Rooms, walls and openings

Rooms

Each room has a footprint, a floor finish and wall finishes on the inside faces. Outside walls take a facade — render, blockwork, cut stone, brick, wood, concrete, zinc or glass. Choosing it in settings applies it to the whole building and replaces every facade already set; a room or a single wall can then differ. You can resize by dragging handles or by editing dimensions. The project ceiling is set once in settings; each wall can then be lowered from the catalogue bar, independently, without moving the ceiling, the roof or the floors above.

Moving a room also moves what was inside it — furniture, columns, outdoor items in that footprint, and floor voids. Nested rooms that you are not moving keep their contents. Resizing a room leaves objects where they are.

Deleting a room also removes what was inside it — furniture, columns, openings on its walls, and any floor voids in that footprint. Undo brings the room and its contents back together.

Copying a room (⌘/Ctrl + C, then V) puts it back 20 cm away on the current level, with its dimensions, usage, finishes, roof, rounded corners, lowered walls and its doors and windows. The furniture inside stays where it is: copy those one by one. The selection moves to the copy, in a single undo.

Naming a room

Right after you trace a room, its menu offers the three usual types. « Other… » opens the full list, with a field on top: start typing to narrow the list down to what you mean — accents and capitals do not matter.

If nothing in the list matches, that same field names the room instead: press Enter, or click « Create … », and the room takes the name you typed. The name then joins the list for this plan, so the next room can reuse it in one click. It travels with the plan — its export and its shared link — and it disappears once no room carries it any more.

The list goes well beyond housing. Alongside bedroom, living room and kitchen you will find open space, meeting room, reception, archives and server room; waiting room, consulting room and infirmary; classroom, lecture hall, library, covered playground, laboratory, sports hall, changing room and public toilets; hotel room, hotel reception, spa, commercial kitchen and stockroom; workshop, production floor and loading dock. Each one arrives with a sensible floor finish — carpet in an open space, terrazzo at a reception desk, bare concrete in a workshop — which you can change afterwards like any other.

Free walls

Free walls are polylines that are not closed into a room — useful for partitions, garden walls or unfinished layouts. While you draw them they stand in 3D as a transparent volume that follows the pointer, each stretch starting from the last vertex; they become solid when you confirm. Picking the tool tilts the 3D view back to a bird’s-eye angle if you were looking at the model edge-on, because a floor seen almost sideways cannot be aimed at. They have no floor slab. Openings from the catalogue stick to them like any room wall, and the walkthrough bumps into them.

Walls and corners

Wall thickness can be set for the whole project at once, or wall by wall from the catalogue bar when a room is selected (north, east, south, west). Thinning a load-bearing wall asks for confirmation; load-bearing stays independent of thickness. The same catalogue bar also lowers any one of the four walls: from 0.50 m — a low wall — up to the project ceiling, never taller; a door or window on that wall keeps it at least as tall as itself. A party wall is one solid, so dropping it on one side drops both. The ceiling, the roof and stacked floors stay put. An opening on that wall follows the new height. In 3D, a selected room also shows a badge on the top edge of each wall: drag it down or up to change that wall alone, live, in one undo step — a wall picked on the plan shows only its own. A chip restores the ceiling; if you later lower the project ceiling, a wall that was already shorter stays put and the gap grows. The control is hidden on a shipping container, an open-air room, or while a corner is rounded. The same settings hold the facade of each outward wall.

Each of a room’s four corners can be rounded into a quarter circle. The arc is a real piece of wall — same thickness, height and finish — and the room’s area and perimeter count it. Round both ends of a short wall and it becomes a curved wall; round all four corners of a square room and it becomes a disc. Floor slabs and roofs — flat or pitched — follow the same outline. Adjoining rooms that fill a rectangle share one pitched roof; the gables follow the slope and close the rounded ends instead of cutting through the tiles.

Doors and windows

Openings belong to a wall. Move them along the wall in 2D or 3D; they can jump to another wall when you drag far enough. Roof windows and dormers belong to a roof slope instead: you slide them along the ridge and their position is measured up the slope, as a roofer would. In the 3D view you can also drop one straight onto the roof: the ghost hugs the slope you aim at and turns red where it would overhang or hit a neighbour.

The catalogue goes well beyond one door and one window: workshop glazing, fixed sashes, ribbon and basement windows, arches, round and arched windows, sliding bays with two to six leaves, garage doors — and storefronts too, including a glazed shop door with twin leaves. The front door has its own styles (panelled, porthole, glazed, with sidelights or a transom) and finishes.

