Plumbing rough-ins

The plumbing rough-ins are marker fixtures — they don't represent the finished toilet or sink, they represent the supply / drain rough-in location on the floor plan. They live in the Rough-Ins category of the Fixtures panel and behave differently from regular fixtures in three ways: where they snap, what they snap to (or don't), and what dimension lines they draw.

The eight rough-in types split into three behavior tiers. Picking the right type for the right job matters because each tier does something specific.

2D only for v1. Rough-ins are intentionally skipped from the 3D viewer — they're reference markers for the plan sheet, not physical objects. They print, they save, they sync, they undo. They just don't render in 3D.

The three tiers

Wall-locked (toilet, tub, shower rough-ins)

The three "real" fixture rough-ins. They live at a fixed perpendicular distance from the nearest wall, set by the From Wall field in the entity panel.

• Default From Wall: 12" (304.8 mm) for toilet and shower, 14" (355.6 mm) for tub.
• Drag behavior: the rough-in always finds the nearest horizontal or vertical wall and locks to it at the From Wall offset, regardless of where you drag the cursor. The snap range is effectively unlimited — you can't drag a wall-locked rough-in OFF a wall while Lock to wall is on.
• Dim spider: three legs — one to the back wall (the locked wall), one to each perpendicular side neighbor. Each leg measures the clear distance from the rough-in's centre to the nearest wall or fixture edge in that direction.
• Override: flip Lock to wall OFF in the entity panel to free-float the rough-in instead. See Auto-orient and lock to wall.

Sides-only (sink, washer / dryer, bar sink rough-ins)

These free-place against a wall conceptually but don't get locked to one. They auto-orient like normal fixtures when their back edge meets a wall.

• Default From Wall: none. No field appears in the entity panel — these aren't locked.
• Drag behavior: the rough-in snaps to walls (same snap range as regular fixtures) and auto-rotates so its back faces the wall, but it doesn't ride the wall at a fixed offset. You drag it where you want it.
• Dim spider: two legs — one to each side neighbor (left and right of the rough-in's local axis). The back direction is suppressed because the back is sitting against a wall — its distance is 0.
• Override: flip Auto-orient on wall OFF if you don't want it rotating during a drag.

Omni (floor drain, plumbing stack)

Free placement with no auto-orient and no wall lock. Used for fixtures that have no implicit "back" — a floor drain sits anywhere, a plumbing stack pokes up through the floor anywhere.

• Default From Wall: none, no field.
• Drag behavior: position snap only (no rotation snap). The fixture stays at whatever angle you've set via Rotate 90° / Rotate 45° from the fixture context menu.
• Dim spider: four legs — back, front, left, right. Each one measures distance to the nearest neighbor (wall or fixture) in that direction.

Common behavior for all rough-ins

All eight types share a few rules that distinguish them from regular fixtures:

• No fixture-to-fixture snap. Rough-ins don't grab onto the edges of vanities, toilets, or cabinets when you drag them. They're reference markers — they live under the finished slab, so they shouldn't snap to the things sitting on top of them.
• No overlap prevention. You can drop a toilet rough-in directly under a placed toilet, a tub rough-in inside a tub, a sink rough-in inside a vanity. The overlap check that blocks two regular fixtures from sharing space is suppressed for rough-ins.
• Spider dims are theirs alone. The dim spider radiating from a rough-in is independent of the regular wall-dimension layer. It uses its own orange color (so it's distinguishable from architectural dims at a glance) and its own layer toggle.

Placing a rough-in

1. Open the Fixtures panel with the Fixtures button in the toolbar.
2. Expand the Rough-Ins category.
3. Click the rough-in you want — Toilet Rough-In, Sink Rough-In, Washer / Dryer Rough-In, Bar Sink Rough-In, Tub Rough-In, Shower Rough-In, Floor Drain, or Plumbing Stack.
4. The rough-in drops at the centre of your current view. Drag it into position:
   • For wall-locked types (toilet, tub, shower), drag in the general direction of the wall and the rough-in locks on automatically.
   • For sides-only types (sink, W/D, bar sink), drag against the wall — the rough-in auto-orients but doesn't lock at a fixed offset.
   • For omni types (floor drain, plumbing stack), drag to the exact spot. They free-float.

