For an open concept home these "walls" will be more figurative than real. I mentioned firming up the walls of your indoor bubble diagrams. We went back and forth with many different designs where the eating area was right in the kitchen, across a peninsula or island or, as it turned out in the final design, adjacent and open to the kitchen. I'm a big fan of the farmhouse kitchen where the eating area is in the kitchen and there is no formal separate dining area. One of the big variants in our designs was the kitchen and the dining area. We also had other bubble diagrams for which we did rough sketches. This was one of many rough sketches during the draw floor plan stage of our home. (It is rotated to match the orientation of the bubble diagram above.) The second is a simpler and more economical option.īelow is my sketch that ended up forming the basis for our main floor house plan. The second floor plan has a simple rectangle for its exterior shape. The first plan is a rectangle with three bump outs. Next are two rough sketches, with the walls firmed up, for possible floor plans. Do lots of these.īelow is the main floor bubble diagram for the 1 1/2 story house from our bubble diagram exercise. By doing them as simple sketches you can sketch them wherever you are using a notepad (or a paper napkin), indoors or out. You don't have to be an artist for this stage. Whether you will end up drawing blueprints by hand or using home design software, I suggest that initially you draw floor plans as simple hand sketches. This fiddling stage really helped in letting the creativity flow but the other parts of the development process: our site plans, needs analysis, and structural design constraints would always bring the designs back to reality. Some look like they belong on another planet. Somewhere I have a file folder of all the weird and wonderful floor plans we fiddled around with. It is a learning process and each redesign brings you one step closer to a final design that is right for the way you live.
But as you create your plans, you may find yourself modifying your bubble diagrams, trying out different house exteriors and occasionally crumpling up your design and starting all over. Designing Floor Plans The Processĭesigning floor plans is an iterative process where you will go back and forth from your indoor bubble diagrams, your site map, your needs analysis, house exteriors and what we have learned about residential structure to create floor plan drawings.Įssentially, this design step is all about firming up the walls of your indoor bubble diagrams.
Plotter drawing on wood how to#
If you are looking for a tutorial that shows simply how to draft the floor plans (rather than the design process presented here), see our Make Your Own Blueprint tutorial. If you are just starting out with your house design, see our tutorial site map. This online tutorial is best followed in order. In this tutorial module you will begin to draw floor plans using the house planning you have already done in the past modules. Draw Floor Plans Module 8 - Design Your Own Home Tutorial