Kitchen / Bath Designers... Plan Layout

[JennaJenris]

Kitchen and bath designs, how do you go about laying out a house based on the blueprint? Do you draw the entire house? Do you draw the outline of the house and just add the applicable interior walls for the rooms you need? Or do you just draw the applicable rooms for cabinet layouts? 

 

I usually just draw each room individually, but on some larger projects where we are doing work in 80% of the rooms I wonder if I should just be drawings the footprint of the entire house? Is there an tricks or time savers for re-creating the blueprint in CA?

 

Thanks in advance. 

[Chrisb222]

[MarkMc]

On 12/14/2023 at 4:42 PM, JennaJenris said:

Kitchen and bath designs, how do you go about laying out a house based on the blueprint?

As a KD I 

• always drew at least the adjacent rooms though sometimes just added windows etc. approximately. 
• If I had prints always drew the entire structure. It's just too fast and easy in CA and often got me more work from the contractors or architects. (Also great to show the client what thing look like from other spaces or entering the front door.)
• Sometime took photo from doorway to next room. Placed a billboard with the image just past the doorway in plan. Billboards outside sliding doors and large windows too.
• Allways had at least a full exterior, roof and foundation which can help with renderings.
• Roof also helps avoid issues when venting out.

For larger projects my preference was to draw the entire house. Easier to see spacial relationships. If multi story helps avoid problems.

 

After switching to remote drafting for others 

• I had a lot of larger projects. Usually continued to draw entire structure. 
• I prefer tracing a dwg when possible. 
• If supplied with a PDF I converted that to DWG (now adays I use AB Viewer for that) Have always had a separate cad program (TurboCad Deluxe, AB viewer) so I could turn off layers or delete unwanted clutter before importing into Chief. Not always necessary if file has layers but often converted PDFs don’t. In any case makes life easier.
• In all cases import the dwg into a CAD detail in Chief. A separate plan is a good idea. Then copy and paste to working plan.

I had one client that just drew separate rooms which has pros and cons. On the one hand it can be easier, on the other can be annoying for renderings and does not show relationships of spaces. It can be easy to miss the effect structural changes in revisions have on adjacent spaces. (Note that there was a project with several ceiling height changes on the same floors. The person that drew separate rooms had never learned how those are done and had a hard time making their revisions until they understood)

 

One other thing I fiddled with a bit at the end was to draw entire structure. Then save as. The purpose was to allow different cabinet defaults in separate plans. The downside though was the aforementioned structural changes needed to be done on each plan. I eventually ended up just using style palettes for different styles in other rooms with the kitchen set for the cabinet defaults.