Previewing in 3D and downloading

Preview 3D

Preview 3D on the Building Plan step lifts the drawing into a solid: the same walls, the same doors and windows, extruded to a storey. Drag to orbit, scroll to zoom.

Furniture

Each room is furnished by type — a bed, nightstands and a wardrobe in a bedroom; a sofa, coffee table and television in a living room; counters, a fridge and an island in a kitchen. Every piece is drawn at its true size, so it doubles as a check that the room genuinely takes what it is meant to hold. Anything that will not fit is left out rather than shrunk, and nothing is placed where a door needs to swing.

The Furniture switch turns it all off when you want the bare shell.

The same flat in 3D with the furniture switched off, showing the bare shell — The same flat with furniture switched off.

Storey height

Height is not part of a plan — the layout is solved in two dimensions — so the storey is whichever you pick: 2.4, 2.6 or 3.0 metres. Whatever you choose here is also the height written into the IFC and SketchUp downloads.

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Choosing a format

The Format chips beside the save button decide what the button writes. Pick by what the person opening the file uses, not by what sounds best:

DXF — Anyone with any CAD programPlain-text CAD, written as R12 — the most widely readable drawing format there is. Walls, door swings, window openings and dimensions on named layers.

DWG — AutoCAD usersAutoCAD's own format, written as R2000, which every version since reads. The same drawing as the DXF; only the encoding differs.

IFC — Revit, ArchiCAD and other BIM toolsNot a drawing but a model: walls that carry their thickness and height, doors and windows hosted inside those walls so they move when the wall moves, and every room as a space with its name and area.

SKP — SketchUp usersA SketchUp model at true size. Walls, floors and furniture as faces you can push and pull, on Walls, Floors and Furniture layers, so the furniture can be switched off in one click.

All four carry the same plan, and the price is the same: one download against your allowance, whichever you pick. Changing format after a download does not cost another. SVG exports the on-screen drawing as-is, free and uncounted, at any point.

What the model formats do and do not carry

IFC and SketchUp hand over a building rather than a drawing, which is the difference between walls you can edit and lines you have to trace over. What they deliberately do not carry is anything the plan does not know: no materials, no fire ratings, no U-values. It is an honest concept-stage model — a shell to work on, not a construction model.