Figarc

Big, big update! Aside from the Whiteprint and Blueprint visual themes, Figarc now has a third theme called Miyazaki.

The theme mimics the deep colors and visual aesthetics used by the legendary illustrator Hayao Miyazaki, who drew the scenes for all Ghibli animated movies. So, once you start playing with the Miyazaki theme and find yourself murmuring, “To to to, to toooro” then you‘ve probably watched some of those animations. 😊

Like the other themes, the Miyazaki theme is built with variable modes. You can find the theme switch in the top-right corner of your Figma file, and with a single click, you can change the visual theme to your entire floor plan.

From a single bed for your child to the epic Alaskan king bed for your entire family. Now, you can drag and drop seven bed sizes to design your bedroom in Figarc.

Each bed is drawn based on industry-standard and international bed dimensions. So, rest assured that the mattress you plan to purchase will fit the bed from the screen in real life.

With the addition of stairways, you can now design multi-floor structures all the way to heaven. This update includes a variety of stairways, such as straight, u-shaped, curved u-shaped, and spiral stairways. More to come soon.

Each type of stairway has three height levels, and each stair is calculated to comply with industry standards dimensions for different ceiling heights, to ensure that the stairs you see in Figarc are as close as what your architect would build.

Did you know you don‘t always have to rely on the usual swinging door on hinges? Think of a situation where you design a guest toilet with only 3 square meters. Or an entrance to a walk-in wardrobe.

Now, you can drag and drop a so-called pocket door or a sliding door for your guest toilet, a utility room, or a storage room. These types of doors are especially useful if you need to save that precious space a swinging door takes up as it opens. Nifty, right?

With the power of variables and variable modes, now you can switch the entire Figma page between two visual themes: Whiteprint and Blueprint.

While Whiteprint is the original theme that mimics a typical architectural drawing (black elements on a white background), Blueprint mimics the 19th-century drawing process in which prints were composed of white lines on a blue ground, hence the word “blueprint.”

As a European-born it is ingrained in me to think in centimeters and meters. But realizing that half, if not more of the Figmates are across the Pacific, I created another grid that mimics feet and inches.

Due to the Figma limitation of not allowing decimals in grid creation, but only integers, the imperial measurements are about 90% equivalent to the metric ones. Considering that Figarc is a fun floor plan maker, this is not critical. Yet, making the measurements more precise is in my backlog.

This week has been more on the creative side. I drew 28 textures of different materials that you can apply to your layers. Now you can get a more refined look and a better visualization when designing a floor plan. This week has been more on the creative side. I drew 28 textures of different materials that you can apply to your layers. Now you can get a more refined look and a better visualization when designing a floor plan.

Going back a few steps, before designing realistic furniture, I‘m realising that the framework should begin with technical drawing to be useful to a larger audience.

I did plenty of reading to better understand the construction nature of drawing floor plans. Based on that foundational knowledge, I designed the internal and external walls, the bearing pillars, and a few sizes and type variants of doors and windows.

This is the foundational Figma library that you can import into another Figma file where you can drag and drop elements to have fun while designing your dream house.

It was expected to be the next logical step. So, before I found down the last hours of this year, in this update I‘m releasing a set of essential bathroom fixtures. All of them are drawn from real fixtures, and they are based on true dimensions and proportions. This is key to making Figarc not only fun but also usable.

The fixtures contain toilets (closed coupled and back-to-wall) and baths (straight and square, freestanding, D-shaped, and corner baths.)Assuming that the number of fixtures will drastically grow, I created a separate Figma library and put them there, to allow for flexibility down the road.

You guessed it—kitchen fixtures are here! Now you can drag and drop kitchen cabinets, fridges, sinks, microwaves, ovens, and oven hoods into your floor plan.

Each kitchen fixture is drawn to adhere to standardized dimensions and contains a few variants in style and size, so it can fit well in small and large kitchen areas.