Walls, rooms and levels
Walls and rooms
Section titled “Walls and rooms”| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| C | Wall tool: click the start, click the end; the next wall starts where the last one ended. Right-click or Esc stops the chain. |
| Ctrl+drag | (Wall tool) Erase the stretch you drag along from every wall under it, in red while you drag. Doors and windows in it go too. |
| Ctrl+click | (Wall tool) Remove the piece of wall between the walls that meet it, or the whole wall when nothing meets it. |
| R | Room tool: drag a rectangle; four walls make a room. |
Drag instead of clicking to draw a single wall.
Walls that run on in a straight line are one wall: drawing on from the end of a wall makes it longer, and two rooms side by side share one long wall along the front. This is Join in a line in the tool options; turn it off and walls stay as drawn. Join walls in a line in the command palette (F3) joins them later. A wall that ends on another makes a T: each face of the long wall is then painted span by span.
With the Select tool, a click on a long wall that other walls meet selects only the piece under the pointer (between those walls). Slide it with the arrow across it and only that room’s side moves: moved outwards, the walls that meet it stretch to it and the rest of the long wall stays where it was (a short wall closes the step where nothing else does); moved inwards, a dividing wall stays whole so the room next door keeps its wall. A piece you leave unchanged joins the long wall again.
A closed loop of walls is a room. Each room is a room of the exported interior, with its own height, floor and ceiling, flags and timecycle. The tool options pick Full or Half walls for new walls.
A selected wall’s Properties have sections for its:
- Height: a half wall, or different tops at the two ends for a sloped top.
- Surfaces: a material for each face, named after the room it looks into.
- Shape: a bulge bends the wall into an arc; openings follow it.
Arcs and half walls work with openings and trims like any other wall.
Wall heights
Section titled “Wall heights”A full wall with no height of its own is as tall as the ceiling beside it, so changing a room’s Ceiling height (or a level’s, in the Levels tab) changes those walls too. A wall end set to exactly the ceiling’s height goes on following it. A height of your own, such as a raised wall, stays when the ceiling changes.
The height arrow, a double arrow up and down at the middle of a selected wall’s top, raises or lowers the whole wall: both ends by the same amount (5 cm steps, Shift for any height), and the walls that meet it follow at the corners. Shift+click several walls and the arrow stands at the centre of them all: it changes every selected wall together, each keeping its own slope. Properties then has one Height field for all of them.
Doors and windows follow the height of their own wall, and cornices follow its top: see Sloped and raised walls and Trims.
Snapping and typed lengths
Section titled “Snapping and typed lengths”The plan tools (Wall, Room, Railing, floor cut and zone polygons, Stairs and the drags of wall ends) share one snap engine. The first rule that applies within about 14 pixels of the pointer wins, in this order:
| Snap | Where it goes |
|---|---|
| Endpoint | A wall’s end, a corner of a floor cut, zone or flight, the end of a railing (a square marker). |
| Intersection | Where two walls’ centre lines cross (an X). |
| Midpoint | The middle of a wall or an edge, the centre of a door or window (a triangle). |
| Perpendicular | While drawing: the foot of the perpendicular from the segment’s start on a wall. |
| Crossing | Two inference lines meet, or an inference line meets a wall. |
| Edge | Anywhere on a wall’s centre line. With nothing else in reach, a point inside a wall’s thickness goes onto its centre line even with the grid off, and a wall end let go there ends on that wall. |
| Inference line | In line with a wall end or midpoint along the axes and the level’s own directions, or the extension of a wall past its end. A dashed line shows what it follows. |
| Angle steps | Parallel or square to the wall under the pointer or the previous segment, along the level’s main directions, else 45 degree steps. The label says which (“Along 21°”, “Perpendicular to Wall.003”). |
| Grid | The fallback. |
A building that sits off the grid is handled by the level’s own directions: the walls of the level (or of the walk-in building) set them.
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| Hold Shift | Free the grid and every snap except Endpoint and the angle steps |
| Hold Alt | Free the angle (the grid and other snaps still apply) |
| M | Grid snap on / off (the magnet in the view header) |
| [ / ] | A finer / coarser grid step |
The small arrow beside the magnet button (and Preferences > Grid & snapping) switches Endpoint, Midpoint, Intersection, Perpendicular, Edge, Inference lines and Angle steps on and off one by one.
