Interior designers have a wealth of software options available to them, but AutoCAD remains one of the most widely used tools for producing precise, professional floor plans and furniture layouts. Its accuracy, layer management, and compatibility with architectural drawings make it the go-to choice when designs need to integrate with broader construction or renovation projects.
If you are an interior designer or space planner looking to get more out of AutoCAD (available from GetRenewedTech for €46.99 per year), this guide covers the specific techniques and workflows most useful for interior design work.
Setting Up Your Drawing Environment
Before starting a space planning drawing, establish the correct units. Interior design in the UK typically works in millimetres. Type UNITS in the command line and set:
- Length Type: Decimal
- Length Precision: 0 (whole millimetres are sufficient for most furniture layouts)
- Insertion Scale: Millimetres
Set your drawing limits to reflect the space you are working in. For a large open-plan office, you might set limits to 30000 x 20000 (30 by 20 metres). Type LIMITS, enter 0,0 for the lower-left corner, and your maximum extents for the upper right. Then zoom to extents with the Z E shortcut.
Importing or Drawing the Shell
In most cases, you will receive the architectural shell — the walls, columns, windows, and doors of the building — either as a DWG file from the architect or as a scanned plan to trace over. If you have a DWG file, use INSERT > Block or simply open it and copy the relevant geometry into your working file.
If you are tracing from a scan, insert the image with IMAGEATTACH, scale it to its known dimensions using a reference measurement, and then use XREF to keep the image on its own layer. Lock the layer containing the architectural shell so you cannot accidentally move it while working on the furniture layout above.
Layer Organisation for Interior Design
Effective layer management is what separates professional interior design drawings from amateur ones. A typical interior design layer structure might include:
- A-WALL — architectural walls (usually locked and inherited from the architect)
- A-DOOR — doors and door swings
- A-GLAZ — windows and glazed screens
- I-FURN — furniture
- I-FURN-FIX — fixed furniture (built-in storage, kitchen units)
- I-EQUIP — equipment (printers, kitchen appliances)
- I-DIMS — dimensions
- I-TEXT — room labels and annotations
Type LA to open the Layer Properties Manager and create these layers with distinct colours — each colour typically corresponds to a lineweight in print, following the BSI convention of assigning heavier lines to structural elements and lighter lines to furniture.
Using Dynamic Blocks for Furniture
AutoCAD’s dynamic blocks are transformative for furniture layout. A dynamic block is a block with built-in parameters — a desk block, for instance, might have a stretch parameter that allows it to be widened from 1200mm to 1800mm by dragging a grip, without needing separate blocks for every desk size.
Autodesk provides a standard furniture block library in AutoCAD, and many furniture manufacturers publish DWG blocks of their products on their websites. Download chair, desk, sofa, and table blocks and save them to a dedicated block library folder. Access your blocks via the Tool Palettes (Ctrl+3) or the Design Centre (Ctrl+2), which lets you browse and drag blocks from any drawing into your current file.
Calculating Circulation Clearances
UK building regulations and ergonomic guidelines specify minimum clearances for circulation routes. For office spaces, a minimum of 1200mm should be maintained on primary circulation routes, with 600mm minimum between back-to-back desks. In residential spaces, a 900mm kitchen aisle is typical.
Use AutoCAD’s OFFSET command to draw clearance lines at these distances from furniture edges or walls. These offset lines serve as a visual check that you have not violated minimum clearances. Once verified, move them to a construction layer and turn that layer off before plotting.
Creating Room Area Schedules
For space planning reports, clients typically want to know the area of each space. Draw closed polylines around each room boundary using the PLINE command. Then use LIST (or select the polyline and check Properties) to read the area. The FIELD command allows you to insert a text object that automatically displays the area of a selected object, so your schedule updates if you adjust room boundaries.
More efficiently, use AutoCAD’s AREA command or write all room areas to a table using Data Extraction (Tools > Data Extraction), which can export block attribute data and area calculations directly to an Excel spreadsheet.
Presenting Layouts in Layout Space
Model space is for drawing; layout space (also called Paper Space) is for presentation. Switch to a Layout tab at the bottom of the screen. Set your paper size to A1 or A3 via Page Setup Manager and create viewports at appropriate scales — 1:50 for room layouts, 1:20 for detail areas, 1:1 for detail drawings.
Use viewport layers to turn off construction layers and guide lines in the viewport without deleting them from model space. Add a title block, north point, scale bar, and revision table in paper space to complete a professional drawing package.
Exporting for Clients and Contractors
For client presentations, export to PDF via File > Export > PDF. For contractors who need editable files, share the DWG directly. If working with contractors who use Revit, AutoCAD drawings can be imported into Revit as linked files — AutoCAD linework becomes the base for 3D modelling in Revit.
AutoCAD is available for both Windows and Mac at GetRenewedTech for €46.99, giving interior designers professional-grade precision at a fraction of the cost of a full subscription through other channels. Combined with a good block library and the layer structure outlined above, it provides everything you need to produce precise, client-ready space planning drawings.
