Summary: In a recent paper, S. Savas, R. Batta and R. Nagi [Finite-size facility placement in the presence of barriers to rectilinear travel, Oper. Res. 50, No. 6, 1018–1031 (2002)] consider the optimal placement of a finite-sized facility in the presence of arbitrarily shaped barriers under rectilinear travel. Their model applies to a layout context, since barriers can be thought to be existing departments and the finite-sized facility can be viewed as the new department to be placed. In a layout situation, the existing and new departments are typically rectangular in shape. This is a special case of the paper of Savas et al. (loc. cit.). However the resultant optimal placement may be infeasible due to practical constraints like aisle locations, electrical connections, etc. Hence there is a need for the development of contour lines, i.e. lines of equal objective function value. With these contour lines constructed, one can place the new facility in the best manner. This paper deals with the problem of constructing contour lines in this context. This contribution can also be viewed as the finite-size extension of the contour line result of R. L. Francis [Note on the optimum location of new machines in existing plant layouts, J. Ind. Eng. 14, No. 2, 57–59 (1963)].