Tips for Drawing a Floorplan?

adt2 · 11 Jan 2013, 21:48

I'm curious about how some of you go about drawing floorplans. I'm certainly no pro, but I've been using SketchUp for a few years now and have a Pro license - so I have access to Layout. In AutoCAD, I would stay entirely on the Top view, drawing walls and doors and what-not in a more-or-less free-form fashion. I never did produce a 3D or isometric drawing.

I'm trying to use SketchUp to draw my next house, though, and I'm having a little trouble wrapping my head around the "workflow." What's the "proper" way to do it? Do you guys just start drawing walls on the top plane, offset by the wall thickness, and pull up to ceiling height? Do you build components, one room at a time?

Again, just curious. I've seen lots of cool-looking SketchUp-produced architectural drawings out there, but I have no idea how to create one of those. All I know how to do is draw floorplans.

mwm5053 · 12 Jan 2013, 01:07

I've done several houses after starting out using SU for just woodworking until I found the HouseBuilder Plugin
http://rhin.crai.archi.fr/rld/plugin_details.php?id=188
I love it. Click here, click there and instant wall with studs and an outer layer of skin the first thing you will notice though is you see the studs through the skin so the skin is on a layer called layer0_skin that you turn on and off and put the studs and plates on a layer of they're own you can specify 2x4 or 2x6 you can change plate height, header heigh,t stud centers and edit the wall for doors,windows openings, they're are by far a lot people who use follow ne around the outer perimeter and some use lines and rectangle tool build walls and push/pull for doors and windows, did I mention doing gable roofs, However theres an other plugin called Build Edge that simpler and does a better job of roofs but no studs and have to cut open your openings. Use this tread if you have more questions.
And welcome as a new member very friendly place and lots of the best advice you'll get for SU

Just one other thing you'll want to read this if you haven't installed plugins before
http://sketchucation.com/resources/tutorials/37-beginner/108-installing-sketchup-plugins

Walt

sketchymick · 12 Jan 2013, 03:33

There's a stack of tutorials on youtube and similar which are worth looking at.

It all depends on what you are starting with. For example you can:

trace over an image (say a scanned plan, hand drawn, whatever) and scale it to the right size
import an autcad drawing and use the rectangle, line and offset tools to trace the image using the autocad points as reference.
import autocad and use that geometry (sometimes problematic depending on the skill of the original DWG author).
start from scratch using the line, rectangle, offset tools with the help of the tape measure to create guidelines and points.

etc. etc.

Give us some clues on where you ideally want to start and what you want to end up with - then you'll get some specific suggestions.

Cheers

Mick

adt2 · 13 Jan 2013, 22:12

Sometimes I start from scratch. Sometimes I start with an existing plan and trace. I'm mainly curious about setup; layers, groups, components, etc. Working in SU is so different than working in CAD that I want to make sure I'm not carrying over unnecessary baggage.

porch_unplugged · 15 Jan 2013, 14:20

@adt2 said:

Sometimes I start from scratch. Sometimes I start with an existing plan and trace. I'm mainly curious about setup; layers, groups, components, etc. Working in SU is so different than working in CAD that I want to make sure I'm not carrying over unnecessary baggage.

for a start draw everything in layer 0.

draw out the walls and make a group. push pull them up to the necessary height. fill in the floor area and group the geometry. use groups for most things, and use components for items that are repeated (doors, windows etc.). make layers according to how you want to control their visibility, so generally i would have walls on one layer, floors on another, funiture on another etc. quite similar to the way i work in cad.

it'll take you a while to get your head round it. one of the big stumbling blocks for me right at the start was knowing that i would have to draw some lines twice (e.g. where floors met walls), which is something i would never do in cad.