Press O for the furniture picker, open the People category and place a figure where you want to test the space: in front of the worktop, beside the basin, in the passage between the island and the run. The figure’s footprint is the space a person actually occupies — shoulders across, body front to back — so the gap you can see beside it is the gap you would have.
There are three, and they are free:
| Figure | Footprint | Height |
|---|---|---|
| Person (standing) | 550 × 350 mm | 1750 mm |
| Person (seated) | 550 × 900 mm — knees out in front, chair behind | 1300 mm |
| Person (wheelchair) | 700 × 1200 mm | 1350 mm |
The wheelchair figure is drawn with a dashed 1500 mm turning circle around it: the clear diameter needed to turn on the spot. Codes argue about the exact number — 1500 mm in the UK and EU, 1525 mm under the US ADA — and one ring at 1500 answers the question a figure is placed to ask, which is does this bathroom work?
A figure is a ruler, not furniture
A person in the plan is drawing furniture — something you can see, not building contents — and four behaviours follow from that:
- They snap to nothing. A figure that jumped flush against the counter you are measuring would have destroyed the measurement.
- The plan check ignores them. A figure is placed exactly where the rules complain: in front of the counter, beside the basin, in the passage.
- They have their own layer. One click drops every figure from a permit set and keeps the furnishing — see layers.
- They are the one furnishing drawn in elevations. A figure standing inside the building is hidden by its own wall; one on the lawn is drawn in front of it. A figure never changes the size of the elevation, because a ruler does not decide the paper size.
Reading the gap
Place the figure, then measure to it like anything else — a dimension will pick up its edge. If you want the number before you place anything, the reference pages have the standards themselves: corridor and circulation widths, clearance in front of a toilet, basin and shower, how wide a galley kitchen aisle should be.
What this doesn’t do
- No accessibility report. The turning circle is drawn, not checked — nothing tells you it is blocked.
- The figures are deliberately plain. Torso, head, arms. Anything more detailed would read as a proposal about who lives here.
- Not counted anywhere. Like the rest of the furnishing, figures are not in the schedules or the quantity takeoff — and unlike the rest of it, they are skipped by the plan check too.
Next
Placing furniture from the catalog for everything else that goes in the room.