AI Floor Plan (Street View Arrows)

Once AI Auto Connect has placed the scenes of a floor level, PanoCool can draw that floor’s plan: walls, doors, windows, room names and room sizes, drawn behind the scene dots as the plan’s background image in the Street View Arrows setup. The drawing is reviewed before it is saved, can be edited by hand, and can be downloaded as a PNG.

Tutorials:

• Video: 360 Photos to a Virtual Tour in Minutes: Floor Plan and 3D View

• Available on all plans; it is paid for with AI edits, not by plan tier.

• Needs a floor level in On a Floor Plan mode with a generated plan (the result of AI Auto Connect): the AI-placed dots give the positions and the scale the drawing is built on. A hand-uploaded floor plan image cannot be drawn.

• Visitors see the drawing through a Floor plan button in the tour: when a drawing is applied, Add a Floor plan button to your tour (ticked by default) adds one to the theme. The button shows every drawn floor with its scene dots and always the latest drawing, so drawing again needs no change to it. Street View mode itself shows the arrows and the level switcher only.

How to use it:

1. In the editor, open the Add-ons tab, open Street View Arrows, and on its Connections tab find the Floor Plan block of the floor level.
2. Click Draw floor plan…. On a floor with no scale or no placed scene yet, nothing runs; a note names the scenes that still need to be placed and linked.
3. An introduction shows the price and the current AI edit balance, a Room names in language picker, and — when the floor holds scenes in more than one linked group, or scenes not on the plan — Scenes to draw checkboxes. The main group is ticked; a group not linked to the rest is drawn where its dots are. Click Start.
4. Progress is shown scene by scene and can be cancelled. Scenes already analysed stay cached, so cancelling does not waste them.
5. The drawing is shown for review with a summary: rooms, doors and windows, AI edits used, and scenes that could not be read. Next to Apply floor plan, Add a Floor plan button to your tour is ticked by default (see below). Apply floor plan saves the drawing as the plan’s background image; Edit… opens the editor first; Discard keeps nothing. Nothing is uploaded or saved before Apply.
6. Afterwards the Floor Plan block offers Draw floor plan again… (free for scenes already analysed), Edit floor plan… and Download PNG (a square 2000 px image).

Editing the drawing (the floor plan editor):

The editor opens full screen: the tools on the left, the drawing in the middle as the saved picture will look, and the details of what is selected on the right. On a phone the tools sit along the bottom and the details fold out above them. Save stores the drawing; Cancel asks before throwing changes away. Press ? for every keyboard shortcut.

• Rooms. Room ® draws a room: drag from one corner to the opposite one. A new room fits itself around the rooms already drawn, so a rough rectangle over a gap fills exactly the gap (hold Alt to draw over other rooms). Room of any shape (P) draws an L-shape or any outline corner by corner; click the first corner, or press Enter, to finish. Split a room (X): drag a line across a room where the wall should be, and it becomes two rooms. A new room is named “Room 1”, “Room 2” and so on, with its name ready to type over.
• Walls and corners. Drag a wall to move it. The walls of other rooms on the same straight line move with it, so two rooms that share a wall stay together; hold Alt to move one wall alone. Drag a corner and the room stays square; hold Shift to move only that corner (for an angled wall). Double-click a wall to add a corner, and select a corner and press Delete to remove it. Type a wall’s exact length, or a room’s width and depth, in the details.
• Doors and windows. Door (D), Window (W), Glass door (G) and Opening (O) add one where you click a wall. Drag it along its wall or onto another wall, drag an end to resize it, or type its width. A door can turn on its other side (Hinge on the other side, F) or open out of the room (Shift+F).
• Outdoor areas. Mark a room as Outdoors for a balcony, terrace or garden: it is drawn with a light railing instead of walls, and its area is counted apart from the floor area.
• Stairs and text. Stairs (S) draws a flight with an arrow pointing the way up: drag to size it, or click to place one, then turn it, reverse it or type its size. Text (T) puts a label anywhere on the plan.
• Names and sizes. Drag the + beside a selected room’s name to move its label, or put it back with Centre the name. With nothing selected, choose whether room sizes are shown, whether the total floor area is written under the plan, and metres or feet.
• Selecting and moving. Click to select; Shift-click, or drag a box across empty space, to select several. Drag rooms to move them with their scene dots (the arrows follow), or nudge with the arrow keys (5 cm, or 50 cm with Shift). ⌘D duplicates, ⌘C and ⌘V copy and paste (onto another floor too), [ and ] turn by 90°, Delete removes, and two selected rooms can be merged. Things snap to corners, walls and the lines of other rooms, and a dashed guide shows what they lined up with; hold ⌘ (Ctrl on Windows) while dragging to place freely, or turn Snap off.
• The whole plan. Turn it by single degrees, Straighten walls, turn it by 90°, or Fit in the picture: the dashed box is what the saved picture shows.
• View and history. Zoom with the scroll wheel, a pinch, or + and −; move the view by dragging with Space held or with the hand tool; 0 shows everything. Undo and redo every step (⌘Z / ⇧⌘Z, or Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y).

