Room Layout

Room Layout — quick guide

Placing things

  • Pick an item from the Library, or use Custom object to type width × depth × height plus the space you need around it.
  • A table entered as 150 × 75 with 10 cm behind it occupies 150 × 85 cm of floor — the tool keeps both numbers separate and draws the extra space as a hatched zone.
  • Drag to move. Objects snap to walls, to each other, and to each other's clearance edges.
  • R rotates 15°, Shift+R the other way, Shift+drag or click adds to the selection.
  • Ctrl+G groups what you have selected, so it moves, turns and mirrors as one piece. Double-click a member to pick it out on its own; Ctrl+Shift+G ungroups.
  • M mirrors left to right, Shift+M front to back — about the selection's own centre, swapping each item's left and right clearance. Duplicate first if you want to keep the original.
  • Labels in the toolbar (or L) hides every name tag at once. To silence just one, use the A button on its row in the list, or Name tags in its panel — a whole group at a time from the group's row.
  • A name tag shows the name only; sizes live in the list, the panel and the dimension lines (Dims).
  • Settings → Show lengths in switches the whole tool between centimetres and millimetres. Lengths are stored in centimetres either way.

Paths & openings

  • Add path then click along the floor to trace a walkway; Enter finishes, Esc cancels, Backspace removes the last point.
  • Anything standing in a path — or in another object's clearance — is listed under Issues and outlined in the viewport.
  • Doors & windows are placed on a wall by distance along that wall; a door's swing is treated as space that must stay free.
  • A path can be one width at the start and another at the end — an aisle that opens out.
  • Paths fork and join: points land on a 5 cm grid with square corners (switchable to free angles), a point near another walkway snaps onto it, and walkways that meet are grouped as one network — double-click picks one back out.
  • Drag a path point to move it, drag the line and that stretch slides sideways staying parallel, Shift-drag moves the whole walkway. Crossings are painted as one layer and are never reported as a problem.
  • A path can be told that chairs pushed into it are fine — a walkway past a row of desks — while still reporting everything else in the way.

Finding things

  • The left rail has four tabs: Add (one of each standard part), Custom (parts you have saved, setups and pictures), Room (size, paths, doors, settings and the list of everything in it) and Parts (what the room is made of, counted).
  • The library carries one of each thing. Place it and change it; save a version you want again with ✎ · Copy as new item and it appears under Custom.
  • In Parts, click a row to select every one of them, or to edit the library item behind them.
  • Folder… keeps your layouts in one folder: the dropdown beside it switches between the .json files in it, Save writes back into the open one and Save as… makes another. Chrome and Edge only; elsewhere Save and Open fall back to one file at a time.
  • Saved files are in whole centimetres and whole degrees — what is on screen is left alone.
  • Select several things and Save as a setup to keep the arrangement in the library under Setups; placing it stamps the whole thing back in as a group.
  • A copy keeps the name of what it was copied from; ids tell them apart. Something placed fresh is numbered instead.
  • Mirroring a bench flips what stands on it — the mouse changes hands, the rack and shelf swap ends — but writing on the top is not read backwards.

Types & the library

  • Placing something from the Library links it to that library item. Edit the item with — size, clearance and colour — and everything already placed from it changes to match.
  • Editing a linked object does the same thing, from the other end. Unlink this one if you want to change just the one.
  • Custom object can save what you build as a library item, which makes it a type of its own.

Pieces worth knowing

  • Trolley — a movable table: two levels, one just above the castors and one at the height you set. Width, depth, height and colour are all it needs.
  • Shelving takes a shelf count, switches between closed shelves and wire grid shelves under Style, and can stand on castors to become a rack you push about.
  • Press — a bench press on a three-legged base with a three-armed handle; added from the bench it stands on. Bag stand — a frame with a bin bag in it.
  • Parts trolley — a wheeled cabinet of small compartments: set how many across and up, and the drawer grid fills the width of the trolley without matching its depth.
  • Office chair on a five-star base, and a garderobe open at the front with a hanging rail.
  • Object flow room — closed on three sides with a roller shutter on the fourth. Point at it and scroll to run the shutter up and down; it stops 10 cm below the top.
  • Select a bench and Add a wall behind it — the wall starts at bench height and stands just past the space the bench needs behind it. Select that wall to add a tool rack or a shelf to it.
  • The assembly travels with the bench, and dragging a rack drags the bench. Only bench walls take fittings; the room's own walls are not objects.
  • A rack and a shelf take opposite ends of the wall and share its width — widen one and the other gives way. A rack is stocked like a shadow board — a row per kind, sizes running across it — and keeps its full height; a shelf is let into the wall, single or double.
  • A mirror is hung on a face rather than placed: pick it out of the library, then click the face of a bench wall, closet, locker, garderobe, shelving or the room's own wall. It lands centred on the spot you clicked; Esc calls it off.
  • A hung mirror takes its start height from the floor, slides along its face when you drag it, and can be moved round to the front, back, left or right of the same thing — it always looks out of the face it is on.
  • Add screens or Add oscilloscope from the bench: they stand on the top, the same distance in from the back edge, sliding along and turning a little. Add keyboard and Add mouse sit at the front edge instead.
  • An oscilloscope can also stand on a shelf — select the shelf and add it there.
  • A table or trolley can carry writing on the top — laid on the surface, sized to fill it, readable from across the room.
  • A floor area marks out a coloured bay — rectangular or round — with its name written large across it. It is paint, not furniture: things stand in it, walkways cross it, and it never counts as a clash or as floor used up.

Pictures

  • From a picture… makes an object out of a photo. Cut-out stands the photo up at true size, front/top/all wrap it onto the box.
  • Floor plan underlay puts an existing plan on the floor so you can trace over it — set its scale in cm.

Keys

  • 1/2 3D / plan view
  • F fit · G grid · C clearance · L labels · D dims · W walls
  • R rotate · M mirror · Ctrl+D duplicate · Del delete
  • Ctrl+G group · Ctrl+Shift+G ungroup
  • Arrows nudge (Shift = ×10) · Alt while dragging = ignore snapping
  • Ctrl+Z undo · Ctrl+Shift+Z redo · Esc deselect