You can create a Microsoft Visio Professional 2002 space plan to manage and allocate space and track assets starting with as little as a list of office numbers for the portion of a building for which you are responsible.

Although the space plan diagram that you create may look basic, like the one shown here, it functions as a powerful tool that you can use to allocate space by department, handle office moves, track computer equipment and furniture, and generate asset reports.

Creating a space plan involves three steps:

• Prepare a list of office numbers and import it into a blank Visio Professional space plan diagram to create a collection of spaces.

• Locate the spaces in the Explorer, a window where you can view by categories the information that you imported.

• Drag spaces out of the Explorer onto the drawing page to build a basic space plan.

If you have access to a floor plan, you can insert the floor plan into a Visio Professional diagram and use it as a background on which to build your own space plan.

Prepare the office information and import it into Visio

To prepare the office information from which you'll build your space plan, create a list of office numbers as a column in a Microsoft Excel worksheet. If you have other information that you want to include as part of your space plan, such as the department to which each office is allocated or the space type (cube vs. office), you can add more columns to your spreadsheet.

After you type all the office numbers and other information into the worksheet, save it, and then import the information into Visio Professional.

To import office information into Visio Professional

1. On the File menu, point to New, point to Building Plan, and then click Space Plan.
2. On the first page of the Import Data Wizard, in the Category box, click Space, and then click Next.
3. On the Plan menu, click Import Data.
4. In the Source box, click Excel. To locate the worksheet that contains your office numbers, click Browse. Select the file, click Open, and then click Next.
5. In the Name box, click the name of the column in your worksheet that contains office numbers. Click the same column name in the Space ID and Key boxes. In the Building ID box, click <None>. Click Next.
6. Fields lists the columns your spreadsheet includes. Properties lists the information categories that are associated by default with the spaces you are importing. Do one of the following:
   • If your worksheet includes only an office number column, click Next.
   • If your worksheet contains a department column, you want to match that column with the department information category. In the Fields list, click the department column name. In the Properties list, click Department, and then click Add.
7. Click Finish to import the office number information from your worksheet into your space plan diagram and convert it into spaces that you can drag onto the drawing page. You can find these spaces in the Explorer window. If you don't see the Explorer window, on the Plan menu, click Explorer.

Tip   If you want a value such as space type (for example, office or cube) to appear on each space shape in your plan, in Step 6, under Fields, select the name of the column that contains the space type data. Under Properties, select Space Use, and then click Add.

Locate the information in the Explorer

When you import your office number information into the space plan, Visio Professional translates it into spaces, creating one space for each office number. These spaces, which act like other Visio Professional shapes, are accessible through a window called the Explorer. The Explorer gives you a central location from which you can edit and arrange your space plan contents.

After you import office information and before you place it onto the drawing page, the information exists as a list of spaces by office number in the Explorer window under a category called Unplaced Data.

To view your space information in the Explorer

1. If the Explorer window isn't open, on the Plan menu, click Explorer.
2. Click the Spaces tab.
3. To see a list of the office number spaces you imported, click the plus sign (+) next to the Unplaced Data icon.

Note  When you close a diagram, any space information left in the Unplaced Data category is deleted. To make the information part of the diagram, you must drag the space shapes onto the drawing page.

Drag spaces onto the drawing page to create the space plan

If you've imported your office information into a space plan, and you can see the information in the form of office number spaces in the Explorer window, you're ready to build a space plan.

All you need to do is drag the spaces from the Explorer window onto the drawing page and arrange the space shapes so they reflect the actual arrangement of the offices on your floor.

As you drag spaces onto the drawing page, they disappear from the Unplaced Data category in the Explorer window and appear in the Page-1 category instead, indicating that this page in the diagram is where the space shapes have been placed.

To build a space plan

1. Follow the procedures described earlier in this article to import office information into a space plan and open the Explorer window so you have access to the space numbers.
2. From the Explorer window, drag a space representing a particular office number onto the drawing page.
3. To change the size or shape of a space, drag one of the space shape's green selection handles.
4. Continue dragging spaces onto the drawing page and arranging the shapes until you have created a space plan that reflects the layout of the offices in your building.

Tip  If area measurements are not important to your space plan, you can hide the size label that appears by default on the space shapes. To hide office size, on the Plan menu, click Set Display Options. On the Spaces tab, click the Show area check box, and then click OK.

Use a floor plan as a background

If you have access to a paper or digital copy of a floor plan for the office space you manage, you can use it as the background on which you build your own space plan.

After you import a floor plan and set it up as a locked layer, you can build your own space plan by arranging space shapes over the top of the background.

There are two steps to preparing a floor plan that you can use as a background:

• After you scan a printed floor plan and/or place a digital copy in an accessible location, insert it into your Visio Professional space plan diagram.

• Lock the floor plan so that you don't accidentally move or alter it as you add space and asset shapes to the diagram.

To insert a floor plan

1. In Visio Professional 2002, open the space plan diagram into which you want to insert a floor plan.
2. Do one of the following:
   • If the floor plan is a bitmap, Windows metafile, GIF, or other common graphics format, on the Insert menu, point to Picture, and then click From File. Locate the file you want to import, and then click Open.
   • If the floor plan is a CAD drawing (DWG or DXF format), on the Insert menu, click CAD Drawing. Locate the CAD drawing, and then click Open. In the CAD Drawing Properties dialog box, clear the Lock cropping check box, and then click OK. In the CAD Drawing dialog box, select Continue without matching scale, and then click OK.
3. To resize the floor plan so it fits the drawing page, drag one of the green selection handles on the floor plan graphic.

To lock the floor plan against changes

Select the floor plan graphic and do one of the following:

• If the floor plan is a bitmap, Windows metafile, GIF, or other common graphics format:
  1. On the Format menu, click Layer.
  2. In the New Layer dialog box, for Layer name, type Floor Plan, and then click OK twice.

     Tip  If you do not see the New Layer dialog box, in the Layer dialog box, click New.

  3. On the View menu, click Layer Properties.
  4. Under Name, locate the layer named Floor Plan.
  5. Click in the Lock column in the Floor Plan row (a check mark appears), and then click OK.
• If the floor plan is a CAD drawing:
  1. On the View menu, click Layer Properties.
  2. Under Name, locate the layer named CAD Drawing.
  3. Click in the Lock column in the CAD Drawing row (a check mark appears), and then click OK.

With the floor plan locked against changes, you can build your space plan by dragging space shapes from the Explorer window and arranging them over the top of the rooms in the floor plan.