Furniture and outdoors

The ATM can stand on the floor or fit through a wall passage. At its default size, use a passage 84 cm wide and 200 cm high, then hold Alt while placing the narrower cabinet through the wall, with the broad front fascia outside. It does not cut the wall automatically. Its power switch controls the screen and night lighting.

The security camera (20 × 20 cm, 15 cm high) hangs on the wall under the ceiling: white housing, smoked dome and lens. When powered, its red recording light glows at night without lighting its surroundings. It does not resize and you walk beneath it.

Belt barriers (200 × 32 cm, 95 cm high) mark out a queue: two posts on round bases, a cassette on top and the red belt stretched between them. The object lengthens along the queue and the belt stretches; the posts take the finish (metal, charcoal…).

The vault door (200 × 30 cm, 220 cm high) sits flat against a wall: a rectangular steel plate, a thick round door standing proud, perimeter bolts, a spoked handwheel and hinges on the right. It does not cut the wall; it dresses the entrance to the vault. It scales homothetically and stays passive at night.

The safe deposit wall (200 × 30 cm, 220 cm high) stands against the vault wall: a dark steel chassis filled with brass doors and keyholes, small ones on top, double ones at the bottom. It lengthens along the wall by gaining columns of boxes, at a fixed height.

The reception desk (240 × 80 cm, 110 cm high) shows visitors a slatted wood front with a lit band under the counter top, and keeps a low work return on the staff side. It lengthens along the hall without changing depth and carries a screen or a bell. When powered, its band lights up at night.

Select a CRT television to choose its screen image: Nature, Cartoon or Cinema. The choice is saved with the plan. Switch the TV on to make the screen glow and illuminate nearby surfaces, most visibly at night. Resizing also changes the model: compact sets include a built-in VCR; larger sets lose the VCR and give more space to the screen.

Place furniture from the catalogue. How a piece resizes depends on its kind: a sofa or TV grows along the wall without getting deeper; a chair or car keeps its proportions (a vehicle also scales in height); a round table or fridge stays square; a dining table or rug can take both sides — always within half to double the catalogue size, in the catalogue bar or with the 3D handles. Outdoor items (terrace, pool, shed…) sit on the plot. Solar panels and chimneys sit on the roof when dropped on a building: in 3D the ghost already follows the slope as you place them — panels lie in the pitch, a chimney stays upright and pierces the covering. Some objects stack on others — a TV on a sideboard, a lamp on a bedside table.

Shops and warehouses get their own equipment: checkout counter, double-sided gondola shelving, clothes rack, fitting room, pallet racking and a forklift with a pallet on its forks — enough to lay out a real sales floor or stockroom. Above the door hangs the shop sign: type any name in it and pick the letter color. A convenience store also gets a striped combini fascia and roadside totem, an open refrigerated multideck, an ice-cream chest, a hot-food warmer, a magazine rack and a photocopier. Those two also have a Brand setting, which switches the three stripes of the livery — NANA-11, MILK-9, FAMILIA or SHOTEN, the corner shop — independently of the word on it and of the letter colour. And gondolas and coolers stock themselves with real products — bottles, cans, cartons, cup noodles, bento boxes, onigiri, snack packs — different from one unit to the next.

Ground surfaces cover circulation — asphalt road, dirt and wooden paths, stepping stones — paving in cobbles, interlocking blocks, concrete, stone or exposed aggregate, and natural areas in mulch, sand or artificial grass. Each surface is resizable, detailed on the plan and in 3D, walkable in first person, and supports objects placed on it.

The traffic light stands on a 40 × 40 cm footprint and runs a real cycle — red, green, amber, with the pedestrian signal on the side showing the opposite state — day and night, every light in the plan in step; at night each vehicle head tints the road with the lit colour. Stretch it to 2 m or more on one side and it grows the North-American mast arm: a taller pole, an arm over the road and a second, larger head hanging at its end.

The garden bollard light, 20 cm across and 80 cm tall, edges a path or a terrace; placed in a row it marks the way. Its round footprint resizes by diameter. At night its diffuser lights up and pools light on the ground at its foot without washing the surroundings; by day it stays a frosted, unlit glass.

Street furniture equips a sidewalk: the fire hydrant (30 cm across, 75 cm tall, round footprint) sits at the kerb, alongside the traffic light and the mailbox.

