Looking for a drawing program to draw a keeps floorplans.

[Senko]

I'm trying to draw a keep and I'm looking for a cheap or preferably free drawing program with a grid background. Doesn't need any shapes or pictures, I just want a drawing program with a grid I can use to ensure everything is consistent in shape as I can say a box is 10 x 10 x 10. Everything I can find however is more complex and requires more skill than I have to use. Anyone know of something that fits the bill?

[Foeclan]

Inkscape is very good for this sort of thing, and is free. Lots of tutorials out there, easy to render a grid to the scale you want, you can easily paste in images if you want. I ran my game with it for a couple of years before we started using roll20.

[Senko]

Thanks I'll take a look, trying to make a small but luxurious keep is tricky.

[zza ni]

i recently got 'sims 4' (it was free on steam a couple of weeks ago. i think it's still is)

with the cheat code for free building (or picking the free building option) one can make some very interesting interior and exterior 3d building plans. mostly modern, but not just.

[OmniMage]

Have you tried Dungeon Alchemist? Its probably considerably more than what you are looking for (and pricier too).

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1588530/Dungeon_Alchemist/

I recommend it as it is easy to make different rooms the size you want (in 2 dimensions). Just grab the room tool and drag the area you want. It'll fill the area as needed (you can turn auto fill off). As I recall, making maps for multi floor dungeon was in the works.

[Melkiador]

I'm guessing you don't want just any keep? There are lots of pre-existing maps of keeps.

AI art tools may also be an option, but I think those are currently banned by Paizo, so we probably shouldn't link them here.

[Ryze Kuja]

www.inkarnate.com is an excellent mapbuilding program, and it's cheap. It's $25-ish a year, I believe. The free version is also pretty good too, but if you make a lot of maps then the paid version is totally worth it.

After that, you can take any map you make and import it to https://www.owlbear.rodeo/, and this program will automatically make a grid for you.

[Senko]

Melkiador wrote:

I'm guessing you don't want just any keep? There are lots of pre-existing maps of keeps.

AI art tools may also be an option, but I think those are currently banned by Paizo, so we probably shouldn't link them here.

I did take a look at a number of them none really met what I was looking for.

[Senko]

OmniMage wrote:

Have you tried Dungeon Alchemist? Its probably considerably more than what you are looking for (and pricier too).

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1588530/Dungeon_Alchemist/

I recommend it as it is easy to make different rooms the size you want (in 2 dimensions). Just grab the room tool and drag the area you want. It'll fill the area as needed (you can turn auto fill off). As I recall, making maps for multi floor dungeon was in the works.

Dungeon alchemist looks interesting the only issue is it looks like there's no size indicator on the rooms as in if you want a 20 x 20 room you have to guestimate what size that would be.

[OmniMage]

You can make a new map to be whatever size you want. Make sure its digital not paper sized. You can specify a 20 x 20 grid, 40 x 40, or even 1050 x 2. Digital maps can even resize if your new room won't fit.

[Senko]

OmniMage wrote:

You can make a new map to be whatever size you want. Make sure its digital not paper sized. You can specify a 20 x 20 grid, 40 x 40, or even 1050 x 2. Digital maps can even resize if your new room won't fit.

Oh I know I can make a grid size of what I want but I can't make a grid square 20'x 20' or 10' x 10' at least as far as I can see.

[Azothath]

I use Inkscape on Linux Mint. Coreldraw is(was) a bit friendlier than Adobe Illustrator.