The Omni Group
These forums are now read-only. Please visit our new forums to participate in discussion. A new account will be required to post in the new forums. For more info on the switch, see this post. Thank you!

Go Back   The Omni Group Forums > OmniGraffle > OmniGraffle General
FAQ Members List Calendar Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read

 
Is OmniGraffle Right for Me? Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
I’m interested in purchasing OmniGraffle, but I’m not sure it will do what I need. I need to be able to make “to scale” floor plans with tables, etc. that I can move around to see how they fit. In other words, I might have an area that is 20 ft x 40 ft, and I need move things around to see how I can arrange a number of 6 ft. round tables and 8 ft. rectangular tables and so forth.

Will this application easily do this?

Many thanks for your input!
 
OmniGraffle is not geared at doing this, but I personally think it's fairly good at it, depending on how complex your needs are. In fact, Omni just moved to a new office building, and before the move many of us used OmniGraffle to plan how we were going to arrange our new offices. We have also used it to plan out floorplans in the past, such as when we've hired a new employee and needed to experiment with how we might be able to fit them into an existing office.

EDIT: I forgot that setting arbitrary scales is only available in the Pro version of the application. Be aware that if you do this in the Standard edition of OmniGraffle, you'll need to manage the scale yourself.

We have a lot of common furniture - desks and bookshelves etc. which are used in many of the offices. We've measured those pieces and built a simple stencil (which is something that you could easily do as well) so that when planning out a new space we can often just draw out the new space and drag in the furniture we have for our offices.


But I encourage you to try out OmniGraffle for yourself before you decide whether or not you want to purchase it. By default it will allow you to create simple diagrams without a license, and you can also get a daily free trial license from our online store in order to unlock all features of the application for at least a day (and you can come back for another license tomorrow if you need more time). This will also help you determine if you will be satisfied with the Standard edition, or if you want the Pro edition.

You can download OmniGraffle from this page on our web site:

http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnigraffle/

Note that there are separate downloads for the Standard vs Pro versions. If you download one and then request a trial license from our online store, make sure that you request the appropriate license - a Pro license will not work in the Standard version, and so forth.


Also, there is a link on that page to the public beta of OmniGraffle 5, the next major update to OmniGraffle. I suggest testing the beta if you are running Mac OS X 10.5 (which OmniGraffle 5 requires) - while version 5 still needs some polishing before it is ready for release, it has a lot of improvements over the current version of OmniGraffle.

Note that the price of OmniGraffle 5 is going to be higher than the current price of OmniGraffle 4. However, if you purchase now you will get a free upgrade to version 5 when it is released.

-andrew

Last edited by Andrew; 2007-12-17 at 01:38 PM.. Reason: Clarification of OmniGraffle feature availability
 
If all you want to do is scale a room and furniture to see how you can re-arrange the placement and orientation of tables and chairs, this is all do-able. but you will have a slight learning curve first until you get confident with the package.

What you want to do is scale a room, very easy

scale tables and chairs very easy, group the table and chair objects then you can copy them and populate the "room" you can even make them into your own stencils future use.

So I'm going with hat Andrew said try it, Omnigraffle is a lot more then meets the eye,...
 
I forgot earlier that the Standard edition of OmniGraffle doesn't support arbitrary document scales, so for something like a room layout, you'll need to manage scaling yourself. ("Ok this table is 2 ft x 3 ft, I'll draw that as 2 inches x 3 inches.")

The Pro version handles arbitrary scales, so you can tell it that 1 inch = 1 foot or whatever, then add a 2 ft x 3 ft table and it'll draw as 2 inches x 3 inches (or whatever is appropriate).


I edited my earlier post to clarify that point, but wanted to add a new post for the benefit of anyone who has already read my earlier post. My apologies for the confusion.

-andrew
 
Thank you both. I’ll give it a try and let you know how I fare!
 
Graffletopia's Architecture stencils might help you with this endeavor.
 
I tried it out and it seemed pretty neat, so I bought the pro version. I LOVE it!

First, I would like to complement you on the instruction manuel and tutorial videos. They should win a prize for clarity and instilling confidence in a new user.

Second, even with the “learning curve” I was able to get the results I was hoping for—and more— in a very short time. I made my own stencils of various size tables and chairs with little difficulty.

I do have a question for which I could not find an answer. I created a stencil with a circle to represent a table and 8 little boxes (chairs) around it. I know I can shift select all 9 pieces so the move as one unit, but I would like to create the stencil “table with 8 chairs” as one unit that will always move together. I’m sure this must be possible, but I haven’t been able to figure it out.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Delilahs View Post
I would like to create the stencil “table with 8 chairs” as one unit that will always move together.
Have you tried the Arrange > Group command?
 
Thank you, it worked like a charm! BTW, I found the Graffletopia site interesting and inspiring.
 
 


Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search
Display Modes


Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
OmniGraffle and OmniGraffle Professional 5.4.2 are now available Joel OmniGraffle General 0 2012-08-27 10:35 AM
OmniGraffle and OmniGraffle Professional 5.4.1 are now available Joel OmniGraffle General 0 2012-08-08 04:02 PM
OmniGraffle and OmniGraffle Professional 5.4 are now available (and an important note about 5.4.1) Joel OmniGraffle General 0 2012-06-04 02:17 PM
OmniGraffle and OmniGraffle Professional 5.3 are now available Joel OmniGraffle General 0 2011-07-19 11:01 AM
Omnigraffle -> Visio -> Omnigraffle is corrupted ronb OmniGraffle General 0 2010-12-02 06:41 PM


All times are GMT -8. The time now is 11:27 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.