Relocating a garage by mirroring — V2

Project A Task 1: modify a residential floor plan by flipping the positions of the garage and the primary bedroom, moving the garage from the bottom right of the plan to the top right. Three considerations hold throughout — keep the rest of the plan as intact as possible and make only the changes the relocation requires; maintain the existing area and capacity of both the garage and the primary bedroom; and do not compromise the circulation, accessibility or privacy of the spaces.

First copy the entire floor plan and place the copy beside the original. That leaves a reference version of the existing layout while the work happens on the copy.

Revit warns on the copy because some dimensions and elements are tied to the original model location. The working copy is intentional, so the warnings are acknowledged.

Next copy the garage and primary bedroom portion to the right side. Positioning it accurately needs a reference point: the corner of the kitchen wall, because that wall is common to both layouts and keeps the original and flipped versions aligned consistently.

Select the garage and bedroom copy and mirror it with DM. The mirror axis runs horizontally, because the objective is to flip the garage and primary bedroom vertically within the plan.

The selection also carried the existing room tags. Wall positions and room boundaries are about to change, so leaving the tags in place would complicate the next steps — remove them now and add them back once the layout is settled.

To remove them, use Filter: uncheck all categories, then select only room tags and rooms, and delete.

Back on the copied original, remove the existing garage and primary bedroom areas so the flipped version can take their place.

Bring the flipped portion in. Select all of it and group it with GP — grouping lets the portion move as one unit, so the rest of the floor plan is not disturbed by accident.

Move it with MV, positioning the group against the kitchen wall reference. Revit shows several overlap warnings because the new layout has not been cleaned up yet; those are expected at this point.

This is where grouping earns its keep: selecting the group and choosing Edit Group fades the rest of the model, so the existing house stays visible as a reference while only the relocated portion is modified.

Before changing anything, compare against the original. There, the garage connects to the gallery, and the gallery gives a separate entry to the primary bedroom before continuing to the kitchen. That circulation strategy has to survive the flip — the garage must not open directly into the kitchen.

Start with the garage. Its exterior walls are not aligned on the same axis; the difference is small and gives no functional benefit, so delete them and carry a single exterior wall instead, dragged onto the perpendicular wall's axis and connected with the drag handle.

The garage exterior wall also does not line up with the interior wall of the breakfast nook. Use Align — AL — selecting the first wall as the reference, then the garage wall. The overlap warning that follows is cleared by dragging the exterior wall up.

A few floating walls and a door in this area no longer serve any purpose in the new layout, so remove them and simplify the space.

In the original, the garage reaches the gallery, which then gives access to the primary bedroom and the rest of the house. Flipped, the garage currently opens straight at the kitchen. To restore the circulation, the gallery has to be recreated as a transition space between garage and bedroom.

Remove the existing door, which opens the connection up, and drag the laundry room wall to the right. That leaves open space, but the garage needs to be enclosed — so select the wall, right-click, Create Similar, and draw from this point across to where it meets the laundry wall perpendicularly, adding the remaining walls the same way.

That gives a clear transition between the garage, the bedroom and the main house. The garage still needs a door: use the existing door as the reference, right-click, Create Similar, and place it on the new garage wall.

With the garage and gallery resolved, move to the primary bedroom. The gallery should lead directly into it, so the entry needs adjusting. In the original plan the bedroom begins after the small closet, which means the existing door extending further into the space is no longer needed — remove it.

A curved wall here no longer has a purpose in the revised layout, so remove it, along with the interior wall of the primary closet.

Removing that wall and adjusting the adjoining geometry gives a cleaner edge and gains usable space for the primary closet.

The wall on the left restricts circulation through the space, so remove it and use the existing dining room wall as the common boundary. That creates breathing space on entering the primary bedroom.

Extend the dining room exterior wall towards the primary bedroom for a cleaner exterior edge and room for a larger window. Then enclose the space: drag the pantry wall across, deleting the existing exterior wall where necessary, exit the group, and extend the dining room exterior wall to the bedroom.

With the breathing space in place, create a larger window — click the existing window, right-click, Create Similar, and place one of a bigger size.

Ungroup the space. The garage now connects into the gallery rather than opening directly into the kitchen, and the gallery provides a separate, more appropriate entry to the primary bedroom.

Relocate the remaining portions and extend the pantry wall to enclose the primary bedroom. Place the door at the size needed with Create Similar; the arrows on a door denote its orientation, and clicking them flips which way it opens.

With the layout settled, add the room tags back to the various spaces. That completes the revised layout.