How to Create a Bathroom Remodel Layout From a 3D Scan

Create the layout by scanning the bathroom in Space or Floorplan mode, reading the room figures and fixture positions off the plan, and marking the soil stack, vent, window and door swing before you move anything. Draw the new arrangement on that measured base, then test every clearance and the door arc against it.

The Order of Operations

A bathroom fails in a different order than a larger room. One wrong dimension moves three fixtures, and the drains usually settle the layout before taste gets a vote.

Step 1: Capture a Room This Small

A bathroom is harder to capture than it looks. You cannot get far enough away from anything, the room is split by glass, and much of what you need is shiny or white.

Start in the doorway and capture both faces of the opening, the jamb depth and the floor transition. That thickness decides what fits through the opening and beside it. Then work the perimeter with the device between your chest and the wall, tilting up and down.

• The ceiling line. Run the capture up into each ceiling corner. A missed corner lets the plan close at a lower height, and height decides whether a shower head or a vent pipe clears.
• The floor line. Follow the wall to floor junction all the way around. A threshold strip can read as a step, and a missed floor line makes the room come out smaller.

Do not scan from inside the shower enclosure or from behind the open door; both put a surface between you and the room. Work the doorway, the opposite corner and the long wall, so every surface is seen twice.

Mirrors and glass are what goes wrong quietly. A mirror above the vanity can return a phantom room behind the wall, and a glass shower screen can vanish from the scan. Scan reflective surfaces at a moderate, fairly frontal angle, tape the mirror edge if you need its boundary marked, and crop the phantom geometry afterwards. The methods are in handling reflective glass and mirrors in 3D scans. You need a mirror's position and size, not its surface.

Before you leave, open the plan and check it: it closes, the door and window are there, the ceiling reads at the right height. Then measure one wall by hand and compare, as in measuring a room with your phone.

Step 2: Measure What Is Already There

The plan arrives with room dimensions, floor area, perimeter, ceiling height and wall area worked out, plus the size of every door and window it detected. They land within about half an inch on a standard interior capture: close enough to design from, not to order a made-to-measure vanity from. If the bathroom is part of a larger renovation, scanning the house for renovation plans covers the rest of the capture in the same session.

Measure the fixtures you are keeping with the point-to-point tool: the toilet from finished wall to the center of its base, the vanity from finished wall to front edge, the tray across the inside of the opening. Read everything from finished surfaces: tile and backer board add thickness the scan never saw. Where a wall is out of true, take the smallest reading.

Then record the rough-ins you can see. Lift the toilet before you scan if it is coming out anyway, so the flange is in the model.

• Waste and supply positions, with each stub height, its offset from a side wall and the waste pipe size
• The soil stack or boxed chase, and how far it projects into the room
• The window sill height, reveal depth and which way it opens
• The door leaf width, jamb depth and swing direction

A scan records surfaces only. Anything behind a panel, under the floor or inside a duct is unknown until someone opens it, so list those as questions.

Step 3: Mark What Cannot Move

Mark the fixed points before drawing anything that depends on them. Each one changes the cost of the job.

The soil stack. It carries waste out of the room, usually boxed into a corner, and it pins the toilet to one wall because the pan needs enough fall to reach it.

The vent. The stack continues up through the roof, or a separate vent pipe does, and it has to keep rising. A layout that wants that corner needs a plumber to re-vent.

The wet wall. Supply and waste group on one or two walls. Moving a basin across the room means breaking the floor or boxing pipework in, which belongs in the budget before it belongs in the drawing.

The window. It rules out a mirror on that wall and a tall unit in that corner, and its sill height decides whether a bath sits under it.

The door swing. Draw the arc. A door opening onto a new vanity or a shower screen is the most common thing found too late.

The floor structure. Waste has to fall, so joist direction decides where a drain can run and how much floor comes up. No scan shows that.

Record these in the PDF notes or the covering message. What is left without a note is yours to design.

Step 4: Draw the New Arrangement

Place the elements in order of how hard they are to move, not how much they matter to the client.

1. The shower or bath, as the largest footprint and usually the least flexible.
2. The toilet, kept as close to the stack as the room allows.
3. The vanity, then the storage, which fills what is left.
4. The door and any opening changes, last.

In the floor plan editor you can move walls, move openings and swap a fixture for another from the library. The plan, the 3D view and the area figures stay linked. Set wall thickness to match the real construction, because it feeds the areas quotes are built on.

Draw two options rather than settling for the first. A second arrangement takes minutes, and one that keeps the stack against one that moves it shows the client what the money buys.

Step 5: Check the Layout

Check distances between finished surfaces, not between lines on a plan. Tile, a counter overhang and a towel rail eat into a clearance that looked fine on screen. Measure across the tightest point, then walk the room on the drawing: the door arc, the shower door swing, a drawer that pulls out and the space to stand at the basin.

The figures below are published by the National Kitchen and Bath Association and quote the 2015 International Residential Code. The minimum column is the legal floor where that code is adopted, so confirm with your building department. The right column is what designers aim for.

No door, whether entry or fixture, should block another or prevent a fixture being used safely. And a separate toilet compartment has a minimum footprint as well as clearances, so it cannot go into whatever space is left.

Quantities: tile, wall area and storage

Wall area comes off the plan, so tiling can be priced before anyone visits. Subtract door and window openings, decide whether the wall behind the vanity is tiled, and measure the shower walls separately so tanking and tile count for the wet area only.

Order tile by the box with a waste allowance for cuts and breakage. The allowance grows with the pattern, and a room with a niche, a window reveal and a door jamb has more cuts than the floor area suggests. Keep a spare box from the same batch.

Storage is the check people skip: towels need a home, and the plan should show it.

Step 6: Hand It Off

Ask what the person receiving the plan works in. A DXF opens as editable linework in CAD and is what a designer or drafter wants. A PDF suits the conversation and the quote. A share link lets a tiler open the room in a browser without an account.

Send the constraint notes with the drawing. The plan says where things are; the notes say which are negotiable, and a layout sent without them will be redrawn by whoever receives it.

Expect the trades to check the room themselves. The plumber confirms the rough-in before ordering fittings, the tiler sets out from a datum chosen on the day. Your plan sets the design; their site check sets the cutting list.