Hi. I did a quick floor plan in OmniGraffle to convey my vision of combining two rooms, and the builders liked it and asked for more exact measurements.
So I started with the walls, and entered them in as inches. I played around with the units and scale, because I want something that I can work with in Omnigraffle, and use the grids, etc., and not have them disappear when I zoom out, etc.
However, the next time I opened my document, I noticed that the numbers that were shown for the length of my walls were different than what I had originally entered. A 317 inch wall was suddenly 356 and 5/8" long. What happened?
I’m also curious why some lines touch and stick to other walls, and lose their length measurement, while others don’t.
And anything else you can tell me that would help me quickly draw two rooms, and their windows and doors and interior counters etc…
You want to avoid working at a 1:1 ratio because then you would end up with a diagram as large as an entire room, which would be a huge canvas. For a floor plan, you want to set up a scale so that you have accurate comparative measurements. See https://support.omnigroup.com/set-a-canvas-scale/ or you could ask your builders which scale is ideal. You could also go with whatever scale is typically used in your area. Some standards are listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale_ruler#Architect’s_scale. Based on that, I might use 1in = 12in or a 1:12 ratio so that one inch on the page is one foot.
You might also do a search in the Stencil Browser in OmniGraffle to see if there is a stencil that can help you get started with your floor plan instead of you drawing everything from scratch. One last feature to know about are OmniGraffle Data Variables. See https://support.omnigroup.com/documentation/omnigraffle/ios/3.0/en/data-variables/ and consider adding labels onto the lines using the <%Length%> <%Width%> and <%Height%> variables so that as you make changes, you can see the changes as you work. Using Scale is an OmniGraffle Pro feature.
“Lines” in OmniGraffle don’t have their own length if they are connected to other objects on both sides. This is for diagramming, so that when you move objects, the lines move with the connected object. If you do not want your lines to connect, you can hold down the Option key while near other objects. You can also go into the Properties inspector, and under Connections in the Line tab, uncheck Allow Connections to Other Objects and Allow Connections to Other Lines. This will mean that your lines will not connect so they will not change. Otherwise, line that you connect to other objects WILL change by design as you move the objects they are attached to, because that behavior is desirable for those doing diagramming.
See if you can find a good stencil and drag the items that you want to your document. Best of luck getting your room design completed! I’m not much of an architect, so I hope someone who is has some advice that is more advanced than I do. Hopefully this gives you a bit of information to get started! Let us know if you get stuck, as we are happy to help. You can always email us from the help menu using Contact Omni.
I’ve had a lot of success using OmniGraffle for doing cabinet layout designs, remodeling a great room, and repurposing another room. It’s not exactly RenderWorks or a CAD, but it is a lot easier, and lower overhead.
My latest question is this: I want lines, in my case walls, to automatically attach to other lines, but I don’t want them to lose the ability to be resized explicitly. Is there a way to do that?
Along the same lines, when I lay out lines with the line tool, it would be easy for me to go through this flow:
click at the starting position, click at the end of the first wall, move the cursor to the end of the second wall and click there, and move to the end of the fourth wall and click there. Then I can click again to end the line tool, or hit return. Then I want to go and change the individual segments to be the exact length, by typing in the units explicitly. But the line tool’s segments aren’t individually editable. Is there a way around that?
What I do right now is to start the line, move the cursor to the end of that “wall” and hit return. Then I explicitly enter the dimension. Then I repeat for the next wall. Instead I want to layout multiple line segments at once, and then go and change all their lengths individually. An alternative would be to select a multi-segment line and split it into separate individual lines, if possible.
