Coloring Architectural Floor Plans

[croviax]

Hi. I just bought Affinity Designer and was wondering what is the easiest way to color a floor plan such as attached image here. In illustrator we can use live paint and just fill in the spaces. We need to use a vector based software because the plans are gonna be scaled to different sizes for presentation and marketing purposes. Thanks

[DWright]

Hi Croviax,

 

What format has your floor plan been created in, if the objects on the plan are closed curves you can use the Pixel Persona to colour these quickly 

[croviax]

6 hours ago, DWright said:

Hi Croviax,

 

What format has your floor plan been created in, if the objects on the plan are closed curves you can use the Pixel Persona to colour these quickly 

 

It was created using Autocad, converted to PDF then imported to Designer as vector line works.

 

Do you mind elaborating the method? How do I color those spaces using Pixel Persona?

 

I tried duplicating the curves layer and rasterise them before using the Flood Fill Tool. The only problem is that at certain areas its really pixelated/blurry due to it being a raster image

[R C-R]

If you use Pixel Persona & rasterize the curve layers, you will end up with rasterized output instead of the all-vector format you want.

 

So instead, you need to work directly on the curves, closing & stacking them as required to fill them with color using the Color panel or Context toolbar Color popup to set each object's fill color. Obviously, this is likely to be quite labor intensive, but if you are using Affinity Designer you can reduce some of the work by using symbols for the trees & cars, & perhaps for other repeating elements like some of the roofs, or creating assets for frequently used items.

[gdenby]

From what I've seen of the AutoCAD objects, most are groups of un-joined single strokes. I'd guess that it would be more than labor intensive to work them into something AD will color as vectors, and more like starting to rebuild from rubble.

 

So here's a work around suggestion. Rasterize the file after deleting as much of the  text and perhaps textures as possible. Flood fill the shapes. Reload a copy of the vector drawing, and insert the pixel layer as a nested child. At least the lines will remain clear, and pixelization should be reduced.

 

Getting rid of the trees and cars, and substituting AD drawn objects as symbols would be good, tho' I don't know how much fuss there would be deleting the trees, etc, and placing the symbols where they were. What's the timeline on the project?

 

Sigh, cross app translation makes the effect of the Towel of Babel seem trivial.

[toltec]

At the moment it is a vector, so could be enlarged to life size, more or less. If you know the maximum size it will be used at, increase the vector image to be at least twice that. Say A2? although the sky is pretty much the limit.

 

Rasterise it and then flood fill it as DWright suggested. When you downscale the bitmap it to any size, it will be sharp. Just keep it to at least 300dpi and keep the master image..

 

The only thing that would normally stop that is computer memory, but it's only simple black and white  line art with solid colours ?  so memory wont be an issue.

 

 

[Fixx]

I usually just end up drawing simple coloured areas in a separate layerset and move that behind original vector drawing (as there are usually no fills in original, just transparent shapes). If there are complicated paths I can copy those from original vectors and join them to closed paths. But usually rectangles are enough to cover simple areas.

(Now, it is possible that there are ready room shapes already in original file as they are used for room identification and area calculations. They might be useful if they can be coloured in AD. Of course that applies only to floor plans, not site plans.)