Typical Apartment Finish Floor Plan Drawings

When you think of a floor program, the first word that probably comes to mind is "design." The two are related, just they're non exactly the same matter.

A floor plan is 1 of the construction drawings that you lot'll find included in a set of blueprints. They appear alongside site plans, elevation plans, and other detailed working drawings that offer builders a road map for how to build a structure. They serve every bit the cardinal kind of business firm plan for general contractors and others working in the structure industry.

Just merely what is a floor program? And what do nosotros demand to know about its symbols?

A floor programme is a two-dimensional architectural drawing that shows the design of a house or other structure project from above. Information technology is drawn in what's chosen a plan view, as if you're looking downwards through an invisible roof into the building.

Symbols on flooring plans

A flooring plan typically shows structural elements such as walls, doors, windows, and stairs, likewise equally mechanical equipment for the plumbing, HVAC, and electric systems.

Flooring plans use stylized symbols that often look like the outlines of elements they stand for. Tubs, stoves, sinks, and stairs are familiar examples. These can appear forth with built-in elements of interior blueprint, like appliances, islands, cabinets, and bookshelves.

Objects and dimensions are also represented on a floor plan by solid lines or dotted lines of dissimilar weights and styles. For examples of the types of lines used on construction drawings, visit How to Read Construction Blueprints.

Floor program symbols brand up their own language, just as construction workers have their own vocabulary that they utilize to communicate when working on projects. Considering it'south essential for designers and builders to sympathize this language, a floor plan includes an of import chemical element called a legend, which acts every bit a central that helps viewers interpret the drawing.

The legend defines architectural symbols and notations on the plan. Many standard symbols appear there for specific projects. Even so, at that place can be variations in how symbols look and what they represent, which makes consulting the fable essential for each project.

For example, construction companies may use their own unique pattern symbols in their fix of drawings. Also, several different-looking symbols may represent the same particular, depending on who you ask. Or one symbol may mean different things to workers with different specialties. Ever search the fable on each unique program to exist clear nigh what the symbols mean.

Here are some common symbols you're likely to encounter in a floor plan.

Door, window, and stairs symbols

Doors and windows are elements institute on every floor plan, and stairs are almost as common. Doors announced every bit gaps in a wall, oftentimes with an arc showing the fashion the door should swing. Windows are similar, actualization equally narrow boxes in walls. Stairs are depicted most often as a series of rectangles.

Door symbols

Doors look like larger gaps between walls, often with a curved line to prove which way the door will swing, indicating clearance. They may look different on floor plans depending on their grade and office.

• For typical hinged doors that provide entry to a room, the curved line forms a quarter-circumvolve (90-degree) arc.
• Double doors look like a stylized letter "M," with two curved lines meeting at the center.
• A bifold door, often used on a closet, is shown as being open: It looks like ii peaked tents with a space between them, indicating where they'll run across when closed.
• A pocket door is a sliding door that more often than not disappears into the wall when open up. A standard sliding door is shown equally a thinner line extending from a wider, dark rectangle.

Window symbols

Windows are drawn as part of the walls.

• Regular sliding-glass windows are distinguished from solid walls by three parallel lines.
• Casement windows include arcs like to those of doors, showing how they open outward.
• Bay windows are angled similar the edge of a stop sign, breaking the straight-line trajectory of the wall.

Blueprints include a door and window schedule stating the style, size, and fabric of each.

Stairs symbols

Like the rest of the program, stairs are seen in a two-dimensional perspective from to a higher place. They look similar a series of attached rectangles (usually) or other geometric forms.

• Some plans may testify stairs bisected by a line with an arrow at 1 end to indicate which management is up (ascending).
• Landings are shown equally larger rectangles or squares.
• A curved or spiral staircase can await like role or all of a carriage wheel, with wedges joined around a bend.

Appliance and plumbing symbols

In floor plans depicting kitchens, bathrooms, and laundry rooms, yous'll see symbols for appliances like the fridge, stove, washer, and dryer. These unremarkably appear virtually plumbing elements like sinks, showers, toilets, and drains. Symbols can be accompanied by labels or abbreviations that further explain their functions, or not.

Apparatus symbols

Stylized representations of built-in appliances such as refrigerators and stove-top burners are typically included in floor plans.

Simple outlines of appliances with specific hookup sites, such as a washer or dryer, are too included. Many are rectangles that surround a alphabetic character or two indicating their part (such as DW for a dishwasher; come across list of abbreviations below).

Plumbing symbols

Mutual plumbing fixtures depicted in flooring plans include a toilet, bathtub, and shower, forth with different kinds of sinks: a freestanding sink, single vanity sink, double sink, cabinet sink, kitchen sink, laundry basin, etc.

Less common fixtures include a bidet or urinal. Associated bathroom features also may be depicted, including towel racks and toilet paper dispensers.

HVAC and electrical symbols

Since they lie largely inside a building's walls, infrastructure elements of the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems may be depicted on their ain designated sheets within the set of blueprints. Symbols for parts located in the living space or outside the building, such equally vents or the AC unit of measurement, are oftentimes included in the overall floor programme.

