How to create a non square floor plan in Visio

I need a quick and easy way to create a Visio floor plan of a room that is
not square, typically from an old building.

I have measured the wall lengths and the diagonals and wish to draw a floor
plan from these showing the correct angles.

If you go to the menu bar, click on the shapes icon, scroll down to Maps and
Floor Plans Building Plan and select Walls, Doors, and Windows. This
will provide the necessary shpaes to draw your floor plan. If you go menu
bar View Size and Position Window, then, when you select a shape in the
drawing, it will provide details about that shape, including the angle.
These values are edittable. Once you have your walls in place, drag the
Space shape and place it within the walls. Resize if necessary, but it needs
to be completely inside. Then, right click and select auto size. The shape
will conform to your walled figure and give the square footage.

HTH
Wapperdude



"Tegglet" wrote:

I need a quick and easy way to create a Visio floor plan of a room that is
not square, typically from an old building.

I have measured the wall lengths and the diagonals and wish to draw a floor
plan from these showing the correct angles.

Thank you for your response but either I do not understand the instructions
or it does not help me. I do not need to know the square area but I do need
a reasonably accurate shape for layout and cable installation purposes.
After a site survey I have the measurements of the walls and the diagonals
of the offices in question. As I often work on old buildings the walls can
be at all sorts of angles giving a significant variation in the width and
length of an area from one end to the other.
Constructing this manually I would use basic geometry to construct two
triangles with one wall as a common base. The far point of the LH Wall would
be constructed from the intersection of two arcs. The first having the LH
end of the base as its centre and a radius equal to the length of the LH wall
and the second having the RH end of the base as its centre and a radius equal
to the length of the diagonal from the RH end of the base to the far end of
the LH wall. Repeat this process for the RH wall and you will have the two
corners of the room with all the walls at the correct angles. In practice
this is much simpler than to sounds.
In Visio, I visualise being able to construct each wall to the correct
length individually, selecting any wall as the base, then gluing the
connection points of the LH and RH walls to each end and swinging them until
their free ends coincide with the end of the appropriate diagonal. The
fourth wall should then sit neatly on top (given that the measurements were
accurate!).
I can create a wall with connection points but as soon as I fix its length
it will not allow rotation.
I do see this as a basic requirement as I cannot be the only person in the
world who wants to draw scale plans from actual measurements. Am I asking too
much of Visio?


"WapperDude" wrote:

If you go to the menu bar, click on the shapes icon, scroll down to Maps and
Floor Plans Building Plan and select Walls, Doors, and Windows. This
will provide the necessary shpaes to draw your floor plan. If you go menu
bar View Size and Position Window, then, when you select a shape in the
drawing, it will provide details about that shape, including the angle.
These values are edittable. Once you have your walls in place, drag the
Space shape and place it within the walls. Resize if necessary, but it needs
to be completely inside. Then, right click and select auto size. The shape
will conform to your walled figure and give the square footage.

HTH
Wapperdude



"Tegglet" wrote:

I need a quick and easy way to create a Visio floor plan of a room that is
not square, typically from an old building.

I have measured the wall lengths and the diagonals and wish to draw a floor
plan from these showing the correct angles.

Repeat post, 1st effort went into the vapor land.

I would rate the answer as did not help. The behavior you've encountered is
associated with 1-D shape. Lock the line length and the angle locks as
well--a Visio feature. To enable rotation, right click the wall then
traverse formatbehavior and set interaction style to box. Your wall will
rotate, but it will not glue. Position the wall as desired, then, reset the
interaction style to line. Now it will glue, but not rotate. Klunky.

If you happen to know the angle, you could enter it directly into the Size
and Position window without the above steps.

Perhaps someone else might have a better methodology to offer than these...

I added the sq ft info in case that was something you wanted to know--too
much info, it had nothing to do with your post.



"Tegglet" wrote:

I need a quick and easy way to create a Visio floor plan of a room that is
not square, typically from an old building.

I have measured the wall lengths and the diagonals and wish to draw a floor
plan from these showing the correct angles.