How to draw units on a floor plan: a practical guide

What does drawing units on a floor plan mean?

To draw units on a floor plan is to draw or adjust a shape on the map of your facility and link that shape to a unit from your unit list. The shape decides where the unit sits on your self-storage unit map and what outline it has. The unit itself, with its code, size, price and status, lives in your unit list.

That distinction runs through this whole guide. Drawing does not create a new unit; it gives an existing unit a place. If the unit does not exist yet, you add it to the unit list in unit management first, and only then draw its shape. The drawn area is not written back to the unit either: the size in your unit list stays as it was.

After import, TheStorageControl links the codes it recognises to your unit list. Drawing is for whatever the import was unsure about or could not find. The import itself is covered in our article on importing a floor plan; this one is about the hands-on work afterwards: editing the storage floor plan until every unit is right.

When do you draw or correct a unit?

After import you see green, orange and red shapes: matched, needs a look, and a number without a unit. Not every red shape is a unit. In the fictional demo facility Capelle Rivium, the three red shapes are the office, the lift and the plant room; you ignore those. You draw or correct shapes mainly in five situations:

• A missed unit. Its code was missing or illegible, so nothing was matched. The unit appears in the list of units without a shape and you draw its shape yourself.
• A misread code, such as a 0 read as an O on a scan. That code matches no unit and gets a placeholder shape, so nothing silently disappears. You click it and choose the right unit.
• A shape that is too big or too small. With no closed room around a code, the system uses a rectangle between the nearest walls. A shape like that, or a unit cut off at the edge of the drawing, goes to orange.
• A combined unit, with a code like A+B in your unit list. The import only recognises it when all parts were read and their rooms join up. Otherwise you draw or adjust one shape covering both rooms.
• A new unit you have just added to the unit list, for example after a refit. It has no shape yet.

How do you draw a unit: rectangle or corner by corner?

There are two ways to draw a shape. For a rectangular unit, the rectangle is quickest: you draw the shape from corner to corner in one movement. For a unit with an angled wall, a recess or an L shape, you draw corner by corner.

Corner by corner, you click the corners one at a time. Put one in the wrong place and Backspace removes the last corner. Enter closes the shape; Esc cancels drawing without changing anything.

Zoom in first: up to 25 times, drag to pan, and use Fit to bring the whole drawing back into view. Then you choose the unit the shape belongs to.

How do you adjust corners and sides?

A shape that is nearly right does not need redrawing. Drag a corner to the right spot, or move a whole side in one go, for example when a unit has been drawn half a metre too deep.

If a corner is missing, say around a column, click the handle on a side to add a new corner. Remove a corner you do not need with a right-click or double-click; at least three always remain.

While you drag, a corner snaps to neighbouring corners and walls within 12 screen pixels, shown with a small cross. That way units meet without gaps or overlaps. Because the distance is in screen pixels, snapping gets more precise the further you zoom in.

If something goes wrong, Ctrl+Z reverses the last change, up to 20 changes back.

Which unit do you choose, and is the area right?

A shape only counts once it is linked to the right unit. Linking units to the floor plan works shape by shape: click a shape and choose the unit from the facility's unit list. That list only offers units that do not have a shape yet, so you cannot accidentally give a unit a second shape.

The side panel shows the drawn area next to the area in your unit list, for example: drawn 9.6 m² · unit list 7.5 m². At import, a shape passes if it is within 20% of the recorded size, with at least 0.6 m² of leeway for small units; above a 40% difference you get a stronger warning. Use the same yardstick when you draw by hand.

Take the fictional unit D0111 in the demo facility Capelle Rivium, recorded as 7.5 m². A shape between 6.0 and 9.0 m² is within the margin; a shape of 9.6 m² is 28% larger. Then check whether a piece of corridor was included or the wrong wall picked.

If the drawing is right and the size in the unit list is out of date, update that size in your unit list yourself. The drawn area is never written back to the unit.

A keyboard routine for working through a floor

The keyboard is the quickest way through a floor. Confirm and Ignore jump to the next shape that needs a look; N does the same and zooms straight in. With several floors, the floor switcher moves between them and shows the unit count per floor.

Fixing a missed unit in six steps:

1. Check that the unit is in the unit list. If it is not, add it in unit management first.
2. Find the room on the drawing where the unit belongs and zoom in until the walls are clear.
3. Draw the shape: a rectangle for a rectangular unit, otherwise corner by corner, closing it with Enter.
4. Drag corners or sides until they snap to the walls. A cross shows where a corner locks.
5. Choose the unit from the list and compare the drawn area with the area in the unit list.
6. Confirm with Enter. You jump on to the next shape that needs review.

What blocks publishing?

You draw in a draft. If you edit a published floor plan, TheStorageControl creates a draft copy and the live map stays in place until you publish again; the previous version is then archived. Every change is in the audit log. You need the permission to configure units (owner, admin or manager), not a developer.

Units without a shape do not block publishing, but they appear in their own list, and publishing anyway needs your explicit acknowledgement. Publishing is blocked in four cases:

• A shape without a unit. Link it to a unit, or ignore or delete it if it is not a unit.
• Two shapes for one unit. A unit belongs in exactly one place; delete the shape that does not belong.
• A shape linked to a unit that is no longer in the unit list. Link it to the right unit or delete it.
• An invalid outline: fewer than 3 or more than 64 corners, an outline that crosses itself, or a shape that does not lie within the drawing.

Split and merge units in unit management, not on the map

Drawing only changes the map. If you want to merge two units into one, or split one unit into two, you are changing the units themselves. You do that in unit management on the Units page, not on the floor plan. The map comes afterwards. In short:

• Merge: at least two vacant units at the same facility and on the same floor. The new unit gets a code like A+B, size and price are added together, and you record a reason.
• Split: one vacant, rectangular unit is divided into two equal halves. The new codes end in -1 and -2, and size and rent are halved. The split is saved as a draft first and then published.
• Then the floor plan, because it does not update itself. Open a draft, give the new units their shapes and tidy up any shapes that no longer fit.