Canfield Research Group LLC

Goal: Cut a hole in a wall that is 33“x80” and has no trim but has a baseboard that wraps around the doorway. In my case this is the entry to an existing kitchen. The doorway criteria are:

• An entry 33” wide and 80” tall
• The entry is sheet rocked (no trim)
• There is a baseboard that runs around the entryway

• The kitchen floor includes the entryway area

I tried a number of methods before I deduced the “best” way to handle this. Failures can instruct as much as successes can so here are my failures:

Method	Image	Description	Success?
Custom Wall		Use a wall that is starts at 80” and is 12” tall. The trick is to create the short wall as a stand alone wall (not connected to anything) and adjust the Hight and Base Level properties. The baseboard should be hidden by setting those properties to 0”. Then create surrounding wall segments and finally move the short segment into location by manipulating the length and wall position to fit. Although close to what is desired there are a few problems; The underlying color of the floor shows through (green in my case), sometimes FloorPlan refuses to merge short walls thus preventing room creation where one is desired, if an end of the short wall is butt to a 0 degree wall then it can be very painful to get the walls to merge properly.	Limited success
Invisible Opening		Use an invisible window (Windows, Invisible Windows, Rectangle) and adjust the dimensions and set height from floor to 1/32” (0” does not appear to be allowed). The baseboards are still visible running across the invisible window. The baseboard can be eliminated by setting the wall properties properly but that eliminates the baseboard for the entire wall (both faces). The doorway sides cannot be individually textured and will take on the texture of the corresponding wall face (50% for each face).	Limited Success
Block	no image	Create the opening by drawing walls on either side but not connecting them. Then connect them using an invisible wall so the room is defined. Use a 3D block object (see attachments at end of this page) to simulate the wall. Set the snap to None, set the dimensions and properties to simulate the wall face. Two block objects may be required if both wall faces are different materials. The floor area correct as are all wall textures. It is a bit tedious to place the block since 3D objects cannot be dynamically resized, they have to have their dimensions set via the property dialog. Another problem is that the invisible wall reliably attaches only to the normal walls at their center point (regardless of snap point settings). On occasion FloorPlan will allow attachment to edges but this is unreliable. Finally editing the opening can be difficult to impossible without deleting the invisible wall, which destroys any floor materials set for the room	Limited Success
Fake Wall	no image	Use a wall on a different location simulate the look desired. This is visually the same as using a block and may be easier or harder to maintain than the 3D object depending on other aspects of the plan. It has the same problems and limitations regarding invisible walls as the block solution above	Limited Success
Fake Room		Use 1” walls to draw the entry way. This allows trim to wrap the entryway. But when an invisible wall is added at the entry edge the trim ceases to align properly! The extra walls are difficult to maintain and the invisible wall used in the threshold cannot always be butted to the other walls.	FAILS
Combination		The working doorway, see below for details	SUCCESS

The best method I found for this uses some of the other constructs described and is done as follows:

• Draw a wall normally.
• Optionally segment it around the doorway so that wall properties are limited to a small region of the wall.
• Insert a Door / Rectangular / Opening
• Modify the door trim material to be as desired, typically the same as one of the wall faces. The Door and Glass materials do not apply to this object and can be ignored.
• Hide the Trim that outlines the door on both wall faces. See Hiding Wall Trim above.
• Set the threshold floor texture if desired to hide the split down the center of the doorway. See Setting Threshold Textures above.
• Invisible walls can also be used to simulate this but I have found that getting the invisible wall to butt-to the normal walls to be unreliable. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t and sometimes it appears to work but leaves an artifact.

• Finally disable FloorPlan’s built in baseboard and use a custom baseboard to wrap around the doorway area. See Custom Baseboards.

The finished doorway exactly matches my original criteria. It is fairly easy to maintain with only the annoyance of keeping that second location synchronized .

If FloorPlan added some additional features then this would be MUCH easier:

• Disable/Enable wall trim on all door and window objects. Invisible windows already support this.

• A setting to control the threshold material for a door.