Wall planner

The wall planner lays out an exhibition to scale: walls as elevations, rooms as floor plans, display cases and partition walls as bodies of their own. The objects come from the project and bring the measurements recorded for them. Walls chained together form a room that you can walk through in the 3D walkthrough. For the workshop, every plan is available as a PDF to scale.

The wall planner guides take you through it step by step.

Where the wall planner lives

The old address /walls redirects to /plans. /p/…/wall-planner redirects to the project’s wall planner view or, with ?wall_id=…, straight to the plan named. The former address /p/…/wandplaner no longer exists; old links to it end on an error page.

In the main menu the plan library is under Libraries › Plans (visible from status 9). Any member who calls up the address may read it.

Requirements in the project

The defaults for all projects are under Settings › View › Field selections, in the wall planner section.

Which fields supply measurements

Only number fields can be chosen for width, height and depth (field type Number , decimal or int). You can set several fields per measurement; the first one that has a value for the object is used.

Internally the wall planner works in millimetres. It reads the unit of a measurement field from the field’s unit configuration and then shows auto. If it cannot find one, the field shows the Unit picker with Unit?. You can choose mm, cm, dm, m, km, in and ft. A measurement field without a known unit is not used, so that no object appears at the wrong size.

A value such as “approx. 50 cm” counts: the planner reads the first number in the field.

Kinds of plan

A “plan” is anything you plan on. There are five kinds.

Display cases, partition walls and passages together are called fixtures. Each has a plan of its own and appears on walls and floor plans as a silhouette.

Plan overview and plan library

The plan overview in the project (the Wall planner view while no plan is open) and the plan library show the plans as identical cards. They are grouped first by room (with path), then by group, then by kind in the order wall, floor plan, display case, partition wall, passage. Each group shows how many plans it holds.

Plan overview in the project

Plan library

Plan settings in the card menu opens the plan in the editor on the Plan tab. An archived plan shows its plan settings in a dialog with the same sections; Active brings it back from there. Delete asks first. If objects are still on the plan, it is archived instead of deleted.

The plan library’s editor has an address of its own: reloading and going back keep the plan, switching to a neighbouring plan changes the address, and the arrow at the top left leads back to the library.

Rooms

New plan

New plan in the library and New project plan in the project open a short New plan dialog. After Create the plan opens in the editor; everything else is on its Plan tab.

Measuring and fitting the background follow in the editor once the plan is created.

Base and project

A plan from the plan library is a base plan and applies in all projects. Whatever a project changes on it stays in that project and carries the Project marker.

A project plan (button New project plan in the plan overview) exists only in this project and is fully editable there.

Which plan an object is on, and how it lies there, is a project-specific value . The same object can be on a different plan in another project.

Plan field on the object

In the object view the plan field shows the assigned plan with preview, room and size, or otherwise No plan assigned.

Editor

The editor has the header at the top, the toolbar on the left, the stage with the plan in the middle and, on the right, the sidebar with the tabs Selection, Objects and Plan.

Header

If you leave the page while something is still being saved or saving has failed, you are asked first.

View menu

The same zoom is available to tap at the bottom right of the stage: zoom out, percentage (a click sets 100 %), zoom in and Show all.

Toolbar on the left

Snap aligns to the edges and the centre of the wall, to the edges and centres of the other objects, and otherwise to a 10 mm grid.

Stage

An empty plan without a background says so on the stage; Go to background leads to the Plan tab. If a plan cannot be loaded, the stage shows Could not load the plan. with Retry.

At the bottom left a minimap shows the room formed by chained walls and where the plan sits in it. Clicking a segment opens that wall, and the corner resizes the map. The map appears as soon as the wall is chained to at least one neighbouring wall.

On a floor plan the neighbouring plans and their fixtures appear faintly in the background.

Selection tab

If nothing is selected, the tab says so. As soon as an element on the stage is selected or a tool is active, the sidebar switches to Selection.

Object. At the top are the title and inventory number as in the object list; the number opens the object.

When an object is placed, the plan records its measurements. If the measurement field changes later, the placement stays as it is until From object fetches the new value.

Display case or partition wall.

Passage.

If a passage ends at the open wall and has no counterpart here yet, a bar at the bottom offers Place counterpart here.

Drawing. Colour, Width, for labels Text and Size, plus Include in dimension chains/distances: the drawing then appears in the dimension chain and serves other objects as a distance marker.

While an object is selected, the stage shows the distances to the edges of the wall and to the nearest neighbour on each axis. You can click a distance and enter a number; the object then moves by the difference.

Objects tab

The tab lists the project’s objects that are not yet on this plan, with title and inventory number. In the plan library it is called Fixtures.

If the list is empty, it says why: the project has no objects yet, all of them are already on the plan, the search finds nothing, or the plan library has no fixtures yet.

