Inferences and Alignment Guides

Inferences are the dashed alignment guides that appear while you're drawing, dragging, or placing - showing the cursor is lined up with the edge of a wall, the corner of a fixture, the endpoint of a dimension, and so on. They're a visual assist, not a hard snap. The Inferences section in Settings controls which features VisionPlan considers and how aggressively it draws the dashes.

For tool-side behavior - how inferences actually appear during specific operations - see the existing Inference and alignment article. This article focuses on configuration.

Show Alignment Guides (master)

The top-level toggle. ON / OFF.

When OFF, no dashed alignment guides appear anywhere - dragging, drawing, placing fixtures. Turning it off makes the canvas visually quiet, useful in screen recordings or screenshots where the guide clutter would be distracting.

When ON, all the per-source toggles below it become active.

Inference Sensitivity

Three options: Low / Medium / High, default Medium.

Internally these map to multipliers on the detection thresholds:

• Low - 0.5x (alignment guides only appear when you're close to aligned)
• Medium - 1.0x (default)
• High - 1.5x (alignment guides appear from farther away; more aggressive assist)

Pick High if you're working on a touchscreen and want the assist to reach out farther. Pick Low if you're in a dense plan where Medium produces too many overlapping guides.

Per-source toggles

Five separate on / off toggles for what counts as an inference anchor:

• Infer from walls - alignment guides extend from wall endpoints
• Infer from fixtures - alignment guides extend from the four bounding-box corners of each fixture
• Infer from dimensions - tape dimension endpoints and visible measurement marks become inference anchors
• Infer from pin guides - pin guide positions become anchors
• Infer from doors / openings - door and window jambs (and the opening center) become inference anchors

Each is independent. A common simplification: turn off Infer from dimensions if your plan is heavily dimensioned and the inference dashes from old dimensions are noise rather than help.

Minimum Wall Length Filter

A millimeter value. Walls shorter than this don't generate inferences. Default: 0 (no filter - all walls considered).

Useful in dense plans where you have many small wall segments (corners around plumbing chases, jogs around posts, etc.) producing alignment dashes you don't actually want to line up with.

Common settings:

• 0 mm - all walls considered (default)
• 300 mm (about a foot) - skip very short jog segments
• 1000 mm (about 3 feet) - skip everything but major wall runs

Minimum Fixture Size Filter

A millimeter value. Fixtures whose longest side is shorter than this don't generate inferences. Default: 0 (no filter).

Useful to filter out small electrical symbols, vent registers, and other small fixtures whose corners would clutter the inference set without helping with alignment.

Common settings:

• 0 mm - all fixtures considered
• 200 mm - skip small electrical symbols and registers
• 600 mm - skip everything but cabinetry and major fixtures

Inferences versus snapping

These are different systems and the distinction matters.

• Snapping physically pulls your cursor to a target. The cursor jumps. The result is a precise alignment.
• Inferences show you a dashed line confirming alignment but don't pull. The cursor stays where you put it. If you happen to be aligned, the dash appears as a confirmation.

You can have one without the other:

• Snap ON, Inferences OFF: precise grabs but no visual feedback about secondary alignment with off-target features.
• Snap OFF, Inferences ON: free cursor, but dashes appear when you happen to line up with anything.

Most users want both ON. The combination produces the strongest drawing experience: snap pulls you to the obvious target, inferences confirm any secondary alignment you happened to achieve.

Performance note

In very large projects (many rooms, hundreds of fixtures), inference has more anchors to consider on every cursor move. If you notice the editor feeling sluggish during drag operations, try:

1. Bump the minimum-length and minimum-size filters
2. Turn off Infer from dimensions if you have many dimensions
3. Last resort: drop Show alignment guides to OFF during heavy editing, turn it back ON for the polish pass

Related

• Settings overview
• Snapping
• Inference and alignment