Plan view
Some decisions are easier to make from above. An architect checking the clearance around a bench, a dealer laying out a showroom floor, a customer working out whether a modular sofa really does run wall to wall - none of them are thinking in perspective. They are thinking in plan. Plan view locks the camera directly overhead. The perspective camera is replaced by an orthographic one, so nothing is foreshortened and every module is drawn at true relative size. Click and drag pans across the layout instead of orbiting it, and the view stays aligned to the axes. That combination is what makes it read as a drawing rather than as a camera angle. Underneath, it is the same 3D scene. Dimensions, clearances and the rules that decide which modules can connect all keep applying exactly as they do in 3D. Nothing is rebuilt, nothing is approximated, and switching back returns the camera to the angle it was on before, so your customer never loses the view they were working in. Dimensions can be shown or hidden while you are in plan view, covering both the footprint of the arrangement as a whole and the distances between individual products. That is what makes plan view the right place to check clearances and circulation rather than just composition. Product names can be turned on the same way, so every item is labelled where it actually sits and a colleague can read the layout without a legend. The plan can then be saved as an image straight from the planner. That is usually the entire point: a specifier wants a measured plan to drop into a proposal, not a screenshot of a perspective render that they then have to annotate by hand.
Where plan view sits
Plan view is not the same as drawing a room. Draw Your Room is where a customer sets out the outline of the space before they plan it. Plan view is what they use afterwards, to read the arrangement they have built inside that space. Most room planner projects use both, and they are designed to work together. It is also not a preset camera angle. Predefined Camera Angles moves a perspective camera to a fixed position, which is useful for presentation shots. Plan view changes the projection itself and locks the interaction model, which is what keeps measurements comparable across the whole layout rather than distorted by distance from the lens. Plan view is standard across the platform - in room planners and in product configurators alike. A modular sofa read from above is the same problem as a courtyard read from above: you are checking how the pieces sit against each other and against the space they have to fit. It is switched on or off per installation, so whether your customers get it is your decision rather than a build. Whether they should also be able to place and move modules while they are in plan view is a separate decision, and one we make with you per project: it changes how the interface behaves for every user, so it is worth deciding deliberately rather than inheriting it by default. There is no additional setup cost either way. If the plan needs to leave the browser as a drawing rather than as a picture, that is a different feature. Export 3D Files covers the DXF plan export, where the arranged configuration is written in millimetres with each module placed as a reusable block, ready to open in AutoCAD or any major CAD package.
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about top-down layouts, what plan view changes and what it leaves alone. Missing something? Reach out and we will add it.