Turn a PDF floor plan into a 3D facility

Steps

1. 1

   Open the floor plan tool

   In the editor press I (Add floor plan) and drop the PDF on Drop a floor plan here. The Import floor plan from PDF dialog opens: "Choose the sheet to place, then set its drawing scale."

2. 2

   Pick the sheet

   Under Sheet, choose the page with the floor plan, not the cover or the legend. Each page shows as a thumbnail with its paper size.

3. 3

   Set the drawing scale

   Under Drawing scale, pick from the ranked guesses — "A PDF does not record its own scale, so these are ranked guesses — check them against the drawing’s title block." If you know one real dimension, use Or enter a known width (m) instead, or choose Not to scale to size it by hand. Places at shows the resulting size. Click Use this sheet.

4. 4

   Place it on the map

   Drag on the map to position the sheet; with a scale set, its size stays fixed. Fine-tune in the side panel: Rotation to line it up with the street grid, Opacity, and Crop to trim title blocks (non-destructive). Click the plan’s name in the panel header to rename it, for example "Ground Floor".

5. 5

   Trace the rooms

   Press P (Add area), click each corner of a room and press Enter or double-click to finish. Name it from the panel header and set its Role (for example Room). Work through the plan — receiving, storage, offices, restrooms — until every space you care about is an area.

6. 6

   Generate the walls

   Press W (Magic walls), click the areas you want walled and click Generate walls. "Shared edges between adjacent areas become a single party wall; segments already covered by an existing wall are skipped." Draw any extra wall with L (aisle) and a height above 0 — the line then extrudes as a wall.

7. 7

   Check it in 3D

   Click Preview in the toolbar and tilt the camera. Every facility also gets built-in reports — Floors, Areas, Walls & doors and more — that list what you drew with sizes, which is a quick way to sanity-check the trace. A DWG works the same way through Import floor plan from CAD drawing; it too becomes a floor plan picture.

Related

• Import a PDF or DWG floor plan
• Floor plan tool
• Magic walls
• From a CAD floor plan to a 3D map in the browser

More drawing & 3d recipes

• Draw rooms, walls, stairs and liftsDraw a floor on top of a placed floor plan, step by step: named rooms with roles, magic walls, U-shaped stairs, lift shafts and text labels, ready for 3D.
• Model a multi-floor store with escalators and liftsStack one floor plan per level at its real height, then add escalators and lifts linked to the floors they serve — the way the Retail Mart demo store is built.