We want a map!

[Ronbo]

Okay, I guess my creative juices have run dry. I need some help priming the pump. What I'm trying to do is create an underground setting made of service tunnels and basements. I think that part I can manage on my own. What I need help on is the surface area. This would be an abandoned factory. It would be spread out with multiple buildings.
I don't need the insides mapped, just the building outlines. I know it should have a large work/assembly building; warehouses; office building; shipping and receiving areas and I have no idea what else. I can't seem to put together something convincing.
Can anyone help? Or perhaps point me to a source of inspiration?

[Gamerprinter]

Go to texture resources like cgtextures.com - under concrete (look for dirty concrete) metals - scratched, thread plate, find some yellow striped warning lines for dangerous or loading areas in a plant, include large open spaces with periodic support struts on a grid throughout, then walled in areas for defined sections off. There's also machine-parts on that site, and mask-out the parts from the background and place as machines of the assembly floor.

That's how I'd do it.

GP

[Redrobes]

Just get google maps out, find some big factory and trace over the buildings. You might have to stretch or chop to make it fit with your sewer piping but on the whole its just boxes. If its a really big factory then some of the big car plants should be good.

Put :-

42.302325,-83.16453
52.428702,-1.929753
43.626726,1.35222

into google maps.

[Hoel]

I've worked at a pretty big factory, Volvo Powertrain (makes the BIG engines). I'd say it would be a real pain to map it realistically. The nice looking boxes you see from the outside are just honeycombed with walls, rooms, and big machines. Even the open spaces are full of struts, girders, pillars, railings and multiple levels, half levels and sub spaces. You could get lost for days if the doors weren't kept locked to prevent it.
When I GM and my players enter any kind of industrial facility, I pull some fireplan from the web or just descibe it to them til they are lost, because that's what I got the first few weeks...