Draw Walls

 

Draw walls in your plan in any viewing mode except elevation.

 

Contents

 

Draw Wall
Draw Curved Wall

Wall Length

Wall Thickness

Wall Height

Wall Bottom

Linking Walls

Multi-Storied Walls

Select

Delete

Move

Hide

Lock

Reflections

Paint and Materials

Reshape Wall

Duplicate

Wall Dimensions

Cut Holes

In-Wall Objects

On-Wall Objects

Wall Properties

Draw Wall

Draw interior and exterior walls in two steps:

 

  1. Choose Build> Draw Walls and one of the options below:  


     

  2. Click-and-drag in the work area to draw a wall.

    Note: Walls snap to 15 degrees increments as you draw. Disable snap by holding in the shift key while drawing walls.

 

Wall Lengths

If a wall is not linked at both ends, adjust length in two ways:

 

  1. Click-and-drag blue handles
     

  2. Right-click wall and choose "Set Wall Dimensions"

 

If a wall is linked at both ends, click-and-drag attached walls to adjust length. For example, if you have four walls, drag side walls to adjust the top and bottom lengths. Drag top or bottom walls to adjust side lengths.

Wall Height

Adjust wall height by dragging top wall handles up or down. You may also right-click the wall and choose "Properties" or "Set Wall Dimensions" and change the walls height.

 

Default wall height under Edit> Preferences> Walls. This is also the distance between floors in multi-story buildings.

 

Wall Bottom

Change Height of Wall bottom by dragging lower wall handle upwards.  You may also add new points to a wall bottom as you do with wall tops by Ctrl-clicking the bottom edge. See Reshape Wall below.

Wall Thickness

Set wall thickness by right-clicking the wall and choosing "Set Wall Dimensions" or "Properties."

 

Default wall thickness: Set the default for interior and exterior wall thickness under Edit> Preferences> Walls.

Linking Walls

Walls drawn over the end of another wall, or ending near the unlinked portion of another wall will be linked - unless wall thickness or altitude are different.

 

Drawing linked walls:

 

  1. Choose Build> Draw Wall and interior or exterior (not unlinked type).
     

  2. Draw first wall using click-and-drag.
     

  3. Put mouse over the end of the first wall and click-and-drag. The new will be linked to that end of the first wall.
     

  4. End the last wall in the series within two feet of the first wall's unlinked end - and the last wall segment will be linked.
     

  5. A floor will be drawn inside a closed series of linked walls.

 

Ways to stop walls from linking

 

  • Unlink a wall by right-clicking and choosing "Disable Linking"
     

  • Choose "Unlinked" wall types from the Build>Draw Walls menu.

Multi-Storied Walls

Walls may be drawn on one floor and their height raised to the top of the second, third or higher floor levels. It may be easier to modify your plan if exterior walls heights are set this way.

 

However, walls may be drawn on top of other walls beneath them when the grid level is set atop those walls. The upper story wall will attempt to snap to the ends of the lower story wall when drawing (unless the shift key is held down.)

 

Set Wall Drawing Level: Walls draw on the grid - not on top of other things. Set grid level with the Page Up and Page Down keys or use Edit> Move Work Grid.

Select Wall

Select walls in several ways:

 

  1. Double-click wall

  2. Right-click and choose "Select Object"

  3. Click the selection tool and single-click the wall

 

When you see handles on the wall it is selected.

Delete Wall

Select a wall and press the Delete or Backspace keys - or right-click the wall and choose "Delete."

Move Wall

To move a wall, click-and-drag it to a new position. Use shift to constrain movement when dragging.

 

Moving linked walls will adjust the lengths of walls linked to it.  

 

To move a wall up, you can adjust the lower handle on the wall, however, it is often best to move the grid level to the altitude you want the wall to be and redraw the wall on that level.

Hide Wall

To hide a wall for editing inside a room behind it, right-click it and choose "Hide."

 

To show a hidden wall choose View> Show All or Show Last Hidden. Also see Build>Hide for more information.

Lock Wall

Right-click a wall and choose "Lock" to prevent it from being modified accidentally.

 


Reflections

 

Right-click the wall, choose "Properties" and set reflectivity as a percentage - where a mirror is 100% and no reflectivity is zero.

 

To turn on reflections see Edit> Improve Edit Speed> Turn Off Reflections or just press the "M" key. The green dot next to the "M" on the tool bar indicates reflections are on.

Note: Reflectivity requires more rendering power because plan3D has to re-render this reflect image in the countertop. This requires plan3D to do double-rendering. If you have a slow computer or video card you should probably turn off reflections when you're editing. See Edit> Improve Edit Speed for more information.

Paint and Materials

Add bricks, siding, stucco and other materials to all or part of a wall by dragging them in from the Directory - see Materials and Textures

 

Add paint to walls from the Paint and Color Directory.

