Visio® 2007 Bible

Chapter 28. Planning Space and Managing Facilities

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Using Visio for space planning and facilities management

• Exploring the Space Plan template

• Creating space plans with the Space Plan Startup Wizard

• Creating space plans with shapes

• Assigning people and assets to spaces

• Using Visio space plans to manage facilities

• Importing facilities data

• Labeling space plans

• Finding and moving resources

• Generating facilities reports

Space plans are valuable tools from the very first thoughts about building design to the ongoing management of facilities after they're built and occupied. Early on, space plans help determine the optimal arrangement of building space to meet organizational needs. It's much easier to move simple outlines around to figure out adjacencies like whether the conference room should be closer to the reception area or the executive offices. Then, when buildings are occupied, space plans help track the use of space by different departments, identify the location of resources, and put those spaces to best use and the resources in the most appropriate locations.

For basic space planning, such as arranging the rooms for your new home or office, the Office Layout template available in both Visio Standard and Visio Professional is all you need. By dragging and dropping Space and Room shapes from the Walls, Doors, and Windows stencil, you can shuffle the shapes around and resize them until you're satisfied with the layout.

However, for larger-scale space planning or facilities management ...