Modelling buildings at 1:250 scale

[BrianTJohnston]

What software would anyone suggest for a complete newbie like myself to produce harbour buildings? I've bought ModelBuilder by Evans Designs, but it is very basic and has a lot of drawbacks, the main ones being no ability to transform shapes by mirroring or flipping and no way of applying text, even as labels. The lack of transform is the main killer as, unless your building is symetrical you can't produce a rear elevation to match the front. Without spending big bucks on a full blown CAD package with alll the texture and components libraries or something that is going to take ages to learn (Iwant to build models, not sit punching keys), has anyone any suggestions?

[Papercaptain]

Hi, Brian!
Why bother to fight against the inefficiency of wrong computer programmes and wasting time and energy?
There are several harbour buildings available as commercial sets, mainly in Germany, e.g. from Wilhelmshavener Moewe-Verlag (www.papermod.com), Mitteldeutscher Kartonmodell-Verlag (www.mdk-verlag.de) and Hamburger Modellbaubogen-Verlag (www.h-m-v.de). Also you could try the model railway related sites like MaKaMo, Stipp or Gleimo (some of these have freebies, too). Have a look at tutorials about Sketchup or Gimp computer programmes, there are free versions.
Kind regards -
Papercaptain

[Art Deco]

Brian, how about using ModelBuilder together with a basic graphics application? Create the walls you want in ModelBuilder, then use another application to flip, modify, add text, etc. I think that would probably be a lot easier than learning to design your own from scratch, especially in terms of making the graphics.