Hi everyone

I am attempting to use Inkscape to make a floor plan, but could use some help. While doing this I have run across a few problems and figure that maybe someone here could offer me some advice. Here are my questions:

- Is there an easy way to create a grid that will be set with the same numbr of squares no matter how much I zoom in? As of right now when I zoom in more squares appear.

- Can I create a page on a fixed number of squares? Let's say the room I am working with is 20' x 10'. Can I tell Inkscape to create the page at 60 squares x 30 squares? That way each square represents 3 inches?

- Same thing goes for the furniture that I will create on a new layer. Can I tell Inkscape that I need a square object that is a certain number of squares x a certain number of squares?

Any help you guys can offer me I would appreciate

Thanks in advance!

Spops wrote:Is there an easy way to create a grid that will be set with the same numbr of squares no matter how much I zoom in? As of right now when I zoom in more squares appear.

Yes. You'll probably find that that the grid lines spacing is probably very small so whilst zoomed out Inkscape may be showing every 100th line and as you zoom more lines appear. If you keep zooming in squares will stop appearing. You can change the grid spacing in the document properties.

Spops wrote:Can I create a page on a fixed number of squares? Let's say the room I am working with is 20' x 10'. Can I tell Inkscape to create the page at 60 squares x 30 squares? That way each square represents 3 inches?

File > Document Properties > Page, here you can set the page size in inches. On the Grids tab you can set the grid spacing based on inches as well.

Spops wrote:Same thing goes for the furniture that I will create on a new layer. Can I tell Inkscape that I need a square object that is a certain number of squares x a certain number of squares?

With and you can set the size of your objects using the tool control bar. By default sizes are in pixels but you can change them to inches.

Yikes. I just tried working with the guides and they are confusing.

Try making your own grid using squares.
-So you want a 20x10 room? OK.
-Go into document properties, on the first tab, set the size to 20x10 (switch the units to feet)
-Draw a square, make it a square foot. (Again, change the units on the toolbar)
-Ok, you're going to duplicate this square a bunch of times to create a grid. The problem is that, with these dimensions, its hard to gauge what kind of stroke width you'll need to make the grid visible, you'll see what I mean later.
-Rather than explain the next set of steps, check out this video tutorial from heathenx. At around 2:00, he explains the process of making a grid. Modify it to your situation, you should be able to figure it out. )
-When you got the grid you want, select all the squares and group them. Click on align and distribute dialog, set it to page, and align to top and right.
-There's your grid! Make a new layer and lock the grid layer. Now put down your stuff.

EDIT: Oh, just realized, once you get your grid set up, you could go to object-object to guides to make a bunch of guides.

I think the right tool for what you want is Effects > Render > Grid. This will create actual objects (lines) that form a grid and intersect where you set it to, and the lines will be grouped automatically so you can move it around like a whole object (useful for furniture).

I'm with MicroUgly on this one. If you want to set up a room plan and draw objects to some definite scale I'd do the following:

1. Open the document properties: File->Document Properties

2. On the Page tab, set the custom size drop down to "ft" and make the width 10, and the height 20.

3. Select the Grid tab. Choose the New button to create a new grid.

4. Set the grid units to "in", and set the Spacing X and Spacing Y to 3. Leave the Origin X and Origin Y at 0. Set the last field to show a Major grid line every "1" lines.

5. Select the Snap tab. Make sure "Enable Snapping" is checked. Make sure Nodes and Bounding box corners are checked off for What snaps.

6. Under Snap to Grids, make sure it is checked and set the snap distance to 10. (this distance is in screen pixels - not inches, a setting of approximately 10 seemed to get things to snap as I wanted them to when drawing objects at just about any reasonable zoom level.

With these settings you should be able to easily draw objects of a definite width x height. Of course the spacing you set in step 4 will determine your degree of accuracy (in this case, 3 inches) but you could set whatever you want.

Also, because you've set it to show major grid lines to every line (step 4) when you zoom in it should remain at 3" gridline spacing. When you zoom out, you will see grids disappear. This is to help your readability. If they kept showing every gridline at 3" then you'd get a sea of black when you're zoomed way out.

I tried the above settings and it worked pretty well. Give it a try.

RQ

Heh. I guess it's not that hard after all.

However, if you don't want the lines to disappear when you zoom out, use my method.

Can I create a page on a fixed number of squares? And is there an easy way to create a grid that will be set with the same numbr of squares. Custom Floor Plans

jdizon wrote:Can I create a page on a fixed number of squares? And is there an easy way to create a grid that will be set with the same numbr of squares. Custom Floor Plans

I'm not sure I 100% understand what you're asking but...

You could set up a grid like I described in my post above, then draw a rectangle over that grid. Then if you open up the document properties (Ctrl+Shift+D), make sure the rectangle is selected, you can then hit the "Fit Page to Selection" button which will create the page size based on the rectangle you created.

If you wanted to create an actual grid object then you will definitely want to use the Effects->Render->Grid selection from the menu. It will give you a dialog in which you can set all the parameters of the grid to be created.

Hope that helps.