Floor Plans
If you were making "Floor Plans" for a condominium conversion would you use architectural units or decimal feet?
In our jurisdiction a condominium conversion requires a "Site Plan" and "Floor Plans" to be recorded at the Registry.
The most convenient units for measuring and plotting the interior is decimal feet for the CAD system.
Changing the drafting units to inches and fractions is easy peasy. Try it.
You're right. I can change the dimension style to architectural and apply a scale factor of 12 otherwise it will show a line that is 10.5 feet as 10.5 inches. Thank you.
It's been so long since I prepared a set of floor plans, I can't remember for sure. I probably just did decimal feet at the time but as noted it would be easy use feet and inches. I suggest keeping it simple as far as dimensioning goes. No need to show every twist and turn through the hallways and closets. Just a length and width for each space is enough in most cases.
I'm not familiar with condo conversions, but if you show measurements of the existing building don't you get some pretty weird fractions when you convert the decimal feet? I've heard architects and carpenters only comprende 8ths. 😏
My first exposure to Condo plans was in British Columbia, in metric. Even though the building plans were still in feet and inches. So that says something, doesn’t it?
I’ve since done several in both Washington and Oregon. Always in decimal feet. They are survey plans, after all, and statute law calls for length dimensions in decimal feet on survey plans in both places.
The fact that the OP is working a conversion has no bearing on the matter.
I would set the dimensioning to show only to the whole inch, possibly to the half inch. These floor plans aren't mapping out Swiss watches. They are to show the unit purchasers "what they are buying" and distinguish between the individual ownership and the common ownership. Eighth inch distances would be useless to the unit owners and may even be a bit of false precision, when you think about slightly curved wall studs, etc. The floor area is usually very important, as many times the common ownership percentages are based on the areas of the units.
For a condo your dimensions serve three primary purposes. From the surveyor view they are to get you to the right monument (wall). For the assessor it's about computing taxes. The insurance company wants to charge correct premiums and cut the proper check in the event of a disaster.
None of these require high precision. Nearest half- tenth is fine and that's my preference. I also note the dimensions cannot be measured or expressed more precise than the materials and type of construction allow.
Thank you to everyone. I must say, it is not fun to measure the walls inside of a building, especially when the rooms are not rectangles. It was fun using the hand-held laser distance meter though. Just push the button!