Similarly, symbols for internal electrical wiring and mechanisms can require their ain complicated sheets in a set of blueprints. But outlets, switches, congenital-in lights, and other controls accessed in the living space usually appear on the overall flooring plan.

HVAC symbols

The HVAC system may be illustrated by symbols for air conditioning units, furnaces, wall vents, ceiling vents, and other ventilation elements. Other HVAC equipment you might observe on a floor program include a pump, heater, return air vent, fan, straight duct, condenser, and Y junction duct.

A heating subcontractor might provide a split up duct and annals layout for the HVAC system.

Electrical symbols

Y'all may detect a whole host of electrical symbols on a floor program, showing wall jacks, Goggle box and switch outlets, thermostats, garbage disposals, and more than. Others include ceiling fans and lights, and floor outlets.

Electrical symbols oftentimes feature a subscript — small writing at the bottom of the symbol — that helps explain the outlet'southward part or rating. If you see a symbol with a subscript, it should be explained somewhere in the blueprint's legend. (For more than information on abbreviations, see the section below.)

Wall symbols

Walls are the most common elements of a flooring plan. Thicker lines represent exterior walls, and thinner lines show interior walls. Sometimes at that place'south no visible difference between them. Exterior walls also tin can be depicted past a black outline or double lines rather than a single, solid line.

Different materials may be represented differently on some plans. Walls may be drawn with hatching or other patterns inside to show whether they're made of brick, concrete, or framing lumber, for example. Outer materials or "finishes" also tin be shown in this mode, including metal, hardwood, plywood, or ceramic tile.

Floor plan abbreviations

In addition to symbols, floor plans contain abbreviations for different elements and materials. These abbreviations can include (but are not limited to) the post-obit:

• Air-conditioning or A/C — Air Conditioner
• B — Basin
• BC —  Bookcase
• BV — Butterfly valve
• CAB — Cabinet
• CBD — Cupboard
• CF —  Physical floor
• CL — Closet
• CLG — Ceiling
• COL — Cavalcade
• CW — Crenel wall
• CT — Ceramic tile
• D —  Door or dryer
• DS — Downspout
• DW —  Dishwasher
• EF — Exhaust fan
• FD — Floor bleed
• GM —  Gas meter
• HTR —  Heater
• HW —  Hot h2o unit or tank
• KIT —  Kitchen
• LIN —  Linen cupboard
• LTG — Lighting
• MSB —  Master switchboard
• O or OV — Oven
• REFRIG or REF — Fridge
• SD — Smoke detector, sliding door, or sewer bleed
• SHR — Shower
• WC — Toilet (water cupboard)
• VENT —  Ventilator
• VP — Vent pipe
• WIC — Walk-in closet
• W — Window or washer
• WD — Window
• WH — H2o heater
• WR — Wardrobe

Deciphering the scale on a flooring program

Blueprints for a new abode are commonly shown on newspaper that measures 18×24 or 24×36 inches. Since floor plans need to fit on a sail of paper, the drawings must naturally exist much smaller than the completed project will be.

The scale of a project refers to how the measurements on the floor plans chronicle to the project's measurements in one case it's washed. It is unremarkably found in or about the championship block, forth with a compass showing the orientation of the home or structure on the edifice site. (Unlike on maps, the due north pointer does not always point toward the top of the page, every bit the forepart of the structure may confront in a dissimilar direction.)

Flooring plans are about commonly (though not e'er) fatigued on a 1/4" scale, which ways a quarter-inch on the plan equals one foot of bodily length on the completed structure. Some scales use metric instead of royal measurements.

The scale ensures consistency and helps guarantee that the finished project will await the way it was intended — and that it will be structurally sound. The scale applies not just to the exterior walls, but to all elements of the floor plan.

Creating your ain floor plans

Floor plans for a long time were fatigued past hand, and some nonetheless are. If you're interested in creating a floor plan this manner, yous'll demand the right equipment: drafting tools such as scales, compasses, cartoon triangles, protractors, and templates.

But these days, home plans are most often produced digitally. You lot may need reckoner-assisted pattern (CAD) software and, to create prototypes, a 3-D printer.

Software programs such as Microsoft Visio and Floor Plan Creator accept templates to get yous started drafting your dream home. Some provide tutorials to help yous learn home design and floor plan design, and some even offer options for gratuitous downloads.

Conclusion

Floor plans are like treasure maps drawn by architects and engineers to serve as guides for construction workers — only the landmarks are dissimilar. Instead of mountains and rivers, you see walls and doorways. Instead of cities and towns, y'all see stoves and tubs.

At that place'due south no single "X" that marks the spot where buried treasure lies in a floor plan. Just if you follow the template, you'll wind upwards where you want to be: with a completed building that'due south not just structurally sound and functional but too comfortable and appealing.

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Source: https://www.bigrentz.com/blog/floor-plan-symbols

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