The sidewalk (400 × 200 cm by default, 15 cm high) runs along the roadway with its stone kerb on the street side: lay it edge to edge with the road, kerb toward the asphalt, and line several up to follow the street; it carries lamp posts, benches and bins placed on it. Concrete slabs, by contrast, have no kerb.

The pedestrian crossing (400 × 300 cm by default) is a ground surface like the road: lay it in the roadway’s axis, edge to edge with two road segments; its white stripes run in the crossing direction and it carries objects placed on it.

The street litter bin (50 cm across, 90 cm tall) sits next to a bench or a stop; it is a public bin with a side opening, not a building’s bin store.

The stop sign (60 cm plate, 2.40 m pole) marks an intersection: its red octagonal face looks at the roadway; rotate it like any object to face oncoming cars.

The Japanese utility pole (60 cm base, 9 m tall) stands at the kerb: concrete shaft, crossarms with insulators, transformer drum, street lantern. Widen its base and it grows taller. Place several along a street and the cables string themselves from one pole to the next, sagging like real wires, in a line rather than a web; their ends stay fixed to the poles. No two poles are alike.

Move, rotate and group

Click an object to select it: a drawer opens from the left with its dimensions, materials and every catalogue setting for that object. Change a swatch, a chip or a measurement there — it writes to the plan, same as the catalogue. Clicking another object updates the drawer. A pill at the top left reopens it if you close it. Double-click still opens the catalogue. Furniture snaps to nearby wall faces and stays on the right side instead of crossing them — hold Alt, or push firmly past the threshold, to force it through. Wall-hung pieces (a painting, a mirror, a radiator, a TV) go further: drop or drag them anywhere in a room and they stick to the nearest wall, facing it. Hold Alt to leave them where the pointer is. One click on the arrow handle above the selected object — or the `Q` key — turns furniture and outdoor items 45° clockwise, so a chair or a car can sit at a diagonal. A selected room turns 90° the same way: it stays axis-aligned, and its walls, openings and contents turn with it. While dragging a room, a piece of furniture or another object, hold Shift to keep the move on an axis or a diagonal.

Shift-click adds a room to the selection and a second one removes it; dragging any member moves the whole group, and Delete removes it in one step. Both count as a single undo.

Levels, stairs and lifts

The floor list on the active view adds a level above or a basement below, either empty or with the walls of the current floor copied over. Each level is drawn on its own; the pale outline underneath is the floor below, to line your walls up on. Drag a chip in that list to swap two levels (`Alt` + arrows on the keyboard).

Stairs and lifts come from the Circulations tool on the trace bar: straight flight, flight with landing, quarter-turn, double quarter-turn, half-turn, spiral, ramp, loft ladder, lift, and a plain floor opening. The tool stays greyed until the project has a second level. Drop one on the plan, then set which levels it runs from and to — the opening is cut through the floors it crosses, and the flight shows in 3D.

Columns and floor voids

Columns are placed like furniture and rise the full wall height, in five shapes: round, oval, octagonal, square or rectangular. Where two rooms overlap, Planaira offers to hollow out the shared area into a plan void — no floor and no roof there, the walls closing around it: a patio, a courtyard, a setback. The same overlap can instead subtract — the room you just placed keeps its shape, the other yields it the space — or merge the two into one, when their union is a rectangle. Round the void’s four corners to the maximum and the courtyard becomes a disc, which is how a ring-shaped building is drawn. Both follow the room they sit in when you move it. If you keep the overlap, a terrace roof becomes one empty deck: parapet on the outer edge only, no walls running across the middle.

Floors, walls and fabrics

Floors come by family and pattern: oak, bleached or smoked oak and walnut boards, laid straight, in herringbone, chevron or Versailles panels; polished, raw or waxed concrete; loop-pile carpet in five shades; square, hexagonal or checkerboard tiles; terrazzo; marble. Room walls take one of six paints or eight wallpapers and panellings, on the inside face only. Outside, the facade is render (cream, bistro green, burgundy or ochre), blockwork, cut stone, brick or black brick, wood, concrete, zinc or glass — set for the project, a room, or one outward wall (glass reads as a curtain wall, with mullions).

Furniture carries its own finish — twelve of them, from natural wood to anthracite, red or blue — so a white wardrobe can stand next to a walnut sideboard. Rugs pick a weave, a shade and an outline; windows can take a rod and curtains; balconies and terraces choose between a solid wall, metal railings or glass panels.