How do I…

Upload a blueprint

Put a PDF page or an image of the floor plan on a sheet.

Where to find it: open the project › Properties (nothing selected) › Sheet › Blueprints › Add blueprint

1. Go to the sheet the floor plan belongs on and click an empty spot so nothing is selected.
2. In Properties › Sheet, scroll to Blueprints and choose Add blueprint. You can also drop the file onto the sheet.
3. Pick a PDF up to 256 MB, or a PNG or JPEG up to 32 MB. A one-page file goes straight in. For a PDF with several pages, type the one page you want in Page and choose Add blueprint.
4. The blueprint's controls open with Move blueprint alone on, so you can drag it into place without taking anything already drawn with it; see move a blueprint. The app also asks Prepare this blueprint?: Prepare to crop, set the scale and mark rooms now, or Skip for now.

One page per blueprint. To put a second drawing on the sheet, choose Add blueprint again and type another page number; to put it on its own sheet, add a sheet first and add the blueprint there.

Only the page you choose is kept. It is taken out of the file on this device, as a page of its own, and that page is what is saved to the project — the rest of a hundred-page bid set stays on your computer. Links and comments that were on the page are not carried over; the drawing is.

The blueprint appears at 50% opacity so devices stand out. A sheet holds up to 32 blueprints within a shared image budget.

A PDF page is turned into pixels once, as it is imported, at up to 150 dpi — less for a big page, because a page 36 inches across has to fit the same number of pixels. That picture is what you draw on, and the blueprint's Size row says what it prints at.

A page that is really drawn as lines is also kept as it is and printed from its own page, so it stays sharp at any size: a vector blueprint. It stays sharp on screen as you zoom in, a few seconds after the sheet first opens on your device. A page stays pixels when its pictures cover half the paper or more — how much paper they cover, not how sharp they are, so a drawing with a photo in the corner is still a drawing.

A dense sheet can take a few seconds. After a few seconds the app says what it is doing and how long it has been going — "drawing 267,651 lines and marks… 12 s". Cancel stops it at any point and leaves your file as it was.

If a page will not go in, the app says This page couldn’t be prepared. Try exporting it from your PDF app as a single page, or as a PNG. That is the whole answer: the drawing is too much for this device, or the file is built in a way the app cannot read, and neither is something you can pick apart. Your file is untouched, and nothing is added to the sheet. You are told something different only when you can do something different — the file is empty, the wrong kind or too big, the page number is not in the file, the sheet is full, or this browser cannot prepare blueprints at all.

Next: move, resize or clean up the blueprint, then prepare it or set the scale.

You can also draw and correct rooms and walls on the blueprint.