The rough-in icon stays small — most of the rough-in catalogue uses a 100 × 100 mm bounding box because the marker doesn't need to span the size of the finished fixture. The exception is Plumbing Stack, which uses a slightly larger 150 × 150 mm box so it stays readable against a busy floor plan.

Adjusting From Wall (wall-locked only)

For toilet, tub, and shower rough-ins, the From Wall field in the entity panel sets the perpendicular distance from the locked wall to the rough-in's centre. Type a new value in inches (14"), feet-and-inches (1'2"), or millimetres (355) — the field accepts the same unit syntax as every other length input in the editor.

The default values follow industry-standard rough-in spec:

Type	Default From Wall
Toilet	12" (304.8 mm)
Tub	14" (355.6 mm)
Shower	12" (304.8 mm)

When you change From Wall, the spider dim's back-leg length updates immediately. Use the dim itself as visual confirmation that the new value put the rough-in where you needed it.

Pipe size (entity-panel reference)

Each rough-in type carries a pipe-size option in the entity panel:

• Toilet Rough-In — 3" or 4" drain
• Floor Drain — 2", 3", or 4"
• Plumbing Stack — 3" or 4"

Sink, W/D, bar sink, tub, and shower rough-ins don't have a pipe-size field — those types' rough-in shapes are inferred from the fixture they serve.

Hiding and showing dims

Two layers of control:

1. Master Rough-In Dims toggle — in the entity panel's layer section (or the Layers panel on mobile), the Rough-In Dims entry hides or shows every spider on every rough-in in the room. Use it to clear visual clutter while drafting non-plumbing work, then turn back on before printing.
2. Per-fixture Show Dims toggle — in each rough-in's entity panel options, and also in the fixture context menu (right-click / long-press → Hide Dims / Show Dims). This mutes one specific rough-in's spider without touching the others. Useful when one toilet rough-in is buried under a vanity and its dims are overlapping with the dims of an adjacent rough-in.

The per-fixture toggle wins. Even with the master layer ON, a fixture you've muted stays muted.

Print integration

The rough-in dim spider draws on print output the same way it draws on screen — orange lines with measurement labels. The master Rough-In Dims layer is included in the PrintLayers set, so the print dialog's layer toggles include a Rough-In Dims line you can switch off for an architectural-only print.

The rough-in fixtures themselves are filtered out of the 3D viewer (intentional for v1), but they DO render in print output as flat 2D markers.

Tips

• The spider's orange color is the visual cue you're looking at rough-in dims, not architectural dims. Architectural dims are theme-driven and use the foreground color.
• The dim labels render in inches (plumbing rough-in spec sheets are imperial in North America), regardless of the project's unit-system setting.
• The wall-locked tier (toilet, tub, shower) is the one to use when you need to commit to a wall position. The sides-only tier is the one to use when you want to drop a marker close to a wall but keep the freedom to nudge it. The omni tier is the one to use when there is no wall relevant to the rough-in's position.
• Rough-ins skip the overlap check on purpose — you SHOULD be able to drop a toilet rough-in under a toilet. Drop the rough-in first, then drop the toilet on top; they coexist.
• For dim accuracy, the spider's "neighbor" search is geometric — it casts rays from the rough-in's centre in the four (or two, or three) directions and finds the nearest wall or fixture edge in each ray. Other rough-ins are skipped from the neighbor search so the spider doesn't dim back to other rough-in markers.
• A spider leg shorter than 1" (25 mm) is dropped from the render — too close to be useful as a dim. The spider just stops drawing that leg.