One of the books I read on this subject suggested creating a list of room names.
Such as:
First floor:
Living room
Dining room
Kitchen
1/2 Bath
Mud room
Laundry room

Second floor:
Master bedroom
Master bathroom
Bedroom
2nd bedroom
3rd bedroom
2nd bathroom

Then add to this list things that will be on both floors like stairways, section open to rafters such as great room, any laundry chutes, chimney chases and things like that.

Then as you do your bubble diagram you check off the list the things you've done, or placed on each of the floor plans you're creating. I find using a check list helps to keep track of all the rooms and where they will be located by floor level.

Then the bubbles can be arranged on each floor level to make the functions near each other that apply.


One good exercise we did at a class was to create two floor plans of the same size house one on tracing paper (the second floor). So that we could see through the second floor to the first floor. This helped us to line up the locations of posts for the interior bents.
These posts would need to go to the second floor ceiling to hold up purlin plates or other roof system timbers.
This was a good exercise to understand how moving a post on one floor effected it location on the other floor. And how it would effect windows locations along the walls and door locations in both the interior walls and exterior walls.

Sometimes it can be a challenge to get everything to work out right for both floors.

Jim Rogers