Create Your Own Kitchen Layout With SmartDraw - Add Walls, Appliances, and Cabinetry

With SmartDraw, you can create a kitchen outline or arrange cabinetry and appliances as easily as you would create a shopping list.

You don't need a fancy degree or technical expertise, just your imagination and the ability to click on something with your mouse.

Designing your kitchen using SmartDraw's pre-made symbols and professionally-designed templates, you'll be better able to communicate with contractors and designers.

Or if you're the do-it-yourself type, you'll be better able to plan and execute your own project.

Making your remodeling dreams come alive should be easy and fun!

Step 1: Start with an existing kitchen design template
SmartDraw comes with a handful of basic kitchen designs to help you get started.

There's probably nothing worse than staring at a blank page waiting for inspiration. With SmartDraw, you can get started right away!

On the Home Screen, simply choose Floor Plans - Kitchens, select a template that appeals to you, and click on it to open.

Step 2: Draw a Wall
You can edit the walls of any included kitchen templates or you can choose to start with an empty floor plan and draw your own walls.

To the left of your work area, you should see a docked SmartPanel with some easily accessible wall and symbol tools to guide your through the process of creating a kitchen layout.

To add a wall, click on the Add Walls button. Your cursor should turn into a pencil. To create a new wall, click anywhere on the page and without letting go of your mouse stretch the line representing your future wall to whatever length is appropriate. You'll notice the length of the wall at the top of the line.

Step 3: Create the Room Outline
Continue drawing walls to create your outline. You can move walls into place using your mouse or your arrow keys. To rotate walls use the round rotation handle located at the end of each wall segment or go the the Design tab and click on Rotate.

Step 4: Drag and Drop Cabinets and Appliances
SmartDraw contains hundreds of pre-made floor plan symbols ready to be stamped or dragged-and-dropped to your page.

There are a few libraries pre-docked on your SmartPanel. If you're making a kitchen, start by clicking on Appliances. Select a symbol and then click anywhere on the work area to add it to your design. This action is called stamping.

You can find more symbols by searching. Simply click on the title bar of the Add Shapes area and choose More. Now you can type any word or phrase into the Search Bar at the top of the More Symbols dialog.

Once the search is completed, a list of the matching libraries is placed in the Search Results folder at the top.

To open a symbol library, just double-click it and it will dock in the SmartPanel to the left of your work area.

Once on the page, you can move these shapes using the mouse or the arrow keys.

Completing a design with intuitive tools like these is quick and easy. You don't need to be an engineer to get started. And before you know it, a little planning will help you communicate with contractors or help you.