Is Omnigraffle good for plan drawing?
 

What does everyone think about OG to toy around with some concepts for a house extension. Has anyone used OG for a drawing up floorplans, or is there another (fairly cheap given that I own OG pro) option that might be better suited. I am only trying to generate some concepts that I can discuss with an archtect, not full working drawings.

I want to be fairly sure about the package before I commit to drawing up the existing house/ land area.

cheers
g

.... and there was silence! Was this not a legitimate question for this forum?

g

Very much so, but I guess the people visiting just haven't done this (yet). My response would be to do a simple floor plan for an imaginary room and see how it goes.

It's obviously not as good as software which is specifically made for floor plans, but I used OmniGraffle for messing around with room arrangement for the house we were going to build, and it worked quite well.

I just used plain shapes for room outlines and then put windows and doorways and such on another layer above them.

Missing Doors and Windows
 

[QUOTE=Greg Titus]It's obviously not as good as software which is specifically made for floor plans, but I used OmniGraffle for messing around with room arrangement for the house we were going to build, and it worked quite well.

I just used plain shapes for room outlines and then put windows and doorways and such on another layer above them.[/QUOTE]

What are you using for Windows and Doors.... Are you creating your own, because as far as I can find there are none, short of the bathroom icons, that are designed for floorplans, including doors and windows.

Hi Gavin,

I won't be able to give you a conclusive answer but as we are an architecture/interior architecture/landscape design company and use OG4pro I guess there is something I could say about what you want to achieve.

As long as you can clearly communicate what you want for your new home any medium will do fine. A scribble on a paper tissue is fine, so is OG4. Most important thing you should think of is "how" do you want your new home to work for you, what style, what atmosphere and so forth.

I would recommend to cut out photos from magazines which describe what you have in mind. With those and some idea about the dimensions of your room(s) the architect, if any good, shoudl be able to translate your wishes into something that works.

In OG4 use simply the rectangles and draw walls, door openings and location of the windows. No need to go about fiddling with insulation, different layers of walls (construction) and whatever. What you might want to consider is the location of electricity (outlets) lighting, network connections (if not wireless) and other elements which make life easier or more of a hassle. Sounds a bit weird but the location of these could spare you a trip to the DIY store for extension cords...

However, you should have a fairly good idea of the spaces before you could do the above, consider it a second or even third phase. Hope this makes sense.

Conclusion:
OG4 works but keep it simple as there's no need to go into details.


Best always,
Jeroen

I'm pretty new to Omnigraffle and was hoping to use it for this. However I have so far found it extremely frustrating since lines only snap to the middle of objects and can't be drawn freeform. If anyone knows how to keep it from doing this, please let me know.

thanks!

[QUOTE=antwerpen;21673]I'm pretty new to Omnigraffle and was hoping to use it for this. However I have so far found it extremely frustrating since lines only snap to the middle of objects and can't be drawn freeform. If anyone knows how to keep it from doing this, please let me know.[/QUOTE]

Hold down the Option key while drawing a line and it won't connect to anything. Similarly, you can inspect the Line Tool and by using the Connections Inspector have all lines not connect to any other objects.

OmniGraffle could be a great for quick plan drawings
 

I'd like to use OmniGraffle for plan drawings because it has some great features for doing diagrams quickly (automatically snapping to centers, distributed spaces while showing you the measurements to name a few).

But it's flakiness at showing dimension lines by using the edit >> insert variable >> line length has been frustrating for me (see [URL="http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?p=21677#post21677"]this thread.[/URL])

Results like shown below shouldn't be that difficult:
[IMG]http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/images/acadtips_arch_dim-4.jpg[/IMG]

Yes, depending on what you're trying to do. We were doing rather extensive renovations of our flat and I used OmniGraffle for a couple of purposes. One was to floorplan the kitchen appliances, furniture and counter surfaces, but what I enjoyed most was using it to work out floor tiling. I'd taken pictures of the tiles in the store and used the images to figure out what pattern would look best in the space we had.

I wouldn't use it for any sort of architectural grade work, but it was quite fast for playing with ideas.