Creating a Complete First Floor Furniture Plan Using AutoCAD and Residential Design Blocks

Now let's create our first floor furniture plan. We will need a couple of files to help us along. Number one, we need our AutoCAD for Interior Design residential blocks.

We'll open that up in AutoCAD. The other file we need to download and open is our Residential Furniture Plans PDF, and that one looks like this. We can open that up or print it out to use it as a guide.

Let's jump in. So, back here in AutoCAD, we mentioned we're going to work a little bit differently. We're going to work right in the sheet this time, and we're going to leave the model tab alone.

So let's double-click right in our viewport. It is locked, so we can zoom in and out, and it doesn't mess up our view, but we can make modifications to our plan. Let's zoom into our living room first.

I'm going to start with the line command, and I want to create a kind of crosshairs in this room to set up its center points, center lines. So I'm going to click right here between the two windows. I'll snap to the midpoint, click one time, and go straight up to that fireplace.

So I'll click midpoint there. Now I'm not seeing any lines, so I need to go back to layer and verify a couple of things. Number one, we have I-FURN-LOSE is our current layer, but the freeze in viewport, vp-freeze, is still set.

We'll check that, and like magic, that line appears. So that's what we want to verify. Make sure your current layer says I-FURN-LOSE, and it also needs to not be frozen in any way.

Okay, that worked out pretty well. Now let's draw a line. We don't really need another line.

I think that's enough for this room. Let's go to our dining room. This one's a bit trickier.

Let's start the line command again. I'm going to start with this little bit of yellow line here. Click one time and go straight up to perpendicular.

So that gives me one line across the room. It's not centered, but it's there in the room. Let's start the line command again and go from the right wall to the left wall perpendicular and hit escape.

There we go. We've got two lines, but they're not centered. Now we will center them.

I'll click this line, m for move, click on their intersection, and then pull up until I click to the midpoint. We'll do the same process for the other line, m for move. Click right there and go to the right until I hit the midpoint and click.

Now we have kind of a crosshairs in the dining room. Alright, those lines will help us as a guide. Now we can go to our blocks file and start to grab some of the furniture we need.

We've got the chair category here. There is a side chair dash squ. We'll select that and do CTRL C on our keyboard.

Go back to our plan here. We'll zoom into the living room and CTRL V to paste. And there it is.

We'll click one time. Now we will select it and go to properties and adjust its layer. We'll change the layer from layer zero to I-FURN-LOSE.

Actually, I-FURN-LOSE. That's why I'm not seeing it. Down to the i's.

I-FURN-LOSE. There we go. So that's that chair.

Let's go back to our blocks. We'll zoom out. We need a sofa.

So I'll grab the sofa, and we need the coffee table. We can grab a couple things at once now. And the sideboard.

So, sideboard, coffee table, and sofa. We'll do CTRL C and going to hide the properties for a moment. Go back to my project here, and I will do CTRL-V to paste.

And they're a little bit spread apart, so make sure we don't click somewhere where you don't see them. We want to kind of pull our cursor down. We'll click right here.

Then I will select them one by one and move them a bit closer. I've got ortho turned on. I'm going to temporarily turn it off.

Put the sofa there. Put the coffee table here and move this piece of furniture here as well. Now, let's go ahead and update these so that they have the correct layer.

So first, I'll click this piece of furniture, and I can see the layer set to layer zero. And I want that sideboard to go to I-FURN-LOSE. There we go.

Now let's do a couple at a time to move a little bit faster. I'll grab the coffee table and the sofa and put them both on the correct layer. I-FURN-LOSE.

Perfect. Now we've brought in all the furniture we need for the living room. Now we need to place it.

We'll start right here. The sideboard. I'll hit m for move.

I'm going to grab its insertion point on the back. Click one time, and there's a midpoint on this wall next to the fireplace. I'll zoom in make that a little easier to see.

I'll click right there one time. And now it's touching the wall, and I want to make sure that my loose furniture does not touch the wall because it will be confusing. It could maybe look like a built-in piece of furniture.

But this is a loose piece of furniture. I need to move it away from the wall. I do the m command.

I'll click, move my mouse down, and I need to turn on ortho so it moves straight down. And let's do three inches. We pull it away from the wall.

All right. That one was pretty straightforward. Now let's grab our coffee table, and we'll do ro to rotate.

