How to Use Excell to Draw Floor Plans

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How to Create a Floorplan in Excel

Confession time: I'm a slight spreadsheet nerd.  My dad worked for IBM and I remember seeing him working on spreadsheets on our home computer at a pretty young age.  I got hooked in late loftier schoolhouse/early on college, creating spreadsheets for my budget, comparing prices at various grocery stores, etc.  So naturally, when I started working every bit a schoolhouse librarian, I wanted to use spreadsheets in my work there.  The physical infinite of our library was horribly cluttered when I get-go got there, so I immediately started dreaming up ways of changing the space.  Pretty soon, I decided that I NEEDED a spreadsheet of the floorplan of our infinite.

My first couple of layout designs came out pretty bad, but gradually I started getting the hang of creating floorplans using Microsoft Excel.  Now I realize that there are probably better programs out there for creating floorplans.  Programs that might even be less labor intensive.  Only there's actually method to my madness in using Microsoft Excel:

PROS

1. Most reasonably tech savvy people know how to use it: A generalization yes, but you're likely to find more people with Excel experience than with Google Sketchup.
2. Nosotros often already have access to information technology: I researched interior blueprint programs when I first started putting together my layout, and most of the proficient ones were pretty expensive, while the costless ones didn't give me enough customization.  About people tend to have a copy of Excel on their work or dwelling computers, even Mac users like me.
3. Highly customizable: There's a lot of ways to customize your diagrams in Excel.

CONS

1. Labor intensive to showtime: When you brand your first floorplan, it will accept a good amount of work and elbow grease.  But after yous do information technology the first time, it'south pretty piece of cake to continue modifying information technology.
2. Doesn't cater to unusual shapes: I love our Interior Concepts Collaboration tabular array, simply information technology's Really hard to depict that in Excel.  Basic rectangles and circles are a breeze though.
3. Previous experience in Excel is needed: This post isn't an intro to Excel, so if you don't know how to do things similar resizing columns and inserting objects, y'all'll desire to learn that get-go.

All this aside, I think it is worth your time to effort out making a floorplan using Excel.  At present I'thousand going to evidence you how I do it.

Creating your floorplan

Click here to download the floor plan I used at Stewart.

i. Create a rough draft on graph paper (or sketch it out on regular paper)

This might seem counter-intuitive, but it'due south easier to sketch out your floorplan on graph paper first, and and then accept that information to brand a spreadsheet.  Grab a record measure, and measure the boundaries of the room(due south) y'all're creating the floorplans for.  If you have admission to the blueprints, crawly!  Using one foursquare on the graph paper to correspond one square foot, draw out the bones boundaries of the space.  Now it'due south time to put the stuff in your infinite 🙂

ii. Measure ALL THE THINGS!

Measure the length and width of every tabular array, desk, chair, storage unit of measurement, etc in your space.  Write down the measurements on a notecard.  For at present, you lot don't demand to worry most exactly where they fall in the space,  What you Do need are a listing of how many of each item you have and what their sizes are (ie. Six 30×sixty tables, Iv 36×90 bookshelves, etc)  Don't worry about the height – that won't be represented in the spreadsheet.  Once you've got all the information written downward, it's time to transfer that to the calculator.

3. Setup your spreadsheet like a filigree

Excel spreadsheets outset out with broad columns, which doesn't work well for flooring plans.  I like to create a filigree of squares where each square represents one square foot.  That makes information technology the easiest for planning out the space.  This website offers a great tutorial for figuring out exactly what numbers work best for you.

four. Create the boundaries of your infinite in Excel

Make up one's mind how many square feet each foursquare on your filigree will represent.  I prefer 1 sq ft per square, just that'due south me.  Count out the boundaries of your infinite based on your scale and highlight those squares.  Create a bold purlieus around this area to assist you lot run into the calibration you lot have.

5 . Create fixed objects

If there are certain elements of your space that are fixed, such as wall mounted library shelves, add them straight to the grid.  For our shelves, I highlighted the areas where they are and colored those squares burgundy.  This helps me to get a visual idea of where they are and it'll be useful in the next pace when creating article of furniture.

6. Create and arrange your furniture items

Using the measurements you took earlier, outset to create the furniture items of your infinite.  This tin can exist as simple or circuitous as yous like.  Basic rectangle shapes tend to work best for near things.  I like to color code my shapes in colors similar to the piece of furniture items, as information technology helps me to remember what they are.  Try to position the items relatively as they are now.

7. Group items as needed

If there'south a certain grouping of furniture that always goes together (ie. chairs at reckoner tables) y'all can group the items together using the group role in Excel.  Hold down command (PC) or command (Mac) and select each of the items you want to group.  And so cull group items.  Now when y'all move one, you can move all of them

eight. Play house

Now that yous have all your furniture items in place the fashion your space is prepare, save your file.  And so salve as and create a new file for experimentation and ideas.  Move your furniture all over and experiment with new layouts.  Create shapes for article of furniture items you're thinking nearly purchasing and play around with your space.  This is my favorite role of creating an Excel layout – it makes it so easy to experiment with new ideas.

Check out my book, Reimagining Library Spaces, to become more ideas for transforming your space!

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Source: http://www.renovatedlearning.com/2016/08/29/floorplan-space-excel/

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