Comments on: Design Floor Plans With Excel http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2009/07/design-floor-plans-with-excel/ tips and downloads to help you at work and play Mon, 23 Nov 2009 00:14:26 +1100 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: Dougal http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2009/07/design-floor-plans-with-excel/comment-page-1/#comment-11392 Dougal Sun, 12 Jul 2009 02:11:26 +0000 http://www.lifehacker.com.au/?p=337455#comment-11392 People fall into two camps with their ability to access & load software. At home on your own PC the freeware tools described by readers are great. I have done this. But at work in a typical corporate organisation you are not allowed access to freeware. Or to get publisher, autocad lite or similar software added is a nightmare of justifications and management negotiations. As an engineer I have found Excel to be a very handy and useful drawing tool both for scaled sketches as described as well as non-scale concept sketches. I also use screen prints of drawings and load them into MS Paint to make modifications in proportional scale as well. Interestingly, I find both Excel and Paint methods much faster than CAD software, with the added knowledge/benefit that anyone else in the organisation has the basic corporate software to open and read what I'm communicating in my work. Not everyone has Volo Viewer (for Cad drawing review) or access to the same freeware (for file reading compatibility). People fall into two camps with their ability to access & load software. At home on your own PC the freeware tools described by readers are great. I have done this. But at work in a typical corporate organisation you are not allowed access to freeware. Or to get publisher, autocad lite or similar software added is a nightmare of justifications and management negotiations.

As an engineer I have found Excel to be a very handy and useful drawing tool both for scaled sketches as described as well as non-scale concept sketches.

I also use screen prints of drawings and load them into MS Paint to make modifications in proportional scale as well.

Interestingly, I find both Excel and Paint methods much faster than CAD software, with the added knowledge/benefit that anyone else in the organisation has the basic corporate software to open and read what I’m communicating in my work. Not everyone has Volo Viewer (for Cad drawing review) or access to the same freeware (for file reading compatibility).

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