Drawing a floor plan yourself: a floor placed by AI Auto Connect that has no drawing yet can be drawn by hand, for free. Draw it yourself… in its Floor Plan block opens the editor on a blank plan at the floor’s real scale, with the scene dots showing where each photo was taken. Draw the rooms around the dots, add doors and windows, and Save. Visitors see it like an AI drawing, and it can get a 3D view and a look the same way. The first drawing of a floor adds the Floor plan button to your tour where the theme has room for one.

After editing a floor that has a 3D view: if you changed its walls, the 3D view no longer matches the plan, and visitors see the flat floor plan until it is built again. After Save you are asked whether to rebuild it now; a rebuild costs what a build costs (1 AI edit per scene on the floor). Not now leaves it for later, and the Floor Plan block keeps offering Rebuild 3D view…. Renaming rooms, flipping doors, moving labels, and adding stairs or text leave the 3D view as it is. A look made from the old walls has to be made again too.

Cost and limits:

• 1 AI edit per scene analysed (its doors and windows). A scene already analysed for an earlier drawing is free, so drawing again or editing costs nothing new.
• Renaming rooms named earlier in another language into the picked language costs 1 AI edit per drawing (one more for every further 60 room names, on a very big floor); switching back to a language used before is free.
• No set limit on scenes per floor level: AI Auto Connect puts up to 100 on one, and Re-connect scenes… can add more. A big floor takes longer to draw, because every scene not analysed before is read first. Edit floor plan… opens drawings of up to 500 scenes.
• Scenes that cannot be drawn as a room (outdoor and drone views, flat photos, some halls, warehouses) are left out and named in the summary; their dots stay on the plan. Flat photos are not charged.
• Provider failures are not charged; cancelling keeps the scenes already analysed.

Known limits:

• Room sizes and proportions are close estimates, not a survey. Doors, windows and walls sit where the photos show them; the wall between two rooms can still be off by a few tens of centimetres. Walls closer than 35 cm are joined automatically.
• An open glass door can make a balcony run deeper than it is; open-plan spaces come out as one room; mirrors are never drawn as windows. The editor fixes these by hand.

Common questions:

• Why does Draw floor plan do nothing? The floor has no scale or no placed scene yet. Run AI Auto Connect on it, or place and link the scenes the note names.
• Why is a room missing or in the wrong place? Its scene was not on the plan, was in a group left unticked, or its photo could not be read as a room. Link it and draw again, or move the room in the editor.
• Why are there two walls between two rooms? Each room is measured on its own. Walls closer than 35 cm are joined automatically; a wider gap is closed by dragging one wall onto the other.
• Can visitors see the drawing? Yes, from the Floor plan button that Add a Floor plan button to your tour adds. Where the button goes depends on the theme: the icon buttons of Basic, Simpli and Slide Menu 1, the menu of Slide Menu 2 (once the menu is set up in the Theme tab), or the Mini bar of Clean (once it has one). Spatial, SiteSync and custom layout themes have no place for it, so the review says so instead of offering it. The button is added once; a tour that has it says so instead of asking again. In the Theme tab it shows as Your Street View floor plans, with Use my own floor plans instead to turn it into an ordinary floor plan button.
• Does drawing again cost again? No. Only scenes not analysed before are charged.

