Arranging furniture in open office spaces

In this lesson, you will overlay external files into a furniture plan and then layout furniture groups inside the rooms of an office building. Open the furniture 3 project file to begin, then type xref and press Enter. Click this icon in the corner and select Core. Open and select overlay as the reference type. Click OK. And repeat the process twice more, (audio playing) overlying the shell (audio playing) and the tenant drawings.

(audio playing) Close the External References pallet. Let's move the furniture out of way. This will be our kit of parts that we will use to layout (audio playing) the furniture into the enclosed rooms of the office building. It looks like we have a large room up here, that might be suitable for the conference table. Move (audio playing) the conference table up there, grab it from its center point and with objects snap tracking on, track a line up vertically from the central line of the two doors.

(audio playing) Over here we have a coffee room and another coffee room. Let's put the cafe table arrangement in there. Move (audio playing) this furniture group (audio playing) over here (audio playing) and then copy (audio playing) from here to here. The CEO and VP have these offices. So let's put in this arrangement in there. Move (audio playing) this over and then I'm going to zoom in with a mouse wheel and pan.

And then I'll click right about here. (audio playing) Copy this group using Ortho (audio playing) so that it will be directly up into the Vice President's office. Now these two people have a space between them and we might want to have a seating arrangement there.

(audio playing) So let's see. Let's copy (audio playing) one of these cafe table arrangements in there. (audio playing) I'll turn off Ortho. I'll place it right about here. And press Enter to end the Copy command. It's a bit too tight, as you can see. Let's change this particular arrangement. Toggle off group selection. (audio playing) Click on the chair array. Change the number of items to two.

Press Tab. Now, this isn't really going to work either. It's a little awkward to have these two in the middle like that. Let's change the angle that the array is filling. Right now it's 360. Let's change that to 120. Press Tab. And then close Array. (audio playing) Toggle on group selection again. (audio playing) Click on the group. Select it's Grip and then press the Spacebar twice to cycle to the Rotate command within the Grip Editing system. Rotate the group around about like this and then move it over. (audio playing) That's better. Press Esc to deselect.

What else do we have? (audio playing) It looks like we have some couple of other offices over here and we have some up here. And we have a couple of things down here to take care of also. So lets copy (audio playing) the CEO's furniture group into this manager's office. (audio playing) And then again, Copy. (audio playing) Press Ortho mode On, on the status bar. And go ahead and pan up here with the mouse wheel, just by dragging the mouse wheel, and create a copy of it up there.

Again, copy this object from some arbitrary point located near the (audio playing) furniture and then I'll come up here and zoom in and place it in this room (audio playing) roughly. Now we need to go ahead and select the (audio playing) group, click its Grip. Press the Spacebar twice to cycle to the Rotate command. And then I'm going to eyeball it or estimate the rotation, just like that.

Maybe that's not quite enough. I'll do it again. Click, Spacebar, Spacebar, and rotated it just a bit more. About like that. Okay. Now, I'll move this down right about there. It doesn't have to be perfect for a furniture group if you did want to make it perfect, you can certainly do so and I'll show you that. We'll move this down (audio playing) right here (audio playing) and then rotate it (audio playing) using the Reference option, from here to here and the new angle that is right here.

Now, suppose I want to have this copied right up there. I'll type ucs. Enter. And then use the Object option. I will then click on this desk to rotate the coordinate system. Then I can copy this group, using Ortho, so that it moves up perfectly in the same line up here.

Now actually these are backwards, aren't they? Because the armchair is in the entry. So let's flip them over. Mirror both of these (audio playing) about the midpoint here. (audio playing) And then, yes, we want to erase the source objects. (audio playing) And perhaps I also need to move them back a little bit now. (audio playing) There we go. Now down here on the other side of the plan, it looks like we have symmetry working for us. I need to change the coordinate system back to World. So I'll type UCS.

Enter. And press Enter again to accept the default option which is World. (audio playing) Choose mirror. (audio playing) Select these furniture groups. Press Enter. Click on this midpoint of the core. Click over here and press Enter. That worked perfectly. Now, over here, we need a conference table, but we didn't make one. So, let's adapt this furniture group to suit our purpose. (audio playing) I'll move it in here. (audio playing) And then, ungroup it. (audio playing) Now, I will rotate it both of these objects from some arbitrary point.

And I'm just going to eyeball in the space about like that. Now, lets see. A conference table would be bigger than a single desk. So I will copy this desk (audio playing) and make four copies. (audio playing) Then I will use the Polyline tool on the furniture layer first. So I'm going to go to A Fern and set that current. Use the Polyline tool and draw a polyline (audio playing) around these four corners.

(audio playing) Then I will click the Close option here. Erase these desks (audio playing) and press Enter. Now, let's copy (audio playing) this chair from some arbitrary point down here. And we'll use the array option. Let's say we want four chairs. I'll type four. Enter. And then I can move the mouse here to control the spacing and the angle at which they are arrayed. I'll click right about here and press Enter.

Then I'll move these up. (audio playing) So they're centered more or less on the conference table. And then mirror them (audio playing) about the midpoint to midpoint line. (audio playing) Finally, let's just move these objects (audio playing) into the middle a little bit better. And in case we ever need to manipulate these objects again, let's group them. I'll type P for previous. Enter.

Enter. And now we have a single group. (audio playing) So you have gained some practical experience distributing and transforming groups of furniture blocks in the enclosed spaces of an office plan.