Thanks for the help, and the suggestions, Southrend!
I've now been using the designer for a while to produce my ideal house; and in the process I would like to add to the wish list for the designer -- which was why I posted in the first place. I have appreciated additions to the thread showing off some designs as well -- thanks for that. I've also been visiting a few houses in world 31 to get a feel for what works.
Here's my wish list for the designer!
(1) Buttons as a list down the side; not a pull down menu. Not only is this faster -- I have found when building rooms in the upper right of the grid, the pull down menu covers up squares I am using, and doesn't retreat until I have done an extra click on the menu title to explicitly retract it.
(2) Color coded squares. Say, green for garden/menagerie, white for interior, brownish for dungeon, and normal background for unused. This would really help the over view.
(3) Walls need to be made a bit darker, so that they show up more clearly and make the layout move visible. Alternatively, the lighter color for interior rooms might already solve this.
(4) Solve the bug (? I think) which means I sometimes cannot rotate a room. This seems to happen when I switch from one floor to another. Here's the shortest way I have found to reproduce the problem starting from clear. Place a chapel. Select upper floor. Select ground flaw. Rotate the chapel. The rotation does not work.
(5) Less important: but how about optional display of icons/text/both for rooms?
(6) Dungeon rooms would look better if you could display the room shape. Rooms all take up 8x8 runescape squares. Most rooms make all 64 cells part of the room. But a dungeon room does not. The treasure room is 6x6, plus 2 cells for the passage in. The corridor is 8x2 cells, with the rest solid rock. The junction is two intersecting corridors, with additional cells made available for a 4x4 space in the center. The dungeon stairs and pits are both a 6x6 chamber like the treasure room, but with four passage ways of 2 cells each, in every direction. The corridor should rotate properly; you could have two icons used for the corridor rooms, one for NS and one for EW. You don't select them as different rooms, however; the rotation action simply switches the icon between NS and EW.
(7) Finally... this is the hardest, but it would be very cool and not perhaps as hard as it seems at first. 3d views. Basically, all you need is to draw rooms in the right order, so that those to the front simply over draw those to the rear. Views could be of a single floor without the roof, or of the the above ground view with roof and two stories shown. View would be from one of four directions: NE, SE, NW or SW. Each floor would occupy a diamond shape; with the walls extending up in the shape of a parallelogram. Managing the treasure room would require four separate icons for use in the layout, with rotation switching between them.
Items 6 and especially 7 on my wish list would, I think, be more work than the others. I propose to explain items 6 and 7 better with some pictures, when I get around to it.
This designer is a really nice tool, and I'll continue to use it whether it gets upgraded or not. A good tool is worth maintaining and extending... if you do have the time I offer these suggestions as something you might like to consider!
Edit...
To illustrate what I mean by suggestions (6) and (7) I have taken the liberty of using Shane's house, for which he gave a link above. The link is
http://rsbb.ca/h740I like this design; and I think a few tweaks to coloring would really help show it up much better in the designer. Ditch the grid, ditch all walls with outside cells like a garden or menagerie, and color the interior cells to contrast with the exterior. I've also disposed of the text identifying the rooms. The icon is enough for a regular user; I'd like to see text as an option.
I've also shown how it could appear in a 3d viewing style. The views are obtained simply by overlaying icons starting from the rear of the scene. The dungeon can be managed also, but I am thinking of a better icon set for dungeon rooms.
Cheers -- Wrytch