A crime scene diagram shows details about the location and evidence related to a crime scene. It's used during investigations and in subsequent court proceedings. Most crime scene diagrams are based on a floor plan that depicts the location of the crime. Just as crimes can take place anywhere, a crime scene diagram might depict a residential, commercial, or outdoor scene depending on the nature of the crime. Some may also include surrounding streets or vehicles when relevant.
Before you make a diagram of a crime scene, you'll want to take photographs of the scene. Take both wide angle photos and close up of the key details. Make sure you take photos from different perspectives and cardinal directions. Number the evidence at the scene and place physical markers to help catalog and identify it later. Note marker numbers in your notes so you can recreate them in your diagram.
Your crime scene diagram is going to be drawn to scale so you'll need to measure key details of the scene and the location of anything relevant including bodies and evidence. Measure walls, windows, and furniture. For evidence such as weapons or a body, you'll want to measure their location from at least two fixed reference points like the corners of a room.
Once you have enough information, you're ready to start your crime scene drawing. Select Crime Scene Diagram from the Police & Fire category under New Document on the dashboard.
Next, you'll want to decide on the scope of your diagram. Will you map out a single room, a whole structure, a yard or park, the street, or a multi-building scene? Choose a scale that will fit your needs. Even if you don't choose the scale correctly at the start, SmartDraw will let you change your scale at any time. The default scale of SmartDraw's crime scene template is 1/4" = 1'. You can set a different architectural, metric, or custom scale under Document Setup by clicking on Units & Scale. The Document Setup section is located in the SmartPanel to the left of your main drawing area.
Once you're happy with your scale, it's time to set the scene by drawing any fixed structures first. Using your measurements from the scene, draw walls, doorways, windows, and staircases.
To start drawing walls, click the Add Wall tool in the upper left part of the SmartPanel to the left of your drawing area. Click once in your work area to begin drawing a wall segment, drag your mouse, and then click again to complete your wall segment. You can continue adding more walls to create a closed outline. A circle will appear at the end of a wall to help you connect it to close the outline. Click Esc to exit out of wall drawing mode.
Alternatively, you can drag and drop any of the pre-built standard room outlines.
Easily edit the scene using SmartDraw's powerful floor plan features. Modify wall length and placement, and more.
Next, add doors and windows to your crime scene. Find the Doors & Windows library and drag and drop them to your walls. As you drag a window or door to your wall, you'll see your cursor change from a stamp to an anchor. When you see the anchor, you'll know it will attach to the wall at that spot. Once attached, you can move it around on the wall until it's positioned where you want. The distance guides will help you position things accurately.
Adding furniture is as easy as dragging and dropping. There are some furniture libraries docked to your template. Browse through them to find what you need. You can also find more symbols by either searching or browsing the More libraries directory. For example, you can search for "sofa", "chair" and "table" and simply drag and drop the relevant symbol to your scene directly from the search results.
Once the scene is set, you're ready to add symbols specific for the crime you're illustrating. Add a body or bodies, weapons, blood spatter, drugs, and more from the libraries to the left of your drawing area.
SmartDraw has a number of basic body outlines that you can simply add to your crime scene diagram as is. You can also get an articulated body that you can position in a custom way.
You can resize any symbol using the black square grow handles around them. Just click and drag them.
To rotate a symbol, grab the circular rotating handle located slightly above the left hand side of a shape and use your cursor to rotate.
You can also use the Rotate options available in the Home tab.
Add numbered evidence markers and reference the same numbers you used on the scene.
The Crime Scene library docked to the left of your drawing area contains some pre-built evidence markers you can drag and drop to your page and edit. To change the number, just type a new number with the evidence marker selected.
You can also easily make your own custom evidence marker. These can be basic circle or rectangular shape you add a number to. Simply drag and drop a Shape from the basic Tool area of the SmartPanel and type to add a number.
You can:
You can use arrows to the point to the evidence in your diagram. Simply draw a line using the Line tool in the Tools area of your SmartPanel. Once you added a line, add an arrow using the Line Style → Arrowheads drop down menu in the Home tab.
Need more symbols? Just type a keyword in the Search for symbols box above the docked libraries. The search results will be grouped by the libraries they were found in. Click on the plus sign next to any group of results and you can either choose Add result or Add library for future use. Add result only adds the symbols that matched your query. Add library will add the entire library the symbols were found in.
Getting the position and size of evidence in your crime scene is essential.
When you drag and drop symbols to your page, you'll see helpful blue guides appear that let you know the distance of the symbol from the nearest symbol or wall. This can help you position evidence more precisely.
You can also add separate measurement lines that are always visible to help the audience of your crime scene diagram see key details.
Go to the Dimensions & Area section of the SmartPanel and click on the Measure & Distance. Now, click and drag your cursor in your drawing area to draw a straight line that will display its exact length.
You can add any photos you took home at the scene to your diagram in SmartDraw. To add an image, click the Insert command on the Home tab and choose Picture.
Browse your computer for the image file and click OK from the Import Image dialog box. You can import the following file formats: JPG, PNG, SVG, or PDF.