 

To apply paint and materials to part of a wall, floor, roof or countertop, see Build> Draw Material.

Reshape Wall

Reshape walls by dragging red handles. Add new red handles to wall tops or bottoms by Ctrl-clicking wall edges - and then dragging those handles. Delete handles you've adding using Ctrl-click as well.  

 

Reshape a wall to have a roof peak:

 

  1. Create walls and draw a roof on them. Figure 1.
     

  2. Hold in Ctrl, move mouse over top center wall edge. Figure 2.

     
    Figure 1.                                                      Figure 2.
     

  3. Ctrl-click top center wall to add a new red handle. Figure 3.
     

  4. Drag the red handle up under the roof peak to snap it into place. Figure 4.

     
    Figure 3.                                                      Figure 4.

 

Disable Snap: To disable snap (you don't want to disable snap above), drag red handles while holding in the shift key.

Duplicate Wall

Walls may be duplicated by selecting them and choosing "Duplicate" from the Edit menu. You can create evenly spaced rows of walls by holding in the Q key, peeling off a copy of the wall, then choosing Duplicate fr`om the Edit menu to repeat the wall duplication in the same direction and same distance as many times as you want.

 

Hold in the shift key while Q-dragging a wall to keep it even with the first wall.

 

Also see Edit> Duplicate.

Wall Dimensions

Walls are automatically given dimensions in blueprint mode. See Build> Dimensions for more information.

 

Also see Build> Tape Measure for other ways to measure.

Cut Holes

Cut holes in walls with Build> Cut Hole. Frame wall holes using Build> Draw Molding. Convert wall holes to generic windows or doors by right-clicking them.

In-Wall Objects

Directory doors, holes, showers, fireplaces and other in-wall objects cut a hole in the wall before they're inserted. Allow enough wall space for these objects to fit when dragging them in. Otherwise they will disappear.

 

Linked walls won't allow doors, windows and holes to overlap the link area so you'll need to move them in the thickness of the wall.

 

See Door and Window tutorials and Directory for more information.

On-Wall Objects

Some objects attach themselves to the surface of a wall when you drag them in from the Directory. For example:

 

  • Security doors slide over entry doors.
     

  • Light switches and wall lamps float on a wall surface.
     

  • Apply materials and paint to part of a wall with Build> Draw Materials.
     

  • Molding drawn on a wall are owned by that wall. Delete the wall and its molding will be deleted. See Build> Draw Molding for more information

Wall Properties

Set wall properties by right-clicking and choosing "Properties."

 

 

Wall Properties

 

Wall thickness can be adjusted here as well as by right-clicking and choosing "Set Wall Dimensions"

Height
can be adjusted here as well as by right-clicking and choosing "Set Wall Dimensions" and dragging the top wall handles.

 

Side of Wall: If you right-click on the outside or edge of a wall, the Property window will show outside or edge instead of "inside" as shown below. Wall sides may have different materials.

 

Material Properties

 

Reflectivity:  100% is a mirror, 15% is a shiny floor, 0% is flat.

 

Scale: How much to scale the original image. For example, if this is set to 50% then the material will be reduced by 50% (half.)

Also see Materials and Textures.

 

Wall Label

 

Create custom wall labels for Help> List of Materials.

 

For example, to change the label "name" to "Bathroom East Wall", and "category" to "Bathroom" do this:

 

  1. Enter "Name" in the Label text box.

  2. Enter "Bathroom East Wall" in the Name text box

  3. Click the "Add Data" button

 

Try adding new labels like the ones below:

 

 

 


Curved Wall and Rounded Wall

 

Draw short straight wall segments around a reference image or shape to make a curved wall.

 

If you don't want the walls to snap to 15 degree increments hold down the shift key when drawing the walls.

YouTube Example...

 

Steps:

 

  1. You need to import a JPG or GIF image or Directory Shape you can use as a "Reference" for drawing your curved walls.

    Either 1.) Drag-in a "Cylinder" shape from the "Your Shapes" Directory in Plan3D or 2.) Import a JPG or GIF or BMP image as a trace file.

  2. Scale the image or shape before tracing over it with walls. For JPG or GIF right-click on it and choose Scale Trace Image. For shapes from the directory hold down the ALT key and drag them to the size you want or right-click them and choose "Set Dimensions."

  3. Put the shape where it's supposed to go in your plan.

  4. Use the shape as reference while drawing walls. For shapes from the directory it may be easier to trace it in blueprint mode.

  5. LINKING: Walls will link automatically if you don't use the shift key (15 degree increments). If you hold down the shift key when drawing walls you may need to double-click them to get them to link.

Note: Doors and Windows can only fit on wall segments that are large enough to hold them.