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Arcvelle
Open Studio

Lesson 2 of 8 · 12 min

Draw your rooms

Set your units and wall sizes, drag out rooms with the Room tool, draw walls point by point and type exact lengths for each wall.

In this lesson you will

  • Choose metric or imperial units and set the default wall height and thickness
  • Create rooms by dragging rectangles that join automatically
  • Draw walls point by point with angle and corner snapping
  • Correct a wall by typing its exact length, thickness or height

In this lesson you draw the shell of a small flat. Arcvelle finds rooms from the walls you draw, so once the walls enclose a space it becomes a room with its own area.

Start a blank plan

  1. Open a new project. The plan is empty and shows a short prompt in the middle.
  2. Open the Build panel. Under Plan settings, choose Metric (m) or Imperial (ft / in) in Units.
  3. Set Wall height and Wall thickness. These apply to every wall, and you can change single walls later. A typical internal ceiling height is 2.4 to 2.7 m (about 8 to 9 ft).
  4. Leave Snap to grid (5 cm) on while you learn. It keeps corners on tidy measurements.

Drag out rooms

  1. Pick Room in Drawing tools, or press B.
  2. Drag a rectangle on the plan. The live label shows its width and depth as you drag. Release to create the room.
  3. Drag a second rectangle so that it shares an edge with the first. Rooms that share an edge join, so the shared wall is drawn once.
  4. The tool goes back to Select after each room. Hold Shift as you release to keep drawing rooms.

Draw walls point by point

Use the Wall tool, or press W, for anything that is not a rectangle, such as an L-shaped hall.

  1. Click to place the first point, then click again for each corner. The length of the wall you are drawing is shown beside it.
  2. Lines snap to 45° steps and to existing corners. Hold Alt to place a point without snapping.
  3. Click an existing corner to close the shape, or double-click or press Esc to finish.

Make it exact

  1. Press V for the Select tool and click a wall. The properties panel shows Length, Thickness and Height.
  2. Type a new length and press Enter. The far end of the wall moves and the walls joined to it follow.
  3. Drag a wall sideways to move it, or drag a corner to reshape the rooms around it.
  4. Click inside a room to see its area, give it a Name and set its Room type. The type matters later for Smart Layout.

Check your work

Use the scroll wheel to zoom, or the zoom buttons in the bottom-left corner, and press the fit button to see the whole plan. Drag empty space to pan. If something goes wrong, press Ctrl+Z to undo. To delete a wall, select it and press Delete. Rooms are found from walls, so removing walls is how you remove a room.

If you have an existing drawing of the home, see Trace a plan to draw over it at the right scale.

Try it now

Start a blank plan