to provide PDF? If so, where can I find it? Your totorial is great! Thanks for sharing. Much appreciated..
On Sep 1, 2010 simmlover123 wrote:
Thanks! can u make this house avalable for download? i cant manage to build it and its just so pretty. Many, many thanks.
On Sep 14, 2010 bless91 wrote:
'thank you' for an item
On Sep 14, 2010 bless91 wrote:
'thank you' for an item
On Sep 14, 2010 bless91 wrote:
thank you for an item
On Oct 4, 2010 joan1986 wrote:
gracias por un artículo
On Oct 4, 2010 kakashiswife wrote:
Thankyou! I really appreciate the tutorial. I haven't mastered it yet, but I'm having fun trying!!
On Oct 31, 2010 Syringa89 wrote:
That's looking rather promising, but i would like to know if you have issues with doors not looking right on the very bottom of the house... thats a problem i have right now, but i used a different technique for multi-levelt houses...
On Jan 21, 2011 iamdestinystar wrote:
this is a great and thorough tutorial but i must admit it is all a bit daunting with all of the intricate steps... thumbs down to maxis for not giving us an easy way to make a split level
On Mar 26, 2011 Semmos wrote:
Jesus Christ, I'm Dutch, and only 14 years old. I think i came pretty far for a young girl who's English isn't really good. From step 12, it's way too difficult unfortunately :c
If there is someone, who's Dutch, or can explain these things to me in simple English, like the way you to teach a little child how to tying shoolaces, send me message please
But it's a damn good tutorial, I realle like it
On Apr 4, 2011 Lady Arielle wrote:
Would like to see this as a pdf file.....other than that, it's a VERY good tutorial.....
On Jul 18, 2011 GaZa07 wrote:
-TENKIU XD
On Nov 24, 2011 rennessmay wrote:
how do i play this game?????