1. Here's a quick tutorial on how to use an engineering scale.

2. To begin manually drafting a basic floor plan, start by lightly laying out your exterior walls with the shape and dimensions desired for the hou...

3. Once the exterior walls are up it is helpful to add reference lines to the drawing for scaling purposes. Generally these lines are put through t...

4. Now it’s time to lay out the interior walls of the proposed house using light lines. It is important to predetermine the thickness of thes...

5. The next step is to determine the location of the doors to both enter the house, the rooms within the house, and all of the closets using light...

6. Windows are the next addition to the existing floor plan. Similar to the doorways, windows will be dimension from their center. It is important...

7. Now it’s time to add cabinets, kitchen appliances and bathroom fixtures to the plan. Lower kitchen cabinets are typically 2 feet deep and...

8. It’s finally time to add dimensions to the floor plan. Make sure to thoroughly label dimensions throughout the plan. All walls, doors, win...

9. Once dimensioning is complete it is time to label the rooms and add any specific notes thought to be appropriate. Bedrooms should be labeled by...

10. The next step in finishing up the floor plan is to clean it up and make it look nice. Make sure all mistakes are completely erased and look nic...