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Learn · Designers and builders · Lesson 12 of 12

Lay out a commercial building from the Library

You willFind the racking, bays, counters, beds, racks and kits that suit a warehouse, office, airport, hospital or school, and place them with their clearances.
Time4 min
Why it mattersReal equipment at real sizes, with its aisles and clearances drawn, saves setting out every item by hand.

Try it in Plotlay → Opens Plotlay with this lesson beside it. Nothing to install.

Steps

  1. Open the Library tab. Under the search box, choose the kind of building in Any building type: Warehouse and logistics, Office and workplace, Airport, Data centre, Hospital, School, Laboratory and research, Retail and supermarket, Police station, Fire station and more.
  2. The list shows that building’s rooms, equipment and layouts, with the services that suit it (a hospital also gets nurse call and medical gases). Type to narrow it: racking, fume hood, airbridge, ICU bed.
  3. Australian, US and UK words all work: forklift or lift truck, cool room or walk-in cooler, aerobridge or jet bridge, trolley or cart.
  4. Click an item, pick its size or type in its settings (a racking bay’s levels, a pallet’s size, an aircraft’s class), then click the plan to place it.
  5. Blue dashed areas placed with an item are its working clearances: forklift aisles, rack flue spaces, an airbridge’s slew, an MRI’s 5 gauss line, the space beside a bed. They show on the plan only, not in 3D or the schedules.
  6. For a whole layout, open Kits and then Building types: a 10-bay rack run with aisles, an office floor of pods, a six-lane screening area, a data hall row with containment, a gate lounge, a six-bed ward bay, a classroom of 28 and more.
  7. Open Schedules to count what you placed under Furniture, fixtures and equipment. Data exports carry each item’s building type in a bldg_type column.

Tips

  • The building type filter works with the other filters and the search: a building type and door shows only the doors that suit it.
  • Sizes are typical Australian ones (AS 4084 racking, AS 2890 parking, AusHFG health rooms, ICAO stand clearances) as a planning guide. Check a maker’s data and the codes before you build.
  • The services for each building (fire, mechanical, electrical, security, hydraulic) are on their own shelves, and the building type filter brings the ones that suit it.

Common mistakes

  • Placing an aisle or clearance zone and expecting it in 3D: zones are plan only, so a 3D view shows the equipment, not the clear space.
  • Leaving the building type set and wondering where the house items went: choose Any building type to see the whole Library again.
Check yourself

You need a forklift with the aisle it works in, drawn on the plan. What do you place?

Words in this lesson

Library
Real-sized things to place, by category and subcategory: kitchen, bathroom, furniture, lighting, power, heating, stairs, outdoor, site, commercial, vehicles, plants. Search in your own words (GPO, countertop), filter, and star favourites.
Schedule
A table drawn from the plan: rooms and finishes, doors, windows, plants or materials. It updates as the plan changes and downloads as CSV.

Related lessons

Choose finishes and add fit-out to a roomSet a room’s floor tile and paint, and place a fitting such as a towel rail against a wall to the millimetre.5 minMap a building’s fire and services assetsPlace fire, evacuation and services assets on a plan, inspect them on site, and export the ESM register, block plans and evacuation diagrams.6 min

Steps checked in the app on 17 October 2026.