Walls, openings & views
Before you can place a single cabinet, the Designer needs a room. This page covers the room-building tools — drawing and editing walls, adding windows and doors, and the different ways to view your work.
Availability: Build plan and up (badged Beta), with the Designer page permission. See Users & Roles.
Everything here happens in the 2D plan — the top-down view. The Designer's tools always work from the plan, so even in a 3D or split view, drawing and editing happen on the plan side.
Drawing walls
Pick the Draw walls tool from the toolbar (a brand-new room also offers a Draw walls button right on its empty-state card). Then trace the room outline.
Two ways to set a length
| Method | How |
|---|---|
| Drag | Press, drag, and release to rubber-band a wall to length — or click point-to-point (click a start, click an end). |
| Type an exact length | Enter a number and the wall snaps to it. The field accepts plain inches (120), fractions (12 1/2), or feet-and-inches (10' 6"). |
Each new wall continues from where the last one ended, so you can draw a whole room as one connected chain — trace it corner to corner and close it back to the start.
Keys while drawing
| Key | Effect |
|---|---|
| Shift | Inverts right-angle snapping — hold it to override the automatic 90° lock when you need an off-angle wall. |
| Alt | Freeform — draw at any angle with no snapping. |
| Escape | Ends the current chain and drops you back to the Select tool. |
Editing a wall
Right-click a wall to open its context menu. From there you can delete the wall or set its exact length by typing a value. (Right-click works the same way on cabinets and openings — see Placing & editing cabinets.)
Tip: Don't fuss over perfect lengths while roughing in a room. Drag the shape you want, then right-click each wall and set its exact length afterward.
Windows, doors & openings
Once you have walls, you can cut openings into them. Pick the Window tool from the toolbar, then choose the type you want to place:
| Type | What it is | Sensible default |
|---|---|---|
| Window | A window in the wall. | 36" wide × 36" tall, silling at 42" (clears a standard 36" base counter). |
| Door | A doorway with a swing. | 36" wide × 80" tall, sitting on the floor (0" sill), swinging left. |
| Cased opening | A trimmed opening with no door. | 36" wide × 80" tall, on the floor. |
| Pass-through | A serving hatch between rooms. | 36" wide × 36" tall, silling at 36". |
Placing one
Hover over a wall and a ghost preview shows exactly where the opening will land. It snaps to the grid and to the edges of other openings so you can line things up cleanly. Click to place it.
The defaults above get you a believable opening in one click — a window automatically sits at counter height, a door on the floor — so you rarely have to fix anything before it looks right.
Sizing it
Click a placed opening to select it, then adjust its exact type, width, height, and sill height in the Inspector on the right. Change a window into a cased opening, widen a door, raise a sill — the plan and 3D update as you type.
Note: Openings are part of the room, not cabinets — they carry no price and no cut list. They shape the room (and, later, where windows you mark as sold become order add-ons; see From design to order).
View modes
A view switcher in the toolbar lets you look at the room five ways. Tools always work from whichever view includes the plan.
| View | What you see | Editable? |
|---|---|---|
| Top down | The 2D plan — the working view. | Yes |
| Straight on | A head-on elevation ("front view") of a wall. | View-only |
| 3D | A 3D walkthrough of the finished room. | View-only (camera only) |
| Plan + 3D | The plan and the 3D room side by side. | Edit on the plan side |
| Plan + elevation | The plan beside a straight-on elevation. | Edit on the plan side |
The 3D room is view-only — you move the camera and look around, but you draw and edit from the plan. If you reach for a drawing tool while in a pure elevation view, the Designer brings the plan back beside it so you have somewhere to draw.
Note: The heavy 3D engine only loads the first time you switch to a 3D view. A session spent entirely in 2D never downloads it, so 2D-only work stays fast.
Snap controls
Two independent snapping settings live in the Editor panel under Snap. They do different jobs and never interfere with each other:
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Increment | What typed and dragged values round to — e.g. round everything to the nearest 1/32". |
| Magnet radius | How close a drag has to get before it snaps to a wall, grid line, or another object (0–24"). A bigger radius grabs from farther away. |
Set them once and the Designer remembers them for the rest of your session. Drop the magnet radius to zero if you want completely free placement; raise it if things aren't clicking into line the way you expect.
Next Steps
- Placing & editing cabinets — fill the room you just drew
- Design your first kitchen — the guided first session
- Pricing a design — assign a material so the room prices
- The 3D Kitchen Designer — the Designer overview