Measurements & properties

Read wall lengths, areas and room labels; set units and precision; and record the drawing properties saved with every plan.

Every drawing carries real-world dimensions. This page covers the measurements shown on the canvas and the reference details saved with every drawing.

Wall length labels

Each wall shows its length on the outside of the room, in your chosen unit:

• The label is rotated to align with the wall, but never drawn upside-down, it flips so it always reads left-to-right or top-to-bottom.
• It sits just outside the wall’s outer face with a small fixed gap, and it’s drawn at a fixed real-world height, like printed dimension text, so it scales with the drawing as you zoom. It’s capped so it never gets oversized close-up, and it fades out entirely once it would be too small to read.
• It always shows the full wall length, even when the wall has a door or window, a 4 m wall with a 1 m door is still 4 m.
• The “outside” is found per wall by testing which side falls outside the room boundary, so it’s correct even on concave (L-shaped) rooms.

Areas, perimeters and room labels

• Area and perimeter are computed automatically from each room’s boundary.
• Room labels (the room name, in uppercase) are drawn at the room’s area-weighted centroid, with a smarter fallback that keeps the name inside even a thin L-shaped room. Show them from Settings or the Visible layers sheet (off by default), where a stepper also sets the text size (8–48 pt, sized with the plan like CAD annotation text).
• Each room can style its own label. With the Room tool, the room’s Properties offers per-room label scale, rotation and offset, and tapping a room’s name on the plan opens a Rename room dialog. While the label editor is open, room names show on the plan even if they’re normally hidden, so you can watch your changes live - your visibility setting isn’t changed.

Live readouts while you draw

As you draw and edit, the canvas keeps a running tally so you always know where you stand:

• A top-leading HUD pill shows the active room’s live area · perimeter (for example 12.00 m² · 14.00 m), updating with every wall you add or move. It appears once the room has at least one wall and the Measurements layer is on.
• While you drag out a Box, each edge shows its live length, and a pill in the centre shows the overall W × D of the rectangle (for example 3.00 × 4.00 m).
• While you draw with Line, a pill on the segment shows its live length and angle (for example 2.45 m · 30°). On a Mac the preview even follows the bare cursor between your two clicks, so you see the dimension before you commit.

The measurement tape

The Measure tool (the ruler bubble on the tool rail) is a working tape measure for checking distances, separate from the automatic wall-length labels. Press, drag and release to drop a red dimension line; both ends snap as you go - to corners and wall midpoints, to a wall’s inside or outside face (so a tape reads edge-to-edge, not off the centreline), and to a placed item’s outline. The live draft shows a dashed red line with a length · angle pill, and a tape under 5 cm is discarded.

• Always on screen, edited in the Measure tool. Tapes you leave on the plan stay visible in every tool. To select, move or delete one, switch to the Measure tool: tap to select, drag the body to move it, drag an end grip to adjust, and Delete from the action palette.
• It doesn’t move with a room. Tapes are stored at drawing level, so dragging a room never drags your measurements with it.
• Saved with the drawing. Tapes travel in the .kalar file, so they survive close and reopen.
• Screen-only by default - or promote it to a printed dimension. A tape is a working aid: by default it’s drawn only in the editor and is left out of every export. To make one print, select it and choose Show measurement on export from its action palette: it’s promoted to a proper dimension - the line, witness-tick terminators at both ends, and the value in your unit - and then appears on a scaled PDF, PNG or JPEG export. (DXF and the 3D model always ignore tapes, promoted or not.) Choose Hide measurement on export to demote it back to a screen-only tape.

Annotations

The Annotation tool (a bubble on the tool rail) adds the documentation marks that aren’t building structure. They’re shown or hidden together with the Annotations layer toggle (on by default), and each can be repositioned, rotated and resized with the same selection handles as a placed furniture item - an outlined box, a round rotation handle on a stick, and a square resize handle.

• Free text - a note or call-out placed anywhere on the plan (distinct from a room’s name). Add text arms placement; the next tap drops it and opens an editor where you set the words (up to 240 characters), the font (Sans · Serif · Rounded · Mono), the weight and the point size (6–96 pt). Like room names, text is sized as CAD annotation text, so it scales with the plan and prints the same in the editor and on a PDF.
• North arrow - a classic half-filled compass arrow with an “N”. One per drawing; position, rotate and resize it.
• Scale bar - drawn to the true active scale, so it reads honestly off a ruler both on screen and on a scaled PDF. Drag the resize handle to set its span, which snaps to a clean round value; leave it on auto and a sensible round span is chosen for you. One per drawing.
• Watermark - a faint diagonal sheet stamp such as “DRAFT” or a company name, with a text and an opacity you control. Edit it from the Annotation tool’s Watermark action (clearing the text removes it). On screen it previews only while an annotation is selected, so it doesn’t crowd normal editing; on a rendered export it’s always drawn when annotations are included. (This is your own drawing watermark - separate from the licensing watermark the app may add to a free export.)

Structural voids are also added here in spirit but live with their room. A void is a hole in a room’s floor - a stairwell, a double-height well, a service riser - and its area is netted out of the room’s floor area, ceiling area, paint, plasterboard and volume everywhere those figures appear, and it cuts a real opening through the 3D model. Add one with the Void sub-tool under the Room tool (tap inside a room) or the Add void button on a room’s row in the Rooms tab, then drag the body to move it or a vertex grip to reshape it. Because a void is room geometry, it rides the Walls layer, not the Annotations toggle.

Whether annotations print is controlled by the Annotations export option (see Drawing properties below and Exporting & sharing).

Units & precision

Set in Settings:

Feet & inches displays lengths as feet and whole inches, like 8' 4". When you type a length into a dialog you can use any of the usual forms, 8' 4", 8'4" or 8-4, and it’s rounded to the nearest inch.

Geometry is always stored in metres; units only change the display. See Coordinate system & units.

Ceiling height

Each room carries a ceiling height: it shapes the 3D model and feeds the wall-area, paint and room-volume figures in its material list. Rooms from a LiDAR scan keep their measured height; rooms you draw use a standard 2.4 m.

Drawing properties (title block)

Open Menu → Properties to record the drawing’s reference details - the fields you’d write in a printed plan’s title block, saved with the drawing:

Edits are buffered, Save commits them, and closing with unsaved changes prompts you first, so you never lose a half-finished entry. These details are saved with the drawing itself, so the drawing number, client and date travel with the plan in its .kalar file and keep revisions traceable.

They also print. When you export a PDF, PNG or JPEG with Border + title block turned on, these fields compose a professional CAD-style title-block panel in the bottom-right corner - a “KALEIDOSCOPE PLAN” producer bar, the drawing title, then labelled cells for Project, Client, Drawn by, Drawing No., Scale 1:N and Date. The Properties sheet has its own Export section with Border + title block and Annotations toggles; these are your persisted export defaults, and you can still override them on any individual export. See Exporting & sharing.

Next

• Multi-room & floors
• Exporting & sharing