Gardens, balconies and pools

A room doesn't need walls. To draw a garden, lawn, terrace or courtyard, draw a room and give it a floor finish that suits outdoor space.

The house below has a garden around its terrace and a swimming pool on the ground floor. Pick First floor on the right to see its balcony with a glass railing.

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In the editor

1. Pick the Room tool (R).
2. Set Edges to None in the toolbar. Otherwise walls are built around the area.
3. Drag a rectangle, or click the corners for any shape. You can wrap a garden around a terrace or along an L-shaped house.
4. In the inspector, name it (e.g. Garden) and choose the Grass floor.

Choosing Grass switches the area to a lawn green. Pick a colour afterwards if you want a different tone.

Useful finishes for outdoor areas:

Finish	Typical use
grass	Gardens, lawns, green areas
stone	Terraces, patios, paths
concrete	Car parks, service yards
wood	Decks

Plants, tables and sofas from the furniture panel work outside too. For trees, garden furniture, parasols, fountains and more, add the garden pack.

Swimming pools

A pool is an area too: draw its outline, and it becomes water.

1. Pick the Room tool (R) and set Edges to Pool.
2. Draw the water's edge: drag a rectangle or click the corners for any shape. Draw it inside the garden or terrace it belongs to.
3. In the inspector, set the pool up:
   • Finish: Blue mosaic, White plaster or Dark slate.
   • Type: Sunk into the ground, or Raised (standing on the floor, like a rooftop pool).
   • Shallow end and Deep end depths, and which side is deep (sunk pools slope from one to the other).
   • Corners: a radius for soft, rounded corners.
   • Glass sides (raised pools): pick the edges that are glass, so the water shows from the side.

Any existing area can become a pool with Make it a swimming pool in the inspector, and back with Not a pool.

Pools are sunk on the ground floor and below, and raised on upper floors, unless you choose otherwise. A sunk pool on an upper floor hangs into the floor below (like a real one would), so on roofs a raised pool is usually what you want.

• 2D: water shaded from shallow to deep, soft ripples, a stone edge, glass sides as a light line, and the depth under the pool's name (1.10 → 2.00 m).
• 3D: a sunk pool cuts into the lawn or terrace around it: tiled walls and a floor sloping to the deep end, a dark waterline band, a stone edge and see-through water. The ground under the building gets deeper to hold it. A raised pool stands on the floor with stone walls and a wide edge; glass sides show the water.
• Clicking the water reports the pool as the room, like any other area.

In the data, a pool is a room with a pool object. Every field is optional; see Data model → Room for the fields and their defaults.

The garden pack has pool accessories: a ladder, a diving board, a hot tub, an outdoor shower and pool loungers.

Balconies

A balcony is an outdoor area with a railing on its open sides.

1. Pick the Room tool (R) and set Edges to Railing.
2. Draw the balcony against the outside of the building. The side against the facade is skipped, because a wall is already there, and railings go on the other sides.
3. Add a door to the facade wall with the Door tool. A Sliding door works well for balconies.

New balconies are named Balcony 1, Balcony 2… and get a wood (deck) floor. You can change both in the inspector. To turn any existing wall into a railing, select it and choose Railing in the inspector.

In 3D, railings are glass balustrades 1.05 m high with metal posts and a top rail. The hotel sample has balconies on its street-side rooms.

In the data

{ "id": "garden", "name": "Garden", "floor": "grass", "points": [
  { "x": 0, "y": 900 }, { "x": 1400, "y": 900 }, { "x": 1400, "y": 1300 }, { "x": 0, "y": 1300 }
] }

Leave color out to use the default lawn colour (GRASS_COLOR), or set any CSS colour.

In the viewers

• 2D: grass shows a lawn colour with a light blade texture in every theme.
• 3D: grass gets a textured lawn. With floorColors="room", a grass area without its own colour still shows as lawn.
• Click coordinates, room hover and markers work outdoors just as they do indoors.

Tip: overlapping areas

If one area sits inside another, such as a terrace in a garden, draw the outer area around the inner one (leave a notch) instead of overlapping them. (Pools are the exception: draw a pool inside its garden or deck, and it cuts its own hole.) Overlapping areas are counted twice in floor-area totals. The house sample shows a garden drawn around its terrace.