DESIGNING WITH MICROSOFT VISIO PROFESSIONAL 1:

DESIGNING WITH MICROSOFT VISIO PROFESSIONAL 1:

By William Robert King, R.A. on Feb 12, 2016 12:23:40 PM

 Designing with Microsoft VISIO Professional 1: 

ARCHITECTURE WORK PC 

William Robert King, R.A. 

This series of blogs will illustrate how I design directly in Microsoft VISIO using online resources to obtain basic plans & site information. This example is for a generic apartment renovation project, but all other project types are similar in many ways in that I use “scaled diagrams” as the place to start. 

A “scaled diagram” is simply a room or space that has a preferred size & configuration. The rooms or spaces needed in any project are generated by the client mostly – this is called a “program” or a “wish list”, but sometimes they leave essential items out (e.g. “hallways”), so we review what we are asked to provide in order to assess if what a client wants actually fits the space provided. This is a distinction found almost exclusively in a renovation project where the size of the space is fixed inside an existing structure. 

In this example, my client was considering combining two apartment into one in an older high-rise multiple dwelling structure here on the upper east side of Manhattan. The first thing I did was to Google the street address and from the endless choices selected a realty sales website that listed all the apartment configurations in this building – very convenient. The files downloaded were in GIF and although viewable, were not “useable” as I need something I can import and manipulate for the purpose of “scaling”. The solution was to simply print out a paper copy of both plans & then scan them into my computer as a color PDF – now I have “as-built” floor plans that can be set to whatever scale I wish. Note here that VISIO drawings are created on virtual drawing pages that you either select from the standard choices or create on your own – it’s onto these pages that I “paste” or “import” other media, in this case a PDF file, but it could be a photo or a Word document – almost anything. 

Here’s a look at my standard architectural D-Size page with AEC conforming title block (required for filing in NYC Buildings Department system). This example has been “pasted” onto this Word Document.