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Arcvelle
Open Studio

Lesson 3 of 8 · 10 min

Doors, windows and dimensions

Add doors, windows and open passages, set their size, swing and hinge side, and check your plan with dimensions and the Measure tool.

In this lesson you will

  • Place doors, sliding doors, windows and open passages on walls
  • Set an opening's width, height and sill, and change a door's swing and hinge
  • Measure any distance on the plan and show or hide wall dimensions

With the walls in place, the next step is to add the openings. Doors and windows affect where furniture can go, how light enters the 3D view and what appears in the schedules of the drawings set, so it is worth getting them right now.

Place an opening

  1. Open the Build panel and look under Doors & windows. You can choose Door, Double door, Sliding door, Window, Floor-to-ceiling window or Open passage.
  2. Click a type, then move the pointer over a wall. A marker shows where the opening will go.
  3. Click the wall to insert it. The side of the wall you click on decides which way a door opens.
  4. The tool returns to Select after one opening. Hold Shift while clicking to place several in a row.

Shortcuts help here: press D to pick a door and N to pick a window.

Adjust it

  1. Click the opening to select it. The properties panel shows its Type, Width, Height and Sill.
  2. Type exact sizes. A common internal door leaf is about 0.8 to 0.9 m wide (2 ft 8 in to 3 ft) and 2.0 to 2.1 m high. Window sills are often 0.8 to 1.0 m above the floor.
  3. For doors, use Flip swing to make the door open into the other room. For a single door, Switch hinge moves the hinge to the other side of the frame.
  4. Drag the opening along its wall to move it. You can also drag it onto a different wall.
  5. To remove it, press Delete or use Delete opening.

Read and check dimensions

  1. Under Plan settings, Show wall dimensions turns the length labels on walls on or off.
  2. Pick Measure, or press M, and click two points. The distance appears between them. Use it to check clearances, such as the space between a bed and a wardrobe.
  3. The scale bar in the bottom-right corner shows 1 m (or 3 ft 3 in) at the current zoom.

A quick review

Before moving on, walk through the plan in your head. Does every room have a way in? Do doors swing against a wall rather than into a walkway? Is there a window in each habitable room? Fixing these now saves rework when you furnish.

For more detail, see Doors and windows and Dimensions and units.

Try it now

Add doors and windows