Looking for Setup software.

[Van]

Needing some Facilities Help here!
Since I'm the drafter here at ART the Girls up front have asked me to come up with a lobby floor plan upon which they can arrange furniture in different setups for different functions. This is to aid rental customers in visualizing how that can utilize the space we have available for rent.
Of course I can render the lobby in Sketchup, AutoCAD, Vectorworks, QuickCAD. I can Ray trace it with Podium, Kerkythea, TurboCAD. The question is; In what kind of software can I give them a floor plan where the architectuals are fixed and inviolate < sort of like locking them on their layers in ACAD> and provide them with something like a button bar interface so they could click on a button and have a "four top" table appear?

I really want to make this easy for them and our clients, but I don't want to have to teach the entire front of house staff how to do the basics of AutoCAD.
Any suggestions?
TIA

[DaveySimps]

Could you just create templates in MS Word, or paint file? They could open a base file of the architectural ground plan (that is created by you or someone with the mad skills to do so), and just move the templates into place as needed? I have not tried it specifically; I am just shooting from the hip here.

~Dave

[Eboy87]

You mean something like this? Looks cool, but it's a bit pricy.

[Footer]

You want Microsoft Visio. It is perfect for doing that type of thing. You have blocks on the left side that you can define and you just drag and drop. It can import from AutoCAD. Either that, or sketchup, but it does not have the resource browser. They do offer a free trial if it did not come with your office install.

[Van]

Cool Guys !
I'm going to try all three and see what works best. Anybody else has ideas feel free to kick 'em my way.

[cdub260]

Originally Posted by Van

Cool Guys !
I'm going to try all three and see what works best. Anybody else has ideas feel free to kick 'em my way.

How about a stack of napkins and a ball point pen?

[jwl868]

This may be too old school, but how about giving them several copies of the floor plan, then they can cut out scaled shapes of furniture (or whatever) from card stock. Arrange those, and trace them, and then give those back to you for final drafting.




Joe

[Arez]

Like Footer said, you want Visio, though there was an open-source program like visio but I can't think of it's name off hand.

[waynehoskins]

Photocopier and transparency film works too.

[Arez]

Haha, talk about timing. Check this out, it might work exactly how you want it to. Autodesk Project Dragonfly