First Floor Doors & Windows

Front Entry

The front foyer (entry area) is shown below.

Here are the items I placed:

1. A double front door. Place an exterior door in the center of the space between the stairs and the wall, then pull the door wider until it's 5' 6" wide. I then positioned the door 6' 0" from the right-hand wall. The Door Specification dialog, below, shows this door's settings.
2. A doorway into the study/den. Place a door in this wall, then change the door to a doorway and make it 48" wide. The second Door Specification dialog, below, shows this door. I placed this doorway 8-9" from the wall at top.
3. A 36" doorway into the hallway. Push this doorway all the way to the left, as far as it will go. If you use casings (which are turned off in my plan), it won't go all the way to the left. Don't worry.
4. A wall under the stairs. It's highlighted in the image. Place this wall  2' 9 1/2" from the right-hand wall. The program will automatically fit this wall under the stairs. If we use crown moldings in this house we will have to make some adjustments, later, but for now we're good.

For the doorways, open the Door Specification dialog and set Change Door Type to doorway, then click OK.

Living Room and Den

The image below illustrates a simple method of copying an object (in this case, a doorway) from one location to another. I use this method constantly, and you will save time, too. Copy the doorway from the entry to the wall indicated. You could also make a second copy into the wall separating the living room from the dining room.

Below shows where I placed items.

I placed the following items:

1. A 48" doorway between the den and living room. I copied the doorway and set it 8-9" from the top wall.
2. 2 - 30 x 48 windows 3' 0" apart. I also aligned these windows immediately below the windows in the master bedroom, above. See below for how to do this.
3. A 48" doorway between the living room and dining room. I centered the doorway in the wall.
4. A 39" doorway at the end of the hall. It completely fills the space from wall to wall. Of course, casings would make this doorway a little narrower, if we were using them.
5. A 42" doorway from the kitchen to the hallway. I placed this doorway 1' 6" from the left-hand wall. This could be adjusted, later.
6. A 48" bifold door into the pantry. First I simply placed a door in the pantry wall, then changed its settings. Then I centered the door in the wall.

The pantry door was made with the following settings. I changed the Door Style to louvered, the Door Type to bifold, and set the width to 42".

When aligning a window (for example) to be directly over (or under) another window, here's what to do:

• Turn on the Reference Floor display. This causes the adjacent floor to appear as red lines.
• Zoom in on the object to be aligned, and select it. See the screen shot, below.
• Use the Accurate Move tool (tool tip is visible at left) to drag the object until the bright blue outline lines up with the red lines. You will know when you have it, because the red lines disappear. Note that you have to move the mouse much further than the object moves. The object itself moves in 1/16" increments.

Kitchen, Dining, Bath, and Laundry Room

So far, the only closet doors we've placed were in the large walk-in closet upstairs (and they were "regular" doors), and the pantry. We could decide to go ahead and place the rest of the bifold closet doors at this point, since we now have a template to work from. I would perhaps copy closet doors to every closet in the house, except that the copy won't work if the space to receive the door is too narrow. In this case, you could make another closet door narrow, then copy that door into the narrow space. Restore the original door and set the new door to the desired width, and you're done!

You may notice, when copying closet doors, that sometimes the resulting door opens in the wrong direction. The image, below, shows this phenomenon. It has to do with which side of the interior wall is the "outside", though interior walls are always inside relative to something.

To correct this, grab the center handle of the door (in the circle in the image), and drag the handle in the direction you want the doors to open. Let go and the door will be opening outward, as you want.

Now, on to the dining room and kitchen. The image, below, shows where I've placed things.

The items I placed are:

1. A 30 x 48 window centered in the dining room wall.
2. A 10' wide bow window (insert the window and drag one end handle outward) in the dining room back wall. I also pulled the bow window out (using the center handle) to make it a little "deeper". See below for how to change the window type.
3. A 30 x 36 window centered in the kitchen wall. We may move it, later.
4. A 39" doorway in the end of the hallway.
5. A 30" door into the bath. Place it 4-5" from the wall.
6. A 36" doorway into the laundry room. I placed it 3" from each adjacent wall.
7. A 36" exterior door in the laundry room. This door is about 8" from the exterior wall corner.
8. A 36" door from the garage to the hall. I changed the Door Type to panel. We don't need windows into our garage.

Of course you should note that I have inserted closet doors in all the closets. I used the same 42" louvered bi-fold door for each one. If you want wider (or narrower) closet doors, you can make any adjustments you think you need.

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