Typed lengths
Section titled “Typed lengths”While a wall is being drawn, type digits and . to set its length along the current direction; the readout shows
Length 3.25_ m. Enter (or a click) places the wall, Backspace edits the number, and Esc takes
the number back before it cancels the wall.
While a room rectangle is dragged, type width,height (either may be left out; Tab types the comma) and press
Enter or release.
Floors, ceilings and zones
Section titled “Floors, ceilings and zones”Every room has a floor and a ceiling made from its walls. Select a room to set its height, a raised floor, the floor and ceiling materials and trims.
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| Z | Floor zone: drag a rectangle or click the corners of a polygon for an area with another flooring, or a pit or platform (a sunken, raised or ramped floor). |
| Shift+Z | Split floor: draw a line across a room and click the side that gets a new flooring. |
| Y | Floor cut: a hole through the floor of a level above the ground (a void or a glass floor), also the ceiling of the level below. See Floor cuts. |
Levels and basements
Section titled “Levels and basements”Levels are the floors of the building. Page Up / Page Down move between them; the Levels tab of Properties edits the heights.
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| Page Up / Page Down | Go to the level above / below (never adds one) |
| Ctrl+Page Up | Add a level on top of the top one and go there (it needs a wall) |
| Ctrl+Page Down | Add a level below the lowest one (a basement) |
| Ctrl+Shift+Page Down | Remove this level when it is empty and is the top one or the lowest basement |
| Ctrl+Home / Ctrl+End | Walls up / down; pressing again from one side gives the cutaway view |
Stairs, railings and ladders
Section titled “Stairs, railings and ladders”| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| U | Stairs: drag from the middle of the foot of a flight the way it climbs. Its heights come from the floors under its two ends. A flight between levels cuts a stair opening in the floor above and adds a horizontal portal. |
| J | Railing: click the start and the end. Style (handrail and balusters, panel or glass) in Properties. Stair rails are in the flight’s Properties. |
| Shift+J | Ladder: click next to a wall. It stands against the nearest wall face and reaches the floor above or the ceiling. |
Selecting and editing
Section titled “Selecting and editing”The Select tool (V) shows handles on the selection: dots for wall ends and centres, arrows for height or slide, a square to move on the plan and rings to turn. The arrows work from any camera angle, also looking up from below.
A selected straight wall has two handles of its own:
- the double arrow across its middle slides the whole wall sideways (the walls that meet it stretch);
- the cubes at its ends make it longer or shorter about its middle.
Both snap to the grid and to the lines of other walls’ ends and middles; hold Shift to place them freely.
More handles:
- a railing has an arrow for its height;
- a stair has squares on its two sides (the width; the other side stays) and an arrow at its head (the top);
- a ladder has an arrow at the top of its climb;
- a light has a square on the circle of its reach (the falloff), and a spot a square on the rim of its cone;
- a spawn point has a dot for its radius;
- a decal has squares on its four sides;
- in the Scale tool, a mesh object has x, y, z and uniform handles along its own axes;
- a polygon zone has what a floor cut has (see Floor cuts), and a rectangular zone a square on each of its four sides;
- a door or window has handles for its width, height and sill (see Resizing with handles).
Move drags a wall end (connected walls follow) or a whole wall; Ctrl+drag raises a wall’s top or an opening. Shift+click adds to the selection and a box drag selects what lies inside it. Properties edits several selected items at once under Shared values.
Doors and windows follow (tool options with a wall selected, the wall’s Properties, the Edit menu) decides whether a door or window moves when a neighbouring wall end is dragged. By default they stay where they stand.
Mirror
Section titled “Mirror”A symmetric interior is drawn once: Properties > Interior > Mirror mirrors everything on one side of a plane to the other, live, like Blender’s Mirror modifier. Turn on Mirror across X (left and right swap; the plane is x = the position) and / or Mirror across Y. The plane shows as a dashed purple line in the view.
- Walls, doors and windows, room settings, props, lights, stairs, zones, railings, ladders, effects, decals and mesh objects are copied. A door’s hinge goes to the other jamb; a prop is turned to face the mirrored way (its model is not mirrored).
- Draw a room the plane cuts as a half up to the plane: its copy closes it, and the half is a room you can select; its settings are the whole room’s. Something standing on the plane (a table in the middle) is not copied.
- The copies are not items you can pick: clicking one selects its original, and hiding the original hides both. The export writes the interior with the copies.
- Apply turns the copies into ordinary items (one undo step). Problems warns about a wall that crosses the plane (its copy would overlap it).