Click any point, really, and type in 90. Now we'll select it, m for move, and we want to grab, let's see, its midpoint on one side and align it with the midpoint of this line that goes through our project. Then we can move it a second time and grab the other midpoint and take it straight to the left.

Now that coffee table is centered. Now let's grab our sofa, and we'll rotate it. Click right here and do 90 degrees.

And we'll do that again, ro to rotate, and this time 180. Now I'll grab the sofa, m for move. I'll click right at its midpoint here and go to the midpoint on the coffee table and click.

And I do that just to line them up. Now I can grab it, and I can pull it back. So grab it one time, click, and then with ortho turned on, I can move my cursor back.

It can be a little tricky because it's going to try to snap, so I might zoom in a little bit. And let's go ahead and go to two feet. Two feet, enter.

Okay, there we go. Now we have our last bit of furniture here. I'm going to select it, ro to rotate, click right here in the front, and this time I'll just move my cursor around to rotate it so it flips back 90 degrees.

Now select it, m for move, click right on its insertion point, go to the midpoint of the coffee table, select it again, m for move, move it to the left two feet, enter. Now I notice I have two chairs here, so I need to move one up, m for move, and I'm going to go up two feet, enter. Now select this chair and do a mirror and grab the midpoint of the coffee table, take my cursor straight to the left and click again, and we're good to go.

We've got the sofa and the side chairs. Now I no longer need this line here, so I'll select it and click delete. Now I want all this furniture in the room, and I actually don't want it perfectly centered, so I'll grab all the furniture, and I'll do m for move, and click one time and pull it towards the windows.

But we'll just go a little ways, let's do one foot six inches. There we go, that's our living room set. We'll come back and add the rug later.

Now, let's do the dining room set. We'll go back to our blocks, and our dining room set that we want to select is a table rect, four means rectangle, and then six, six people. Select it, CTRL C, hover over our dining area, and do CTRL V to paste.

There it is. I'll just place it near the dining room, select it, go to properties, and I want to change the layer. We'll swap that out to our I-FURN-LOSE.

There we go. Now I need to select it one more time and ro to rotate, click and type in 90 and enter. Now we need to move it into place, so move it twice to get it where it needs to go.

First, we'll click the midpoint on this end, move it up to that line. We'll click one more time, m for move, and this can be a little bit trickier. We need to kind of move it to that other line, so I'm going to grab down here now.

So I'll grab that midpoint, go to the right, and perpendicular. Perfect. Now it's centered right in the middle of the room, and you know what? I made a mistake on the living room.

I want to leave these lines there for now because they might help us with the rug. Let's go ahead and add that line back in, l-i-n-e. Pretty easy.

Center point between the two windows, click one time, and the midpoint on the fireplace. There we go. Okay, last but not least, we have some furnishings right here in the kitchen, and they're pretty cool.

These are chairs that slide in under the bar. So let's go ahead and go back to our blocks, and we've got stools, and there's a regular stool which shows the full stool, or stool-under. That's the one we want.

So do CTRL C after selecting it, go back to our i4 sheet, and we'll do CTRL V to paste, click, select it, r-o to rotate, click anywhere, type 90, select it again, and we want to change its layer to i4 and loose. I4 and loose, there we go. Now click onto it one time, m for move, and I want to grab this line kind of next to this, uh, what do we want to do? Let's grab actually this midpoint.

We'll start with the midpoint, click once, we know that one gets centered directly here, so we'll do midpoint to midpoint. Now this chair is not yet pushed in, so our next step is to select it, m for move. Now we'll grab this kind of open line right here, click one time, move it to the right until we get to perpendicular, and now that chair is pushed in.

It will show a dashed line under the counter, which is exactly what we want. Now we'll select this and do c-o to copy. I'll click one time, with ortho turned on, I can go straight up, and we'll do two feet, enter.

We'll do that again. After I hit escape, I'll select the middle chair again, m for move, click one time, go straight down, two feet, enter. Oh, and I moved it.

I should have copied it, and my bad. Select that stool one more time, c-o to copy, click and go down, two feet, enter. When I mess up and go back really quick, I'm just doing CTRL Z on my keyboard.

It works really well in AutoCAD. We'll zoom out, and we'll notice that all of our furniture is complete for level one.