Floorplans

[fuji]

What's a good reasonably priced or free application for drawing floorplans? Looking for the electronic equivalent of sketching my place on graph paper then moving to scale cut outs of my furniture around to see what layouts might work.

Pro CAD software five grand and overkill for simple things I want to do. There must be a zillion people who want to do what I want.

Suggestions?

 

[ig-88]

visio, ~$300, anything cheaper or free has sucked, in my experience

 

[basketcase]

I can't remember which but a couple furniture stores had online apps.

 

[fuji]

Gonna try google sketchup. If that doesn't work I will buy a copy of Visio.

 

[fuji]

Gonna try google sketchup. If that doesn't work I will buy a copy of Visio.

Sketchup worked pretty well, in case anyone else ever wants to do the same. Google sold it to another company but there is s free version that was good enough for what I wanted. About 500 for the license which adds features you would need if you wanted CAD files and other things professional use would require.

But for basic stuff like I was doing, i was able to use the free version to draw a floor plan, put furniture on it, and move it around until I had a good layout.

I had the job done in 2d but was able to pull it into three which was cool, but beyond what I needed.

 

[oldjones]

IKEA has a browser plug-in that's meant for its stuff but can be used if you keep telling yourself the IKA items are just 'stand-ins' SketchUp has a 'warehouse' of models such as kitchen cabinets, windows and such that other folks have stocked so you can download and use them. They're of varying quality, but while Google owned SU, manufacturers contributed many of them.

As a guy who used to design spaces and structures for a living, computers are tidier and give you slicker results with more useful detail, but for assessing your concepts, exploring options and refining them, quick and dirty cut-outs on a fast floor plan cannot be beat.

 

[fuji]

IKEA has a browser plug-in that's meant for its stuff but can be used if you keep telling yourself the IKA items are just 'stand-ins' SketchUp has a 'warehouse' of models such as kitchen cabinets, windows and such that other folks have stocked so you can download and use them. They're of varying quality, but while Google owned SU, manufacturers contributed many of them.

As a guy who used to design spaces and structures for a living, computers are tidier and give you slicker results with more useful detail, but for assessing your concepts, exploring options and refining them, quick and dirty cut-outs on a fast floor plan cannot be beat.

Yeah, it was fun using that sketchup. I can see you could do a lot. I just wanted to move furniture around in 2d to find a better arrangement, which I did, using some stand ins from that warehouse. Long after I was "done" what I set out to do I was playing with making a 3d view of configuration I decided on, which was kind of fun to play with but unneccessary. I can see how you can do a lot more with it than I did. My wife thought the 3d model was cool for about thirty seconds then "why haven't you moved the future yet?" Lol

 

[Remo]

Try SmartDraw