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What is a Plan, is this a drawing?

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A plan is a drawing; in the context of measured building survey and topographical surveys it represents the features on your property on a PDF or DWG drawing. These are used for your planning application and for your architect to produce your construction (proposed) drawings. There are several types of plans. They are:

  • Floor Plans
  • Section Plans
  • Roof Plans
  • Loft Plans
  • Elevation Plans (there are also internal and external plans, most of the requests are just external plans. The only time you need an internal plan is when you have detail artwork or ornate walls that needs to be represented on your measured building survey)
  • Topographical Plans (or also called Land Survey Plans)
  • Ceiling Plans

You should not confuse it with a site plan. A site plan is a drawing/illustration that shows your property in context to other properties. It is based on an Ordnance map and can be purchased online (for roughly £8-10; depending on the scale https://www.buyaplan.co.uk/ ). You need one for all planning application.

A site plan looks like this:

Example of a site plan

Here are some examples of the plans mentioned above:

Floor Plans

 

Floor Plan Example 1
Floor Plan Example 1

 

Floor Plan Example 2
Floor Plan Example 2

 

Floor Plan Example 3
Floor Plan Example 3

 

Section

Section Plan Example 1
Section Plan Example 1

 

Section Plan Example 2
Section Plan Example 2

 

Topographical Plan Example
Topographical Plan Example

 

Topographical planLoft Plan

Loft Plan Example
Loft Plan Example

Elevation

Elevation Plan Example
Elevation Plan Example
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What is a DWG Autocad file, how do I open it?

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A DWG file is a file format produced from Autodesk AutoCAD, in the context of construction; designers, architects, engineers and surveyors produces drawings or illustration on the software and save them to .dwg files. As a client you can view the file by downloading a software called DWG Trueview from the AutoDesk’s website or you can freely view the DWG files online using the A360 Viewer (watch the video below to learn how to do just that).

Sometimes you will also hear your architect or designer talk about a .dxf file, it is a similar format but it is slightly more universal than .dwg and allows the user to open the drawings in different softwares much easily without loss of data. The DXF format can also be used on other softwares such as vectorworks. However, the .dxf format contains a lot less functionality and you would need to convert it to the original DWG format if you need to edit the file (or the native file extension of the particular software). As a client you won’t need to worry about the technicalities, all you need to know is how to open it, take a look around and print the drawings you have commissioned for your property.

The A360 viewer is useful and easily accesible if you just want to view a document. The only disadvantage is that it can take 2-3 minutes for you to view the files online as it needs to process the document. It is also not the best tool to print the DWG file. If you want to print the DWG file, download DWG Trueview from AutoDesk’s website.

Here is a quick video to explain how the A360 viewer works: