This page is the detail behind one row of the floor plan symbols guide. Every symbol below is drawn twice — once as the drawing convention states it, once as it actually appears in a CAD editor — because the two are close but not identical, and the differences are the things that make people think a drawing is wrong when it is not.
The nine door symbols at a glance
| Door | How it is drawn | Needs floor kept clear? |
|---|---|---|
| Hinged | Leaf + quarter-circle arc | Yes — the full arc |
| Double | Two leaves, two arcs meeting | Yes — both arcs |
| Sliding | Offset panels, no arc | No |
| Bypass pair | Two panels on parallel tracks | No |
| Panel + dashed run inside the wall | No — but the wall must be empty | |
| Bifold | Folded leaves, apex out in the room | A little, at the jamb |
| Double-acting | One leaf, an arc on EACH side | Yes — on both sides |
| Cased opening | Two jambs, nothing between | No |
| Garage | Panel + dashed overhead run | No — the run is overhead |
Every door symbol, drawn twice
Left panel: the convention, as it appears on a printed drawing. Right panel: the same door on a Gridsnap plan, in the editor's own colours. Where the right panel is empty, that variant does not exist in the editor and the note says what to draw instead.
Hinged door
Also called: single door, swing door
A gap in the wall, one straight leaf, and a quarter-circle arc: the arc is the floor the door needs to stay clear, and the corner it pivots on is the hinge.
Gridsnap draws the frame section as well as the leaf, and the leaf as a slab of its real thickness — so a hinged door shows two small rebated posts the textbook symbol leaves out. The arc and the hinge side read exactly the same.
Double door
Also called: French doors, double-leaf
Two leaves hinged at opposite jambs, each sweeping its own quarter-circle, meeting in the middle of the opening.
Gridsnap defaults a double door to 1800 mm — two 900 mm leaves — and both arcs swing to the same side, which is the side you set once for the whole door.
Sliding door
Also called: slider, patio door
Panels that run on a track past the opening instead of swinging into the room, so the symbol has no arc — and the floor in front of it needs no clearance.
This is the biggest difference on the page. Gridsnap draws two panels offset across the frame depth, INSIDE the wall band, and draws no direction arrow — the offset itself says they pass each other. The textbook symbol parks a panel outside the opening with an arrow on it.
Bypass sliding pair
Also called: double slider, wardrobe doors
Two half-width panels on parallel tracks that slide over each other, so only half the opening is ever clear.
Gridsnap calls this variant "sliding (double)". The panels overlap about 60 mm at the centre on purpose — the lap is what makes the symbol read as "these two pass each other" rather than "these two meet".
Pocket door
Also called: cavity slider
A sliding door that disappears into a slot inside the wall: the panel is drawn half-open and its hidden run is dashed inside the wall beyond the jamb.
The two agree here. Gridsnap puts the pocket on the side you set as the hinge, and the dashed run is exactly as long as the panel — which is the check worth making on your own plan, because a pocket needs that much uninterrupted wall with nothing in it.
Bifold door
Also called: folding door, concertina
Leaves hinged to each other that fold back in a zig-zag against the jamb — drawn as the folded panels, with short arcs at the leading edge.
Gridsnap draws a bifold HALF OPEN — two equal leaves and the base between them make an equilateral triangle, so the apex stands √3/2 of a leaf out into the room. That is the only position that shows what the door is: closed, a bifold is indistinguishable from a double door. The dashed line is the head track the free edge runs on.
Double-acting door
Also called: double-swing, double-action, the restaurant kitchen door
One leaf on spring hinges that swings BOTH ways — so it carries an arc on each side of the wall, and reserves the floor on both.
Look at the frame posts: they are PLAIN. Every other hinged door in Gridsnap gets a rebated jamb for the leaf to close against, and a double-acting door cannot have one — a stop is exactly the thing that would jam it one way. The leaf hangs on the frame centreline instead, and the plan check keeps the floor clear on both sides rather than only the side the leaf is drawn on.
Cased opening
Also called: doorway with no door, wall opening
A hole in the wall with no leaf at all: two jambs and nothing between them. No arc, because nothing swings.
In Gridsnap a cased opening is still a DOOR — the "opening" variant — because it does everything a door does except swing: it slides along the wall, cuts the wall in plan and in 3D, anchors dimensions at its jambs, and counts as a way through for the circulation check.
Garage door
Also called: overhead door, sectional, roller
A door that opens upward: the closed panel across the opening, plus a dashed run inside showing where the curtain travels back overhead.
The dashed run is one door HEIGHT long, because that is how far the panels travel back along the ceiling. Gridsnap defaults a garage door to 2400 mm wide, and it neither swings nor slides — the swing-clearance rules skip it.
Reading the hinge side and the swing
Two facts are hiding in one arc, and both matter on site. The hinge side (the "hand" of the door) is the jamb the straight leaf is attached to. The swing is which side of the wall the arc is drawn on — into this room, or into the next one. Read them in that order and a door drawing is never ambiguous:
- Find the leaf — the straight line crossing the opening.
- Follow it to the wall. That end is the hinge; the other end is the handle.
- See which room the arc bulges into. That is the room the door opens into, and the room that loses the floor.
The convention worth following when you draw your own: a door swings into the room and back against the nearest wall, so the open leaf parks flat instead of standing in the middle of the space. Small WCs are the classic exception — an inward door there hits your knees, so it opens out.
What the arc is really telling you
The arc is not decoration; it is a reservation of floor. A 900 mm door sweeps a 900 mm quarter-circle, and everything fixed inside that quarter — a radiator, the corner of a wardrobe, a toilet — is a collision that will be discovered on site rather than on paper. Three numbers make the reservation concrete:
- Leaf width: 800–900 mm for rooms you carry furniture into, 700–800 mm for a WC or a store. Below 700 mm a washing machine stops fitting through.
- Head height: 2100 mm as standard — which is also what the 3D view and the elevations assume.
- Standing room on the far side: about 600 mm, or you cannot get out of the door's way while opening it.
A double-acting door doubles the reservation: it swings both ways, so the quarter-circle drawn on one side has a twin on the other, and a counter pushed hard against the kitchen face of a swing door is the classic way to discover that at speed, with a tray. Gridsnap's plan check tests both zones for one.
Two doors whose arcs overlap will hit each other, and a door that opens onto the top of a staircase is worse than that. Both are mechanical facts about the geometry, which is why they are things a plan check can find rather than things you have to notice. The full set of numbers lives in the room sizes and clearances cheat sheet.
Drawing door symbols yourself
On paper the arc wants a compass and the leaf wants a straight edge, and both have to be redrawn every time the door moves. In Gridsnap you never draw a door symbol at all: you place a door in a wall and pick its variant, and the jambs, the frame posts, the leaf and the arc follow — in plan, in the elevations and in the 3D model at once. Move the wall and the door moves with it, arc and all.
Next: window symbols and staircase symbols, or back to the full symbols reference. For the words that go with the drawings — jamb, reveal, mullion — see the architect's glossary.
Door symbol questions
What does a door symbol look like on a floor plan?
A gap in the wall with a straight line across it and a quarter-circle arc. The straight line is the door leaf drawn open at 90 degrees, and the arc is the path it sweeps. The corner where the leaf meets the wall is the hinge, and the floor inside the arc has to stay clear.
Which way does the door open?
Follow the arc. The arc is always on the side the door swings towards, and the hinge is at the end of the leaf that touches the wall. So a door with its arc drawn inside a bedroom opens into the bedroom, hinged on whichever jamb the leaf is attached to.
What is the symbol for a sliding door on a floor plan?
A panel drawn beside or inside the opening with no swing arc — the missing arc is the point, because a sliding door needs no clear floor in front of it. Conventionally the panel sits outside the opening with a direction arrow; Gridsnap draws two panels offset across the wall thickness instead, which says the same thing without an arrow.
How is a pocket door drawn?
As a sliding panel whose hidden run is dashed inside the wall beyond the jamb. The dashed part is as long as the panel, and that length of wall must be free of studs, sockets and pipes for the door to have anywhere to go.
What is the door called that opens both ways?
A double-acting door, also called double-swing or double-action. It is a single leaf on spring hinges, and it is what sits between a restaurant kitchen and the dining room so staff can push through it in either direction with their hands full. On a plan it is drawn with an arc on each side of the wall, and it needs the floor kept clear on both.
What does a doorway with no door look like?
Two jambs and nothing between them: no leaf, no arc. It is called a cased opening. In Gridsnap it is still a door object — the "opening" variant — so it cuts the wall, anchors dimensions at its jambs, and counts as a way through when the plan check looks for a route to every room.
How much clearance does a door need on a plan?
The whole quarter-circle of the arc, plus somewhere to stand on the other side. A 900 mm door sweeps a 900 mm quarter-circle, so nothing fixed may sit inside it, and the far side needs about 600 mm of standing room to open it at all. Two doors whose arcs overlap will hit each other.