Layouts gives you a fast, measured 2D workspace for sketching rooms, renovations, office arrangements, event setups, and other floor-plan ideas. It combines a meter grid with approachable drawing tools, so you can communicate dimensions and spatial relationships without starting a full building-design project.
Plan in the Current Space Area
Open Layouts from Apps to see the layouts associated with your current space, subspace, or activity. The library uses the familiar file browser, including folders, so you can keep a plan beside the work it supports and return to its layout entry later.
Normal space and area access still applies. A layout in a private area remains available only to people who can enter that area. Layouts access is also required to create, edit, and publish; someone who can read the area may still be able to open an accessible layout without receiving editing tools.
Selecting an existing file opens its focused workspace. Creating a new layout adds a file to the selected area and opens it as an editable draft. This stored file identity is useful for organization and publication, but it does not mean the drawing on the canvas is saved. The distinction becomes especially important before you leave or publish.
Draw a Measured Layout
The central canvas is a 2D planning surface measured in meters. Minor and major grid lines, endpoint reuse, wall hosting, and angle snapping help you align elements while keeping the experience lighter than a professional design suite.
The main tools support a practical planning vocabulary:
Snapping can align work to the grid, nearby wall endpoints, host walls, and 45-degree angles, including right angles. These guides are meant to make a quick plan cleaner and easier to read; they do not turn Layouts into a precision engineering or construction-authoring system.
The desktop workspace keeps drawing tools, plan contents, viewport controls, and the session-status boundary around the measured grid.
Select, Adjust, and Review
Return to Select when you want to work with content that already exists. Supported elements can be selected, moved, resized, duplicated, or deleted. Undo and redo keep a bounded history for the current editor session, and a move or resize gesture behaves as one change rather than a trail of tiny steps.
The surrounding views help you understand the current canvas without crowding it:
These panels currently describe rather than edit the selected values. Make changes through the canvas tools and selection controls.
Navigate on Desktop and Mobile
Pan and zoom to move around the planning area, then use Fit planning area or Reset view when you want a reliable way back. The grid remains measured as the view changes; zoom affects what you see, not the plan's meter values.
On desktop, drawing tools and layout details sit around the main canvas. Narrow screens keep the drawing tools in a compact strip and open details in a sheet. View-only users can tap or long-press an object to inspect it, while editable selections can expose Duplicate and Delete actions. Precise drawing, moving, and resizing are usually more comfortable on a larger screen.
On a narrow screen, plan totals move into a details sheet while the canvas and compact controls remain nearby.
One Active Editor at a Time
An unpublished draft has one active editor. When you open it with the required access, Layouts checks whether the editing session is available. A successful claim shows Editing lease active and enables drawing and mutation tools.
If another person already has the active editing session, you see a view-only canvas and the editing tools stay hidden. You can retry after that editor leaves or their session expires; there is no force-takeover action. A temporary connection or session problem can also make the canvas read-only until Try again reconnects editing.
This model prevents two people from independently changing the same draft at once. It is not realtime collaboration: viewers do not receive a live shared drawing, and the session-only geometry is not transferred between browsers or devices.
Keep the Drawing Safe During the Session
Walls, rooms, openings, labels, measurements, rectangles, viewport position, and undo history currently live only in the open editor. Leaving the layout, reloading Visual Space, or opening the file in another session starts without that drawing. The file row can remain in the library because the layout identity is stored separately.
The status Local edits; save not connected is the clearest signal of this boundary. While it is shown, treat the canvas as a working session rather than a recoverable project file. Undo and redo can help while the editor remains open, but they cannot restore content after a reload or after you open another page.
Use Export before leaving whenever the visible result matters. Layouts downloads the currently visible canvas as a PNG, using the layout title for the filename. The image is a useful record or sharing artifact, but it is flattened: a PNG cannot be reopened as editable Layouts geometry.
Publish Only After Deciding What You Need
Publishing is a one-way change to the layout entry. It is available only to the active editor of an unpublished draft, and Layouts confirms that the current tab still owns editing before it proceeds. A successful publication makes the layout available as read-only content to people who can access its space area, releases the editing session, and moves the publisher into Published read-only view.
Publish is not Save. It stores the layout's published identity and read-only state, but it does not store the walls, rooms, openings, labels, measurements, or rectangles currently on the canvas. Reopening the published layout therefore does not recover the plan you drew. Publication also has no current unpublish, edit-in-place, or draft-revision path.
Before choosing Publish, decide which outcome you actually need:
If publication fails, the draft remains in its current editing session and reports the problem so you can retry. Do not leave or reload while relying on that local canvas to remain available.
Know the Current Scope
Layouts is deliberately a lightweight 2D planning app. It does not currently provide:
For controlled part sketches, simple feature-based model previews, and saved technical design state, see Blueprints. Layouts is the quicker choice when the job is a room-scale 2D plan or arrangement rather than a dimension-driven part model.
Common Questions
Why is my layout file still listed when the canvas drawing is gone?
The file identity and the canvas content are different. Layouts stores the file's place, title, access context, publication state, and editing state, but the drawing itself currently exists only in the active editor session.
Can another person see what I am drawing live?
No. Another person can open an accessible layout in a view-only state while you hold editing, but Layouts does not currently share the live canvas geometry between sessions.
Can I edit a published layout?
No. Publication is currently one-way and makes the layout read-only. There is no unpublish or new-draft revision action.
Does publishing save the current drawing?
No. It publishes the layout entry and read-only state, not the current geometry. Export a PNG before publishing if you need a visible record.
Can I export from a read-only layout?
The open canvas can export its visible view as a PNG even when editing is unavailable. Remember that the image is a flat record, not editable layout content.
Why are the drawing tools missing?
The layout may be published, another editor may hold the active session, editing may need to reconnect, or your account may not have Layouts editing access. Read the state label near the workspace for the current reason.
Are measurements suitable for construction documents?
No. They help communicate a lightweight plan, but Layouts does not provide professional CAD or BIM guarantees.