Canfield Research Group LLC

How FloorPlan operates.

• Locations
  • See also Locations and Changing locations
  • Locations define the geometric plane that all work occurs on. A two story house usually has two locations, a Ground Floor and a Second Floor. The first location defaults to 0” off the ground and 8’ tall. The second location is at 9’ and 8’ tall. Each floor is usually 12” above the floor below it to provide room for the flooring.
  • Locations provide defaults but they are not dynamic. When items are placed on a location they take on the default attributes of that location. This applies mostly to walls, ceilings and floors. If later the location changes (See also “Changing locations) the walls need to be manually adjusted, both in offset from the ground and wall height.
  • It is almost always better to copy a location as this at least sets the floor plane correctly although the height still needs to be manually adjusted.
  • Collision detection does not take place between locations. A wall in on location can cross another regardless of the heights. This is critical to understand. Without this feature many designs in FlooorPlan would be impossible.
    • Stairs are an exception to the collision logic. When stairs transition from one location to another FloorPlan auto cuts a hole in the floor. Most of the time this is a good thing.

• Walls are another minor exception. When a wall is placed on the outside of the house it is extended to meet with the top of the floor below. See walls below.

• Walls, internal / external
  • FloorPlan uses the same wall for external and internal uses. This is different from some other software that have external and internal walls. In FloorPlan walls have a number of parameters including material for external and internal views.
  • Walls are external if they are NOT enclosed. If a 3 wall plan is created both sides of every wall are assumed to be external and the external material setting will be used. If enclosed then the external material is used for the outer side of the wall and the internal materials are used for the inner walls.
  • External walls by default are set to the height of the floor below, typically +12” tall. This fills in the hole between floors. These dimensions can be changed and often need to be changed to accomplish some designs.
  • Sometimes a wall needs to be forcible separated into two walls at a specific location. Invisible walls can be used to cut the wall into segments at exact dimensions. These cutting walls should not connect to anything else. To work properly they must bisect the wall and that often requires they be draw long enough to get FloorPlan to cross the wall instead of merging into it. After being drawn the invisible wall can be shrunk.

• Drawing angled walls is more difficult than it should be,see also .

• Roofs
  • Roofs can be used to simulate sloped walls. The rule to remember is that roofs cannot be drawn directly underneath a location with a roof. If there is a roof at a location based 8’ then roofs at any location below that may will be cut wherever the the above roof overlaps. The solution is to place all false roofs at the same location (any number of overlapping roofs can appear at the same height above the ground).

• See also Roof Rules (aka The Way of the Roof)