Hey there!
In this post, I’m going to go over a quick and easy way to create a colored floor plan using the 2019 version of Bluebeam. There’s not a lot of setup, you basically just have to open up your PDF and start drawing shapes.
You can use a variety of programs to create a colored floor plan. One of my previous posts goes into how to create a colored floor plan using Photoshop, which you can find here. There are uses for both programs, depending on what you want to do. I have a quick comparison below.
Bluebeam
- Quick
-
Easy to draw any shape
- Hard to modify
- Layers don't work as well as Photoshop
- Can't click and paint whole areas easily
Photoshop
- More flexibility with selections
- Can click and paint whole areas
- Easier to modify
- Layers can be confusing
- Takes more time to setup the document
Feel free to check out my Youtube video for the tutorial. Or keep scrolling if you’d rather follow the step-by-step instructions.
1. Select Tool

2. Draw Shape

3. Change Settings
- Color: Outside Border color
- Fill Color: Inside color
- Highlight: Checked = Transparent
- Opacity: Border transparency
- Fill Opacity: Inside color transparency
- Line Width: Outside border thickness

In my example I have the following settings:
- Color: Blue (doesn’t matter since I have the line width to 0)
- Fill Color: Red
- Highlight: Checked
- Opacity: 100
- Fill Opacity: 60
- Line Width: 0
These settings are pretty typical for how I create my colored floor plans. I may go to a slightly lower fill opacity, maybe around 30% or so. It depends on how bright the original color is. I also do that if I want more of a pastel look to it.
3. Repeat
Helpful Hints
As your creating the shapes, you’ll notice that your properties will keep reverting back to the original. If you know you’ll be using a certain color and opacity, you can click the button towards the bottom of your properties box labeled ‘Set as Default‘. That will save your settings and you won’t have to change them every time.
If you double click the rectangle tool (or any tool in bluebeam), that tool will stay selected after you create a shape. After your shape is created, you won’t have to select the tool again, it’s already selected so you can just keep clicking away. This can be a big time saver!
As always, thanks for following along! If you have any questions or comments on How to Create a Colored Floor Plan, let me know below!
I’ll catch you next time!
Craig
The Archi-Tech Guy