Guide 7 · getting around
Workspaces: site, building, capture and documents
A project can hold the block outside, the floor plans inside, what you capture on site and the drawings you hand over. Each kind of work needs different tools. The workspace switch at the top of the screen sets Plotlay up for one of them, without hiding anything for good.
The four workspaces
- Site (Alt+1): the block outdoors. Boundary, landscaping and plants, trees, fences and gates, the driveway, a carport and its drainage, setbacks and contours. The Current, Proposed and Both switch sits in its strip, with Site details and the compliance check.
- Building (Alt+2): floor plans. Rooms, walls, doors, windows and archways, finishes, roofs, elevations, sections and schedules. On a map project it draws on plain paper by default; tap Map in the strip to see the aerial under the plan.
- Capture (Alt+3): on site. GPS, asking someone to scan rooms or capture GPS points, the work list, assets and forms, with bigger buttons for a phone in the sun.
- Documents (Alt+4): the drawing set, title block, schedules, the compliance summary, exports and 3D.
What changes
- The tools. The toolbar leads with the workspace’s tools. The rest are under … (More tools), and the command line and Commands menu still reach every command.
- The quick actions across the top of the map: the jobs you do most in that workspace.
- The library opens on the right shelves: furniture and fixtures in Building, plants and outdoor items in Site.
- What you can select. In Site, rooms, furniture and openings are faded and left alone; in Building, outdoor items and assets are. Tick Everything selectable in the strip to work on them anyway, or pick them from the Layers list.
- The side panel shows that workspace’s sections first; another kind of work’s sections are folded, one click to open.
Plotlay picks a starting workspace from what’s in the project (rooms only: Building; a boundary or garden: Site). Your choice is saved with the project. On a phone the picker is at the start of the strip across the top of the map, and the Add sheet starts with the workspace’s jobs.