Using Inkscape to draw floor plans

When designing a space or trying to get a top view of a room or building, there are many ways to draw a floorplan. The easiest method is to simply draw the layout on paper. However, if you want to share the floor plan with someone else such as a contractor, prospective tenant, or property owner, you need to make a legible digital floor plan. Being fond of the open source way of life, Inkscape is an excellent tool to use for drawing a floor plan. If you are unfamiliar with Inkscape, it can take some time getting used to. However, within a few hours, any novice can have an intermediate grasp of it.

Recently I have begun a repair/remodel of a garage that I am turning into an office. See my previous blog post about the progress on the office. In preparation for the electrical work, I drew up a floor plan in Inkscape showing where I want the outlets and lights. This will help when I create the circuits because most of my measurements are already drawn out to scale. To draw to scale in Inkscape, you can change the units to feet. (or inches, meters, millimeters, centimeters, pixels) by selecting File, Document Properties.

Example of my office electrical plan. The blue lines are guide markers.

Should you need to print your drawing, you need to scale the drawing down to the size of the paper you plan to print to. First, select the area you would like to print using the Select and Transform Objects (or the mouse arrow on the left side in Inkscape's main interface). Then select File, Export Bitmap.

Change the export area to Selection. In Inkscape's main interface (the place where you draw), change the units to px (pixels). In an 8x11 piece of paper, at 300 ppi, there are 2400x3300 pixels. So after you make the selection to print, select the lock that is in the main toolbar (to lock the aspect ratio), and make your selection less than or equal to 2400x3300 pixels. Then select Export in Export Bitmap. After the export, the Export Bitmap window stays open. You can close this. Check your directory where you exported the image. Open it and print.