Plan Drawing of a Square Library Shelf

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How to Create a Floorplan in Excel

Confession fourth dimension: I'yard a slight spreadsheet nerd.  My dad worked for IBM and I remember seeing him working on spreadsheets on our home computer at a pretty young age.  I got hooked in late high schoolhouse/early on college, creating spreadsheets for my budget, comparing prices at various grocery stores, etc.  Then naturally, when I started working equally a school librarian, I wanted to use spreadsheets in my work there.  The physical space of our library was horribly chaotic when I first got at that place, so I immediately started dreaming up ways of irresolute the space.  Pretty soon, I decided that I NEEDED a spreadsheet of the floorplan of our space.

My start couple of layout designs came out pretty bad, simply gradually I started getting the hang of creating floorplans using Microsoft Excel.  Now I realize that there are probably better programs out there for creating floorplans.  Programs that might even exist less labor intensive.  Just at that place's actually method to my madness in using Microsoft Excel:

PROS

1. Most reasonably tech savvy people know how to utilise it: A generalization yes, but you're probable to notice more than people with Excel experience than with Google Sketchup.
2. We oftentimes already have access to it: I researched interior design programs when I offset started putting together my layout, and most of the practiced ones were pretty expensive, while the free ones didn't give me enough customization.  Virtually people tend to take a copy of Excel on their piece of work or home computers, even Mac users like me.
3. Highly customizable: There'southward a lot of ways to customize your diagrams in Excel.

CONS

1. Labor intensive to offset: When you lot make your first floorplan, it will take a skilful amount of piece of work and elbow grease.  Merely afterwards you do information technology the starting time fourth dimension, it'south pretty easy to keep modifying it.
2. Doesn't cater to unusual shapes: I dearest our Interior Concepts Collaboration tabular array, but it'due south REALLY hard to draw that in Excel.  Bones rectangles and circles are a breeze though.
3. Previous experience in Excel is needed: This mail service isn't an intro to Excel, so if you don't know how to do things like resizing columns and inserting objects, you'll desire to learn that first.

All this aside, I think it is worth your time to try out making a floorplan using Excel.  At present I'k going to testify you lot how I do it.

Creating your floorplan

Click here to download the floor program I used at Stewart.

ane. Create a rough draft on graph paper (or sketch it out on regular paper)

This might seem counter-intuitive, but it's easier to sketch out your floorplan on graph paper offset, and then have that information to make a spreadsheet.  Catch a record mensurate, and measure the boundaries of the room(s) yous're creating the floorplans for.  If y'all accept access to the blueprints, awesome!  Using one square on the graph paper to represent one square pes, depict out the basic boundaries of the space.  At present it's time to put the stuff in your space 🙂

ii. Measure ALL THE THINGS!

Measure the length and width of every tabular array, desk-bound, chair, storage unit, etc in your space.  Write down the measurements on a notecard.  For at present, you lot don't need to worry well-nigh exactly where they fall in the space,  What you lot Do need are a list of how many of each item you have and what their sizes are (ie. Half dozen 30×60 tables, Four 36×ninety bookshelves, etc)  Don't worry about the pinnacle – that won't be represented in the spreadsheet.  Once you've got all the information written down, information technology's time to transfer that to the estimator.

iii. Setup your spreadsheet like a grid

Excel spreadsheets start out with wide columns, which doesn't piece of work well for floor plans.  I like to create a grid of squares where each square represents ane square foot.  That makes it the easiest for planning out the space.  This website offers a nifty tutorial for figuring out exactly what numbers piece of work best for you.

4. Create the boundaries of your space in Excel

Make up one's mind how many square feet each square on your filigree will represent.  I prefer i sq ft per square, but that's me.  Count out the boundaries of your infinite based on your scale and highlight those squares.  Create a bold boundary around this area to help you lot run into the scale you have.

5 . Create stock-still objects

If at that place are certain elements of your infinite that are fixed, such as wall mounted library shelves, add them straight to the grid.  For our shelves, I highlighted the areas where they are and colored those squares burgundy.  This helps me to become a visual idea of where they are and it'll exist useful in the next step when creating furniture.

6. Create and arrange your piece of furniture items

Using the measurements you took earlier, start to create the piece of furniture items of your infinite.  This can be as unproblematic or complex every bit yous like.  Basic rectangle shapes tend to work best for nigh things.  I like to color code my shapes in colors similar to the furniture items, as it helps me to call up what they are.  Endeavor to position the items relatively every bit they are now.

7. Group items as needed

If there's a sure grouping of article of furniture that always goes together (ie. chairs at computer tables) yous can grouping the items together using the group function in Excel.  Concord down command (PC) or control (Mac) and select each of the items you want to grouping.  Then choose group items.  Now when you move one, yous tin can move all of them

8. Play house

At present that you have all your furniture items in identify the way your space is gear up, save your file.  And then salve every bit and create a new file for experimentation and ideas.  Move your article of furniture all over and experiment with new layouts.  Create shapes for furniture items you're thinking well-nigh purchasing and play around with your infinite.  This is my favorite part of creating an Excel layout – it makes it so like shooting fish in a barrel to experiment with new ideas.

Check out my volume, Reimagining Library Spaces, to get more ideas for transforming your space!

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Source: http://www.renovatedlearning.com/2016/08/29/floorplan-space-excel/

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