Walls, fences and columns

Walls are the first thing you draw and the thing everything else hangs on: doors and windows sit inside them, and a closed ring of walls becomes a room with its own floor and ceiling. Fences and columns use the same drawing habits, so they live on this page too.

Draw a run of walls

1. Press B, or open the Build tab and choose Wall.
2. Click where the wall starts. The next wall follows the cursor and shows its length as you move.
3. Click at each corner. Each click fixes one wall and starts the next from its end.
4. Finish by clicking the first corner again. The run also stops by itself when a wall meets an existing wall or closes a room against other walls.

Press Esc to drop the wall you are drawing; the walls you already fixed stay. Press it again to put the tool down.

Control the snapping and the continuation

The key panel at the right edge of the view shows how the tool is behaving. Tap Shift on its own to change the snapping between Grid, Lines, Angles and Off, and tap Ctrl on its own to step the grid through 0.5 m, 0.25 m, 0.1 m, 0.05 m. Hold Shift while you draw to ignore the guides and angle snapping for that wall.

C switches between Room, which keeps drawing until the room closes, and Single wall, which stops after one wall. Both chips in the key panel can be clicked instead of pressed.

Adjust a wall you already drew

Select a wall and its settings open in the inspector. Under Dimensions you set its length and thickness, and whether its top follows the level or takes a custom height. Bottom can stay on Auto or fill down to meet the terrain. The Curve control bends the wall, as long as no door or window sits in it.

Drag the handle at either end of a selected wall to move that end; the key panel names the gesture while you drag, and Esc puts the end back. Skirting, crown molding, chair rail and wall bands have their own sections further down the inspector.

Draw a fence

Choose Fence in the Build tab and click from post to post, the same way you draw walls. T switches the fence between straight and curved. For a straight fence, C chooses between a continuous run and a single fence. A curved fence is finished with Enter or a double-click once you have placed its points.

Place columns

Choose Column in the Build tab and click where each column stands. C switches between placing one column and placing several. Select a column to pick a preset (Slender, Standard, Heavy and Short / Stout), then change its shape and dimensions in the inspector.

Delete and undo

Select a wall and press Delete, or press X and click the walls you want gone. Cmd/Ctrl + Z brings them back. The keyboard shortcuts list every key the wall tool answers to.