NW Timber Frames
Designing your Home

Our in-house design department is ready to serve your needs, whether you're starting from scratch with a raw piece of land, have a set of plans already, or would like to integrate timber frame elements into your home plan. We will gladly work with your architect or designer, or we can work directly with you to help you shape your ideas into a reality. Northwest Timber Frames can also serve as an in-house consultant for the more confident client or the do-it-yourselfer who has a pretty good idea of what they want and how the building process works. Northwest Timber Frames starts by designing a three-dimensional computer model of your home that can then be used to create shop drawings as well as full architectural plans. The model is also the basis for determining how much labor and what materials, either from a supplier or the clients own lumber, will be needed to complete the project.

Design Services offered by Northwest Timber Frames:

• Concept Design - Initial plan development & refinement
• Architectural Design Services - complete home designs including building plans for construction & permit submittals - along with any required engineering documentation.
• Timber Frame Design Services - Complete timber frame joinery details, shop drawings, and required engineering documentation.
• 3-D Modeling Timber Frame and/or finished home. With our software, you can take a virtual tour of your home before we ever build it. This is a great communication tool that can save time and money by leading to early refinements in design that would be more difficult or costly once the building process has begun. (See more below.)
• Detailed Cost Estimates

Latest Technology

We employ the latest in 3-D modeling technology to insure accuracy in our designs, facilitate communication with our customers, and provide good economy for developing the final product.

CADwork, our design platform, is a 3-D modeling program specialized for the timber framing industry. In addition to accuracy, the ability to visualize the design in 3-D and review that with our clients is a great advantage from concept design through refinement of final details. Furthermore, using the same model to produce the architectural drawings, detailed timber frame shop drawings and detailed material lists insures the building process comes together seamlessly.

Communication Tools

Visualizing a set of Architectural Plans can be difficult for many homeowners not used to building plans, and even for professionals, depending on the complexity of the design. Our technology allows us to show our clients ahead of time what details will look like. We can even e-mail interactive 3-D models allowing you to do a “fly-through” of your new home before building ever begins. Utilizing these communication tools is an important part of the design process to insure that our design efforts are meeting our clients expectations. For an example of an interactive 3-D model, and the software to read it download the viewer and its corresponding file. You will need to download the CADwork viewer program “Lexoview” to see the model which typically takes 2 to 3 minutes with a high-speed connection.

Step 1: Download the 3-D viewer and install it. ftp://ftp.cadwork.ch/CADWORK.FTP/I386-NT/EXE/cadwork_3d_viewer.exe

Step 2: Download the sample 3-D model here. (3.5 mb) PC users can right-click and "Save target as..."

Once the sample 3-D model is downloaded you can double-click it and the 3-D viewer program will open it. You will be able to view the sample 3-D model from any angle just by clicking and dragging on the screen with your mouse. This unique view allows you to see how your home plan can be viewed in 3-D before construction even starts. If for some reason things are not working with the downloads, installation or viewing of the 3-D sample image please call or send an email to Jeff@nwtimberframes.com.