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Diagram features

Floor plan

Written By Clayton Combe

Last updated 15 days ago

Planning a shoot doesn’t happen in a void, it happens in a real-world space. Use these tools to define that space.

Floor plan tools

To get started with floor planning in scenario, just click the floor plan button, which is right up here in the quick items next to markup. And this is going to give you a toolbar of tools that you can use to build a pretty solid floor plan. Now, we'll start with a wall because that's kind of the basic unit of a floor plan. So, I just added a wall here. And you can see it's just a multi-point line. You can add a point to the middle of the line. You can add points to the ends of the line. And these points can also, if you'd like, switch to a curved point. So you can make curved walls. Another thing you can do with points is you can break that at that point. And so that actually makes two separate wall items now that you can operate independently from each other. Wall items can also have their color and thickness change. So you can do that. And then once you have these wall items, notice this is still on. So the toolbar stays here. You can add stuff to them. So let's say we want to add a door. It'll snap onto here. And if you want to change the direction of the swing, just click this button. You can also, if you open up the detail table here, change the number of doors and then change that width to make it make sense. Another thing that you can add is a window. So now we have a window because snap is on can also snap to the wall. And now wherever wherever this goes these items are going to stay on it. A gap acts like a cased opening say um but it behaves just the same as a door or a window. Snaps onto part of a wall. And then we have some more basic shapes. We have an ellipse which is as you can imagine just an ellipse like that. And then we have a rectangle. Uh and this rectangle can resize in any direction and if you'd like has rounded corners. The distance item gets a little more fun. So if we were to add say an actor here, an actor here, and I just use the A key to hit those. And then I can add a distance. So a distance can just behave like kind of an arrow. You can put it anywhere you want. But if you have snap-on, then you can actually add it to other items and it'll always show you the distance between those items. Compass is pretty simple. Drag it on. it points north, whichever way you want that to be. The room scan is where it gets really interesting. Now, this is on a computer that I'm using right now. Um, so it does not have a LiDAR scanner built into it, but if you're using this on a phone or a tablet that does have a LiDAR scanner, it will actually open up the LiDAR scan uh utility, and you can walk around a space, and it will map out the floor plan for you. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to click it here because that is going to add a floor plan that I've already scanned and exported. And I'll show you how to do that later. So, it's this GB. And as you can see, so this this took me about 2 minutes to scan. And as you can see, it's not exactly perfect. Uh the floor planner or the the scanner rather has some limitations. Um, and what that means is that it can't necessarily always tell, for instance, what a bay window is. Um, but we can get in there, we can make some edits. So, uh, what I'm going to do is you can see in the detail table, we have this duplicate as group button. We also have an export button, which is how we exported this in the first place, and it exports it in that GB format. Um, and that is true three-dimensional data. So, you can export that to a three dimensional utility to to do editing or previs. Um, but all I need to do for now is I'm going to duplicate his group. And you just saw that subtle change there because what actually happened was I had the room scan item which is still there, but it's hidden. But it converted that into a group full of all the objects. Um, and now what I'm going to be able to do, and it's funny because this compass is now accurate because the room scan will always show up with north pointing up. But now what I'm going to be able to do is I'm going to be able to get in here and make some adjustments. So, for instance, this isn't actually one window, it's two. So, I go here and then I'll copy and drag to get those on there. Now I have these two windows where they should be. And this is a actually a double door. It's not uh it's not that. So I'll do this. And then I'll change that number of doors to two. And now that's accurate. This is actually stairs. It was unable to figure that out. Like that. This actually is doors this room. So do this. Just keep that open. And then they swing that way. So you can see this is starting to look a lot more organized. These thinner ones, this is actually a couch. This is a table. So it's able to detect the items that are in the room here. And it's just going to use um a little bit of a smaller thickness for those. This is a cased opening. It has some little corners there. So, I'll bring those in. This is actually double. It's a little closet. Deselect. I get this back. I can put my stairs here. They go the other direction. The arrow always points up, but you can turn that off if you'd like. Goes right about there. They come right about there. These are cabinets, so I don't actually need that there. But you know what? I do need a door here because this is like a powder room. and it swings that way and it's more like there. So, this is shaping up. You can see you have a lot of options for how to edit your floor plan and it's still just been a few minutes of editing to get it to this point. Uh, so once you have that, it is a group. You can copy paste it. You can put it into any other diagram you'd like. So, that's floor planning. That's how to get started. Uh there's a separate video for if you have a floor plan from the art department in an image and a PDF, you can just import that as an image and use it that way and automatically size it. Uh but the nice thing about doing a a room scan is that it does get automatically sized. So at least your starting point is uh is reliable proportions.

  • Toggle the Floor Plan toolbar from the button in “quick items”

    • Previously these items were in the Add Item sidebar, but they were harder to find and use

  • Create walls (multi-point lines), doors, windows, stairs, and more

  • Turn on Snap to attach doors, windows, and gaps to walls

  • Group them together and lock them to make them permanent

Room Scan

Use the Room Scan tool on a LiDAR-equipped device to generate a 3D scan of a space.

iPhones and iPads in the Pro or Pro Max lines are known to have LiDAR hardware. Other devices may not be supported.

Scan the space

Currently supported on any iPhone or iPad with LiDAR hardware (typically the Pro and Pro max models).

  • Open the floor plan toolbar and tap the “Room Scan” button to start the scanner

  • Follow the prompt on the screen to move your device around to scan the space

  • For best results:

    • Remove as much clutter from the space as possible, to expose corners and edges. Try to minimize reflections, like large mirrors.