A drawn floor can also get a 3D view: the floor plan raised into walls and floors and painted with the floor’s own 360° photos. Visitors open the Floor plan box as before and switch it between 2D and 3D; in 3D they can spin the model and tap a dot to fly down into that spot. On a floor with an up-to-date 3D view, visitors also walk from room to room in 3D when they follow the arrows or tap a dot on the 2D plan (unless the arrows are set to fade).

How to add one:

1. Draw the floor first (see above).
2. In Street View Arrows, the floor’s Floor Plan block offers Build 3D view…. The guided AI Auto Connect offers it too, in its Floor plan & 3D view step: there it builds by itself once the floors are drawn, and is paid for at Apply.
3. The dialog shows the price and your AI edit balance. Build paints the 3D view on your computer (a minute or two, mostly getting the photos), saves its pictures, and only then takes the AI edits. If anything fails before that, nothing is charged.
4. Afterwards the block offers Rebuild 3D view… and Remove 3D view. Removing takes the 3D view away from visitors; Undo puts it back.

Cost and limits:

• 1 AI edit per scene whose dot stands on the floor, shown before you build.
• A 3D view takes up to 60 scenes on a floor. A floor with more keeps its flat floor plan drawing, and the 3D option says so.
• Every build is charged, rebuilds included. The same build saved again within a day is free.
• It needs a computer: a phone or a tablet can’t build a 3D view, and the dialog says so before anything runs. Visitors can open it on phones too.
• Scenes with flat photos, or rooms with many photos, may not all show in the painting, but every scene on the floor counts toward the price.

When the floor changes:

• Walls drawn again: visitors see the flat floor plan until you rebuild; the block says so with the price of a rebuild.
• Photos or dots moved: visitors keep the 3D view; the block offers a rebuild for a closer match.

A drawn floor can also get a look: the floor plan repainted in a style you pick, with your own room names, sizes, total area and scale drawn back on top. Visitors then see the new look in the Floor plan box instead of the plain drawing, with the scene dots on their rooms.

Looks on offer: Watercolour plan (hand-painted, seen from above) and Warm photo plan (magazine style, warm light). Each card has a Larger preview of a sample made from another home. Two 3D looks (Watercolour 3D and Photo-real 3D) are coming later.

How to add one:

1. Draw the floor first (see above).
2. Click Choose a look… in the floor’s Floor Plan block in Street View Arrows, or Choose a look for your floor plan… on the last screen of the guided AI Auto Connect.
3. Pick a look and click Make this look. It takes about a minute; keep the window open while you wait.
4. Review the result: Use this look saves it, Not this one drops it (the AI edits are not returned).
5. Afterwards the block offers Change look… and Remove look (with Undo).

Cost:

• 2 AI edits per look, taken only when the new look keeps your walls where they are. A look that moves walls or adds rooms is thrown away and not charged; it is tried once more for free, and if that fails too your plan stays as it was.
• If the window was closed or the connection dropped after a look was paid for, Finish your look appears the next time you open it (within a day), for free.

When the floor changes:

• Rooms renamed (or the label language changed): Update the look (free) redraws the names.
• Walls drawn again: visitors see the plain drawing until you make the look again, at its usual price.

Common questions:

• Do visitors need anything special? No. The 3D view and the looks show in the tour’s Floor plan button, on computers and phones alike.
• Do downloaded or self-hosted tours keep them? They still load the 3D view’s and the look’s pictures from PanoCool online, like the floor plan drawing itself.
• Can I go back to the plain drawing? Yes: Remove look or Remove 3D view, each with Undo.