Creating a Floor Plan

[indesignnewbee]

Hi all,

Need help in creating a floor plan via a hand drawn PDF.

There is a background that the floor plan will go on.

What do I do first?  Open the background, import the PDF, draw the lines, etc?

Any help is greatly appreciated.  I gather I do this with layers, but can't find any real help via tutorials on same.

Many thanks 🙂

[Jeffrey_Smith]

I would suggest an online tool like this

[indesignnewbee]

Thank you 🙂  I've opened it and will have a go tonight.  Looks really good. Thanks again.

[Jongware · Accepted solution]

Do not use InDesign for this! None of the outstanding tools that makes InDesign a piece of software for graphic professionals will help you here: advanced typesetting (typographic niceties such as ligatures, real small caps, ), full color management (spot and process color separation), PDF output (crop, bleed, and print marks; PDF/X standard), and general workflow (file templates, master pages, object-, table-, paragraph- and character-styles). All of these tools are worthless to you, and worse than that, they will hinder you.

There are no tutorials to be found because noone would use InDesign for your purpose. InDesign is to create layouts with, for use in the professional printing market.

There is virtually nothing in InDesign that makes it suitable for drawing floor plans, other than that it allows "draw stuff and move it around on the screen". Other, targeted, software is much easier to work with, more accessible, and in general more geared towards doing what you want to do with it

TLDR: do not use InDesign for this! It is like lending Michelangelo's fine brushes and priceless oil paint because you want to paint a door.(*)

(*) And then complain, because it is so inconvenient, what with those tiny brushes and way too oily paint ...

[danshou]

I made a lot of floor plans with InDesign. It is super easy to make true to scale plans there. I even draw furniture and bathroom, etc. As I know everything in Indesign, but never used Illustrator for example, it was much easier for me to do it there.

Place the original plan (as a pdf or jpeg) in the background, 50% opacity and lock it. Then start drawing the walls, windows, doors and so on. Later you can add all the colors, floorings, shadows, etc., the sky is the limit.

Sorry that I used the fine brushes 🙂