Plan tab: plan settings

The plan settings are on the Plan tab, in sections. Every change is saved right away (Saving …, then Saved) and can be taken back with Undo. There is no Save or Cancel.

Centre measures the centre of the object (the hanging axis), Edges both outer edges.

Switching off Active archives the plan. Moliri asks first and then takes you back to the overview. In the plan library, Show archived brings it back into view. Delete plan archives a plan that still has objects on it instead of deleting it.

For a base plan in a project, name, kind, room and size appear as text with Base and the link Change in the plan library. The background and the size of fixtures remain editable for the project.

Fitting the background

Fit background… on the Plan tab starts fitting on the stage. At the top is a bar with the methods, Cancel and Apply, and below it a line telling you what to do next.

With Show background beyond the edges off, the background ends at the edges of the plan. Clear points and Remove fit reset. After Apply the Plan tab is shown again. Esc cancels, and asks first if points have already been set. Fitting can be undone.

Measuring a floor plan

Measure… in the Size section of a floor plan starts measuring on the stage, in the same way as fitting. The floor plan needs a background for this.

Apply enters the size. Measuring can be undone.

## Chaining walls

Chained walls form a room. The minimap, the unrolled elevation in the PDF and the 3D walkthrough all need the chain.

At the edge of a wall the stage shows a + (Chain a wall). It opens Chain a wall on the left or Chain a wall on the right: under Wall choose the neighbouring wall or Create new wall…, plus the Angle (°), default 90°. A chained side shows the angle; clicking it opens Edit chain with Unchain. The faint neighbouring wall at the edge opens that wall.

In a project you can only change the chain of a project plan. For a base plan, the angle says that the chain is edited in the plan library; if you lack write access, it says that.

## Floor plan

Anchor places walls on the floor plan: choose a wall or New wall, then click the starting point and the direction, Save. Chained walls follow the anchored one. If a second anchor contradicts the chain, the floor plan reports this with Remove anchor.

At the corners of the chain you can change the Angle or Unchain, and at the free end of a chain Chain a wall. A wall you click shows its size and Open “Name”.

## Undo and redo

Undo (Ctrl+Z) takes back the last step in the editor, Redo (Ctrl+Shift+Z or Ctrl+Y) restores it until you change something new. Every edit in the editor is recorded: moving, size, rotating, drawings, putting an object from the list on the plan or removing it, placing and removing fixtures, chaining and anchoring walls, the target, sides and size of a passage, creating a new passage, the plan settings, fitting and measuring, and resetting drawings to base (Reset to base).

The history applies to the open plan and survives reloading the page, up to 50 steps. If you open another plan, it starts afresh there. The history lives in the browser tab; a new tab starts empty. Archiving and deleting a plan cannot be undone.

## 3D walkthrough

The 3D walkthrough builds the room from the chained walls with their heights and images, from the silhouettes of display cases and partition walls (with their distance and height), from the floor plan projected onto the floor and from the 3D models of objects that have 3D switched on. Free-standing objects without a model stand upright in the room as their image, at the object’s width and height. Passages lead into the neighbouring room.

You open it with 3D walkthrough in the editor’s header, in the plan overview or in the card menu of a wall.

Eye level is 1.60 m. After closing, the wall planner remembers the position and picks up there the next time you open it. If the plan has no width and height, the walkthrough reports Nothing to walk.

## Export

Export › Export PDF opens Export as PDF.

Below the options you see the result: scale, format, orientation, sheet size in mm. Automatic (fill sheet) picks the nearest standard scale at which the plan fits the sheet. If it does not fit at a fixed scale, Does not fit the sheet at this scale appears and export is blocked.

The PDF is a vector file: lines stay lines, text stays selectable, images are embedded. It contains the background, objects with images, silhouettes, drawings, dimension chains and sizes, as switched on in the View menu. Plan name, scale and format are at the bottom left. The margin is 12 mm.

Export › Export SVG downloads the plan as an SVG in millimetres without a dialog, with the layers architecture, objects, dimension chains, drawing and fixtures.

The wall planner outputs a plan on one sheet. Splitting across several sheets is done by the image export with the Scale tab , not by the wall planner.

Units of measurement

Keyboard shortcuts

The shortcuts for tools, arrow keys and zoom work while the focus is in the editor; a click on the stage is enough.

In input fields and while you edit a label, the keys do not act on the plan.

On the iPad

One finger drags objects and draws. Two fingers zoom the stage (spread and pinch) and pan the view; an object under the first finger stays where it is. With touch, the small markers on the stage (angle, +, crop points, colour swatches) are also large enough to tap. The zoom is also available at the bottom right of the stage.

Permissions

Further reading

• Wall planner guides
• View settings : the wall planner’s field mapping
• Number : units of the measurement fields
• Project-specific values