    • Open curtains and turn on interior lights to ensure the scanner can see everything. However, direct sunlight may confuse LiDAR, so avoid too much of it if possible.

    • Start your scan near a recognizable “anchor” object, like a corner or a doorway.

    • Hold your device at chest or eye height, move slowly in broad sweeps, and avoid quick tilting up and down.

    • When practical, scan coherent “sections” of a few rooms at a time, then assemble them on the diagram. More complex spaces can present problems.

    • Try to keep edges and corners in frame, so the scanner stays oriented.

    • When possible, stay within 16 feet/5 meters of what you’re scanning (this is the effective range for iOS devices).

    • The scanner draws lines around edges and identified objects like windows, doors, and some furniture.

  • Tap the “Done” checkmark button to finish the scan

    • This creates a new Room Scan item on your diagram

    • The scan is automatically scaled true-to-size

    • Identified items (doors, windows, gaps) are placed

    • Orients the scan so north is up (but scans can be rotated and manipulated as needed)

Adjust

The scan is a great starting point, but usually contains mis-identified geometry or objects. Once you’re scanned your location, we recommend doing some cleanup!

  • Select the Room Scan item, and In the Details sidebar (or right-click menu) select “Duplicate as Group”

  • This will hide (not delete) the original Room Scan, and create an editable group of floor plan items in its place

  • Adjust the floor plan items like you would normally

  • Common issues with scans:

    • Combining multiple windows on a wall into one large window

    • Failing to see bay-window geometry

    • Identifying open doors as gaps

    • Walls that are not parallel

Export

  • Select the Room Scan item and open the Details sidebar

    • Make sure it’s the original Room Scan, not the floor plan group

  • Click the button to export as .glb, which includes the full 3D data from the scan

Import

  • For devices without LiDAR, clicking the Room Scan button opens the file picker, where you can import a .glb file that was exported by Scenario

    • For a device with LiDAR, the import button is inside the scanner

  • Select a file; it will be added to your diagram

Scenario ONLY currently supports .glb files that were exported from Scenario. If you have other file types you’d like to import, reach out to clay@scenario.film

Floor plan image

Often, a floor plan is provided by the Art Department. Add it as an image and scale to fit:

So, one thing that's pretty common is needing to add a floor plan to your diagram, something to base your diagram on some kind of real world space. And we have some cool tools to do that. So, we're just going to add an image. And the nice thing about this is it's going to let you select JPEGs, uh, PNGs, PDFs, pretty much anything you can find. So, we're going to select this PDF here. One thing you'll notice is that this actually has multiple pages, and I probably only need one, but I'm going to open it up. Um, and I get to choose which pages I need. So, um, I'm going to go with this first one, but you can select multiple pages. Let's say I selected those two, and it's going to go ahead and add them both as images here.

Now, I'll go ahead and delete this one so we can focus on the first one. Um, but as you can see, this image is pretty small right now. Um, I'm going to make it a little bigger so it's easier to see. But we also know we can see these dots on the background. we have an actual scale in scenario and it would take a while to kind of guess and check um what that scale needs to be. So I'm going to do something resize image. I'm going to click this and it's going to give me this distance right here. And all I need to do is I need to figure out okay what is a real distance on this diagram. You can see up here we have a looks like a 48 foot right there. So, I'm going to do this. I'm going to drag this up to match that. And I'm going to turn on snap here so it lines up exactly with the other point. Now, it says right now that's 8.9 ft. That's just not true. So, I'm going to say that's actually 48 ft. And it has just resized the entire thing to match that scale, 48 ft. So that's done.

Now we have a bunch of extra stuff here. I don't want that on my diagram. So I'm going to crop it out. Now we can see, you know what? I don't even really need that. Just make it nice and clean here. Something around there. This one will go, let's see. somewhere nice and clean. Let's say right about there. Let's make sure that makes sense. Can go inside that maybe. Great. And now that's done. Now I haven't actually gotten rid of anything. If I go back and I crop it again, you see everything else is still there. It's just the crop window. I can move the crop window around like that. Redo it. Um but everything's there. It's just not what I see. And when I'm manipulating the image like normal, I can do that. I can move it around. I can rotate it. Whatever.

So, another thing that's good to do with floor plan images is uh make them a little less opaque. Get them a little bit out of the way. So, we just added a quick opacity slider there. So, now it's going to be easier to see the, you know, fixtures and stuff that I put on top of it. And one thing I like to do is lock it. So, I'm just going to go and hit I can do this. I can go to display lock or you can also see command K. So, I'm just going to command K right here. But once I've done that, I can't select it anymore here. And that's the point is it's supposed to be out of the way. It's supposed to be kind of a permanent background. And if I wanted, I could go find it in layers and find it here and unlock it. But that's kind of tedious, especially when you get a lot of stuff there. So, one thing that you can do is you can just rightclick. Normally, if you right click, you get these options. Kind of generic to the diagram, but if you right click over any locked item, you can just unlock it really quick like that.

So, those are the tools for setting up your floor plan image. Um, you can obviously use these tools for any image that you add, even if it's not a floor plan. Um, but that's a really nice quick way to get your foundation ready.

  • Add images from JPG, PNG, SVG, or PDF

  • Scale using the automated tool; drag the points to define a distance on the image, then tell Scenario what that distance should be, and it will resize to make that true

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