[Solved]Units round when I don't want them to

[krone6]

I am drawing a floor plan and need precise measurements. I have looked into the prevision and units section and tried making the unit placement to the thousandths, however that didn't solve the issue. I'm also using a basic wall and controller dimension for now as this floor plan only requires a birds eye view.

My main issue is that the controller unit will start out as an exact measurement such as 1.292' but go to 1.3' once I glue it to a corner of the wall. This won't work for the interior as things need to be even more precise inside the building.

the other issue are my walls' measurements are not being measured correctly. When I measured the perimeter I went from outer corner to outer corner, not from a single corner to the inner corner of the wall, however Visio thinks I only measured from a single outer corner to an inner corner, causing my measurements on paper to not match what it'll show in Visio. I am attaching pictures of what this issue looks like. You will see the bottom wall says 28' 3 11/16" instead of 28' due to me manually putting the dimension to each outer corner compared to how Visio did.

Thanks for the assistance and I'm sure you'll see me around as I get farther into these drawings for work.

[wapperdude]

Agreed, the Visio floor plan can be somewhat frustrating at times.

There are a few things to be aware of:
1.  Visio indicates wall length as the distance from connection point to connection point.  Typically, for floor plans, the interior dimension is the critical one, so, make sure that every wall is placed such that the connection points are on the interior.

2.  For shared interior walls, (1) above cannot be met for both rooms.  One room will be correct, the other will have to be compensated for due to wall thickness.  But, that's real world.  It does make placing walls tricky.

3.  You can right click a wall and add a dimension line.  It automatically attaches to the wall's connection points.  From your photo, it was hard to tell if you had a combination of "interior" and "exterior" walls.  That will give bogus measurements.

4.  You can right click on the dimension and get a pop-up menu to control precision.

5.  You can select a wall, use the up/down/right/left arrows to move it.  Hold <Shift> key down allows finer increments.  If you have dimension lines showing, you can nudge a wall to get the desired adjacent wall size.

6.  Note that snap settings will impact wall length.  It might be best to turn off snap to grid.  Set snap to ruler to be fine. 

I've attached an example showing two rooms of the same size.  One with interior walls and the other with exterior walls.  The wall lengths are different by the thickness of the walls.

HTH
Wapperdude

[krone6]

Thanks for reply. Sorry about not getting back to you sooner, though I did see your message a couple days ago.

It'll be interesting to see how this project goes then as some of these measurements have to be very precise for a company. Plus I'm learning the program as I go.

[wapperdude]

You can drag guides from either the vertical or horizontal rulers and position on the drawing as desired.  These are handy for snapping and gluing shapes to precise locations.  You can use the size and position window to place a guide exactly where you want by typing in either x- or y- position.  You can add more guides and position them relative to each other by entering the desired value, e.g., 2nd guide could be first guide location + 10 meters by merely copying the location of the 1st guide, pasting it into 2nd guide location and add 10 meters.

The walls will snap (and glue, it set to do so) to these guides.

Also, under precision, you can chose to use page setting.  This may provide more significant digits.

HTH
Wapperdude

[krone6]

You can drag guides from either the vertical or horizontal rulers and position on the drawing as desired.  These are handy for snapping and gluing shapes to precise locations.  You can use the size and position window to place a guide exactly where you want by typing in either x- or y- position.  You can add more guides and position them relative to each other by entering the desired value, e.g., 2nd guide could be first guide location + 10 meters by merely copying the location of the 1st guide, pasting it into 2nd guide location and add 10 meters.

The walls will snap (and glue, it set to do so) to these guides.

Also, under precision, you can chose to use page setting.  This may provide more significant digits.

HTH
Wapperdude

EDIT: Apparently the video decided to work. Here's the video showing the issues along with me explaining what's happening at each step.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Shj700wKUQ

Hello,

Your information is definitely helping a ton, however I've come across another issue with snapping that's literally preventing me from continuing the project. I also tried to record a short video though the few basic screen recorders I found don't work well and Fraps apparently doesn't work on Windows 8.1 (enabled Aero in the options).

I am using the interior wall for everything to keep it simple unless it's a door, then I use the door shape. I have a cement floor made out of three interior walls attached to the main, longer interior wall which forms a square. Inside that square I am placing additional interior walls as exact as I can based on what I've written down earlier which should leave a 1.68' gap from the floor's base to the actual item on top of the base. When I go to make another basic square to represent this item the interior walls from the base glue/snaps together with the non base walls which I don't want. There absolutely needs to be a gap between these walls or it won't be accurate enough. The unit in question is a simple HVAC on top of cement on the outside. You will see what it looks like in the pictures.

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B6Dp8Iwnf_JsbHN5Q2VOYlhsWjA&usp=sharing (Click on them once, it'll open. It's the HVAC 1.jpg picture specifically)

Thanks.

(If you're wondering, yes, I have Googled. I learned to at least try before coming to a forum or someone else and trying to research answers beforehand. What I've tried so far has not worked and the problem persisted in Visio 2010.)

[wapperdude]

I think you'll end up having to do some editing in the shapesheet for each placed wall.  Basically, you'll have to use the guard() function in the begin / end cells to lock their position once you're satisfied with their positioning.

You may be able to play with the snapping strength under advanced settings.  Don't know where it is in V2010.

[krone6]

I think you'll end up having to do some editing in the shapesheet for each placed wall.  Basically, you'll have to use the guard() function in the begin / end cells to lock their position once you're satisfied with their positioning.

You may be able to play with the snapping strength under advanced settings.  Don't know where it is in V2010.

EDIT: I've guarded everything I can think of on the main wall and some on the other with and without gluing/snapping on/off and even with a very precise grid it still won't stay away from that main wall. I've got measurements as small as .25" which can't glue or snap to something next to it or it'll be wrong. Is there a reason Microsoft decided to make something like this an opt-out instead of an opt-in feature?

Are you sure I'm not over thinking this as I'm just trying to place walls in certain spots to give an outline of what the area looks like for each building. It seems like throwing in some programming on a GUI-oriented project is on the side of over thinking.

If I do need to do it this way I will, however I'd prefer to stay as simple as I can.

[krone6]

I am going to lock this thread as all of my issues are solved. I watched a few videos today and it gave me an idea to use regular squares for precise measurements and walls for the walls. So far I have done all four sides and things are looking great.

Thanks for your help on the Guard. I've had to use it a few times to stop myself from accidentally moving something and causing 5-10 different measurements to go with it.

[wapperdude]

Regardless of snap/glue settings, the floorplan add-on has code that always makes walls snap to walls.  But, "normal" shapes should not behave this way.  That is, if you turn snap/glue off, then, regular shapes will do neither.

If you want a "gap" between two walls, then you can first place the two walls, then, use the opening shape to create a gap.  See attached.  After the opening was placed, then, readjust the wall length.  I reset the wall to be exactly 8 ft, according to the dimension shape by adding the necessary amount to the endx  point on the size and position window.

How did you make the controller unit?  Did you use a simple rectangle?  It should not have changed size.  Is the "indicated" precision rounding off?  Select the controller shape, the size and position window will indicate its actual size.

Edit:  I see you posted while I was working on this reply.