Draw a floor plan to scale

Drawing to scale, the FloorGen way

1. Pick the units. Start in feet and inches or in metres with the buttons above. Later, Project settings (Alt+1) switches units and sets the precision: down to 1/16 in, or millimetres in metric.
2. Type a room's size. With the room tool (R), start typing: 12 x 14 draws a 12 × 14 ft room in a feet-and-inches plan (a bare number is feet), 12' 6", 10 works too, and in metric 4, 3.5 is metres.
3. Type each wall. With the wall tool (W), click the first corner and type the length, such as 24' or 24' 6"; Tab moves to the angle, Enter places the wall and you carry on from its end. In a wall length a bare number means inches, so add the foot mark for feet. In metric, 3.5 is metres and 350 is centimetres.
4. Check against the tape. The tape measure (M) reads any distance on the plan; P pins it. Shift+M adds a dimension line that follows the walls.
5. Print at a scale. Export → Print set lays each floor on a sheet at a standard scale with a scale bar, or picks the largest one that fits.

What the scale means on paper

For permit drawings in the US, 1/4" = 1'-0" is the usual floor plan scale; outside the US, 1:50 or 1:100. If the house is too long for the sheet at 1/4", go to 1/8" or a bigger sheet rather than shrinking the PDF when you print, which breaks the scale. Floor plan scale covers sheet sizes and how to read the scale of a plan someone else drew.

Get the measurements right first

• Measure every wall, inside. Wall to wall at floor level, with the door and window positions from a corner. How to measure a room has a sheet to fill in.
• Measure the wall thickness at a door frame: about 4½ in for an interior 2×4 wall with drywall, 6½ in or more for an exterior one. Set it on the wall so rooms come out the right size.
• Check the diagonals of each room. If they differ, the room is not square, and the plan should show it.
• Add up both ways. The rooms and walls along one side of the house should add up to the outside length you measured.

Already have a plan on paper?

Photograph or scan it and trace it: set the scale from one printed dimension and redraw the walls over it. If you are starting from nothing, how to draw a floor plan walks through the whole process, by hand or on screen.