Use colored areas to make your sketches easier to read

For your more complex homes, it may be helpful to visually distinguish non-livable areas on your sketches. It makes them easier to see at a glance, and it would certainly be a nice visual distinction between your appraisal reports and the majority of reports that your clients see day after day.

In TOTAL Sketch, you simply change the default properties of each area type you want to be visually different. That way, whenever you draw, say, a 2-car attached garage, the area is filled in with a color or pattern. Here’s how it works:

In the toolbar of TOTAL Sketch, click Tools, Set up area types. Find and select the area type you want to modify, and click Edit Area Properties. First, choose a foreground color, and bump the opacity to 100%. Usually, and for this example as well, you’ll want to leave the background color white. Choose a gradient, and you can now see a thumbnail preview of what the area will look like. Click OK, then OK again to return to the sketch.
Now, the next time you draw a 2-car attached garage, it will automatically fill in with the gradient and color you chose for that area type.
Try colorizing your non-livable areas in TOTAL Sketch on your next report. TOTAL Sketch is available exclusively in TOTAL 2013 and WinTOTAL Aurora, so if you don’t have them yet, give us a call today for a no-strings trial.