Using RoomSketch3D on the iPhone Duo

In this guide

1. 1

   Update the app (1.1.0 or later)

   Fold awareness came with version 1.1.0 of the iPhone app, and every later version keeps it. Open the App Store, tap your account picture, and update RoomSketch3D if it's listed. Sign in the same way you do everywhere else (Continue with Apple or Continue with Google, with the same email address) and every design and your purchase are there. Nothing about your designs changes: the Duo shows the same plans as your computer and other phones, and an edit on one appears on the others within seconds (see Use the same designs on web, iPhone and Android).

2. 2

   Open flat, held sideways: the whole plan on the big screen

   Open the phone fully and hold it sideways (the way it naturally opens, like a small tablet). The editor fills the inner display edge to edge: the clock and battery step aside on this screen so the plan gets the space. You get the familiar phone layout, just bigger: the design name, Share / Export and Support along the top, the floor picker and Plan Settings under them, the toolbar, the plan, and Structural & Interior, Furnish, Materials and Symbols along the bottom. The single column is deliberate. A three-column desktop layout was tried at this size and measured: it left the plan only a little over half the space the single column gives it. On a floor planner the plan is the thing you came for, so it gets the room, and the panels slide up from the bottom only while you use them.

   

3. 3

   Open flat, held upright

   Turn the open phone upright and the editor turns with it; the plan re-fits the new shape straight away. Upright is the better way round for tall plans and for the Furnish and Materials sheets, which slide up from the bottom: the sheet takes the lower part and you still see most of the plan above it. The app turns to any way up except upside down while the phone is open.

   

4. 4

   Half-open on a table: plan on top, catalog underneath

   Stand the phone half-open on a table with the fold running across, like a small laptop. The plan moves to the upper half, and the lower half, the part lying flat under your hands, becomes a dock with tabs: Structural & Interior, Furnish, Materials and Symbols, with Furnish open first. Tap a tab and its items open right under the tabs; nothing pops up over the plan. Whatever you add appears on the plan above, so you can furnish a room the way you'd use a laptop: look up, tap down. The plan stops just above the fold and the tabs start just below it, so nothing you need to tap sits on the crease. To give the plan the most room, the design-name and floor rows are tucked away while the phone is half-open; the Exit fullscreen button at the right end of the toolbar brings them back (you need them to switch floors or rename the design), and they return by themselves when you open the phone flat. Two more tabs appear when they apply: Yard Zones when the plan has a yard, and on an outdoor floor Furnish reads Outdoor and Materials reads Ground. If a panel was open when you folded the phone, it carries on as the matching tab.

   

5. 5

   Furnish and Materials in the dock

   Furnish in the dock is packed tighter than the usual sheet so about twice as many pieces show at once: smaller cards, Indoor / Outdoor on the same row as the room types, and the search box and the size filter (All sizes, Small, Standard, Large) on one row. Tap a piece to add it to the plan above, then drag it into place on the plan (see Adding, moving, and arranging furniture). Materials opens on Surfaces with Flooring Material, Wall Paints and Ceiling Paints. In the dock the small plan of your rooms and a live 3D view of your pick sit side by side: tap a room on the small plan, and its floor appears in 3D next to it (Drag to look around); the choices are underneath. Picture Gallery and Tile Planner are the other two tabs, as on any phone.

   

6. 6

   Half-open like a book

   Hold the phone half-open with the fold running up and down, like a book, and you get the same full-screen layout as when it's open flat: the plan spans both pages. It isn't split, because each page alone (about half of the screen's width) would make the plan and the panels narrower than on a regular phone. If a measurement you want to read lands on the fold, drag the plan a little to one side.

7. 7

   Closed: tools down the side, full height for the plan

   Closed, you use the outer display, and the app works like on any iPhone, upright, with one difference. The outer screen is wide and short, and the system keeps a column down one side for the clock, battery and camera (Apple's guidelines move toolbars into that side column on the Duo for the same reason). RoomSketch3D puts its toolbar there too, under the clock: Layers, snapping, box select, the tape measure, Auto-furnish, sticky notes, undo and redo, View in 3D, elevation views, Fit room to view and fullscreen, top to bottom. That gives the plan the full height of the screen, and bars and panels stop at the column instead of sliding under the clock and battery. If you close the phone while it's sideways, the app goes back to upright on the outer screen. The full 3D view can still turn sideways while it's open, as on any iPhone.

   

8. 8

   Fold, unfold or turn: the plan re-fits

   Each time the screen changes shape (folding, unfolding, turning the phone, or sharing the screen with another app in Split View) the editor fits the whole plan to the new screen, exactly like opening the design fresh. If you were focused on one room, that room is fitted instead. Your zoom from before isn't kept: a view zoomed in for the big screen would leave the small screen showing a corner of a wall, so a clean fit is the better starting point. Pinch to zoom back in where you were working.

9. 9

   3D on the Duo

   The full 3D view is one tap away in every pose: the cube button (View in 3D) on the toolbar. Open flat and sideways is the best way to walk through a room in 3D: it's the widest view you can get on a phone. The small 3D preview in the corner of the plan never opens by itself on the Duo (or on any other device); tap 3D preview when you want it. While the full 3D view is open, it takes the whole screen in every pose, including half-open; close it and the dock comes back. See Switching to 3D and walking through your home.

10. 10

    In Safari instead of the app

    The editor at app.roomsketch3d.com works in Safari on the Duo too, with your account and designs. Because the layout follows the window's width, the open screen gets the same single-column layout. What Safari can't do is tell a web page how the phone is folded, so in Safari you don't get the half-open split, the side tool column when closed, or the automatic re-fit; tap Fit room to view on the toolbar after you fold or turn the phone. For the full Duo experience, use the app.

Common confusions

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