Found throughout the American South, the shotgun house floor plan has its roots in West Africa and the Caribbean. Fleeing the revolution in the 1800s, Hatians introduced the long, narrow houses to New Orleans and their popularity quickly spread to mill towns and cotten plantations all over the South.
The shotgun house floor plan may the the only African American house plan that exists. Although the name sounds as though it was dreamed up by the National Rifle Association, the shotgun house was so named because of the liner arrangement of its rooms. In theroy, you should be able to fire a bullet through the front door and it would go through the house and straight out the back door.
Long associated with poverty, the shotgun house floor plan is now becoming respectable and even chic in some cities older districts. Architects, artists and community groups are working hard to restore the old homes into designer homes as symbols of both black and local heritage and pride. The shotgun house floor plan is the latest cause in the fight to preserve and restore some inner city communities.
With their typical one room wide and 3 or 4 rooms deep design uninterrupted by hallways, shotgun house floor plans can be as simplistic as a child's drawing while retaining the integrity than many other floor plans don't possess. Raised on piers, shotgun house floor plans allow for air circulation both under the house and as a cross-ventilating breeze. This design is well suited for the Southern climate. Porches provide much needed shade from the sun and encourage interaction between neighbors.
Though in the past shotgun house floor plans have been equated with slum areas, community groups in Houston, Texas are working hard to rennovate the remaining shotguns houses in the inner city areas of the Fourth, Fifth & Sixth Ward. The largest concentration of shotgun house floor plans were in a historic section of the Fourth Ward between downtown Houston and River Oaks called "Freedman's Town". The first preservation ordinance was passed a mere five years ago to preserve the 30 remaining shotgun houses in the area. Most had already been torn down and replaced with larger homes.
Many people living in the area want to see the old shotgun houses refurbished though there is some dispute as to the true historic value of these old homes. The shotgun house floor plan is an important part of African American history and should be preserved as a symbol of pride and survival.
A new building survey software was announced to the market with an innovative approach to support appraisers, insurance inspectors, architects, real-estate agencies, flooring installers and anyone who needs digitized drawing and to calculate the area and perimeter of a floor plan even on-site. The OrthoGraph Architect software supports professional building surveys, incorporating floor plan using a mobile personal data assistant (PDA).
Using this software the measurements are produced in electronic format right on the spot, while using all possible data-entry equipments and providing automatic control on the values. The system handles the drawing data rapidly, and can handle laser distance meters or barcode readers.
After specifying the structure of rooms each room (or logical zone) can have its own drawing. This drawing is uniquely created first by sketching in the particular room into the PDA, and then measuring the distances. To keep the sketching process as easy as it is possible the system provides numerous tools like the "Ghost layer" function that allow the user to show and snap to already sketched or measured zones.
In many cases it may be enough to have the rooms only partly measured (the "fast measure" function), but in some cases it is required to have them exactly surveyed. Using the automatic measurement function the software warns the user for each missing measurement one by one and for doing all necessary measurements on site.
Although the automatic measurement is very precise, as mentioned before it is not always required and can mean more work than it is necessary. In those cases (and if the user decides to keep most of the angles as they were drawn) it is worth to do the measurements manually, just selecting the distances with the pencil and entering the measured data the same result can be achieved.
Measured distances can be entered on-screen but the fastest way is to use a laser distance meter. The model Leica Disto A6 is such a measurement device, which is supported by default. By using Bluetooth connection it transfers the measured distances with one single click.
Joining rooms to each other can be done easily through walls, wall openings, corners or endpoints. The fully measured rooms are acting as fix drawings (called "islands") and after joining them to each other they move together (this is the "floating island" functionality).
Besides measuring the walls, wall openings, doors, windows and furnishings/objects are also supported storing their proper positions and properties.
The drawn floor plan can be exported into 2D or 3D DWG format or scaled PDF print outs besides many other formats like .xls, .txt, .xml.
The benefit of using OrthoGraph is to collect graphical and alphanumeric data on-site with ease, where the software helps controlling and display all measurements. There is no more forgotten measurement, or invalid data, everything is shown on the spot, where the data is entered.
For a short video showing the graphical functionality of OrthoGraph visit YouTube on the following address:
Both Rebecca Welch & Adam Korbuly are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Rebecca Welch has sinced written about articles on various topics from Finances, Build Online Business and Home Based Business. Rebecca Welch is the owner of . She provides researched information on. Rebecca Welch's top article generates over 33100 views. to your Favourites.
Adam Korbuly has sinced written about articles on various topics from Real Estate. Adam Korbuly as Msc. of Electrical Engineering is a CAD and CAFM software technology specialist, and partner in OrthoGraph Ltd. He worked for Graphisoft (producer of the 3D BIM modeling system ArchiCAD and the former producer of the ArchiFM CAFM system) f. Adam Korbuly's top article generates over 480 views. to your Favourites.