DXF → 3D Walkthrough

Click to look around

W A S D move shift run mouse look esc release pointer

The minimap shows where you are.

at the pivot · grid

Nothing is tagged as a wall yet Select the wall lines in the plan — click, drag a box, or use ◎ on a layer — then press wall in the Tag tab.

Drop DXF to load

Settings

Kept on your account: the market, units, practice and site follow you to any machine you sign in on.

Kept in this browser. to keep them on your account instead, on any machine.

Where it is being built

Market

This decides the money and how a figure is written. It does not change what is measured: every market listed builds in masonry and concrete, which is what this take-off counts. A timber-framed house needs different line items, not a different currency.

No rates ship for this market. Set them below and the estimate follows — a rate is a claim about a market, and a guessed one is a bill somebody would quote from.

Units and currency

Currency

Areas, volumes and lengths in the take-offs read in these units. Wall thicknesses and heights stay in millimetres: that is what the drawing says, and rounding them would change the model rather than the reading of it.

Your details

Practice

Printed across the title block of an exported sheet, on the Office plan. A Studio sheet is prepared by a person rather than a practice, and carries the name on the account.

Site and date

Sets the latitude and longitude below from the browser, which is what the sun is worked out from. Nothing is sent anywhere.

Latitude Longitude Date Plan north

Rates

A rate card belongs to a project as much as to a practice, so this one is not saved as you type: opening an old job would otherwise rewrite what every new job starts from. Save it when it is right, and new projects begin there.

Brickwork /m³ RCC /m³ Plaster /m² Flooring /m² Paint /litre Painting /m² Doors /m² Windows /m² Carpentry /rft Electrical /point Plumbing /point Pipe /m AC /TR Emitter each Sprinkler each Garden pipe /m Gang, a day

On top of the work

Wastage % Preliminaries % Overhead and profit % Contingency % Professional fees % Approval /m² Approval, lump sum Tax %

Composite rates — material, labour and wastage in one — as a builder quotes, with what goes on top of them below. Excludes land and external development. A blank takes ours; a zero means none, and they are not the same thing.

Projects

Nothing kept yet. Keep this one stores the project on your account, so it opens on any machine you sign in from.

Nothing kept yet. Keep this one stores the project in this browser so you can pick it up again without hunting for the file.

Kept in this browser, on this machine — so far. Clearing site data clears it. Save to a file for anything you would be sorry to lose.

Kept to — so far, on the plan. These open wherever you sign in. Save to a file for anything you would be sorry to lose.

Click a line in the plan, or drag a box over several, then say what they are.

Dimensions mm

Thickness Height

With nothing selected these set the defaults for the next tag.

Drawing units are mm each; values here are always millimetres.

What are this drawing's units?

The file does not say, so millimetres have been assumed — and every quantity in the take-off scales with that. If it was drawn in feet, the bill is three hundred times too small. Say which it is:

Or measure something you know: dimension it in the Build tab, then type what that distance really is and the scale follows from it.

That dimension is, in mm

One unit currently reads as mm.

Floor slab

Generate Source Thickness

Select segments that form a closed loop — open chains are ignored.

Floors

G Ground floor from the tagged wall heights

Roof Hide floors above Ceilings Thickness

Openings

Click a wall in either view to place. esc to stop.

Width Height Sill

These are the dimensions the next opening gets.

Dimensions

Click the two points on the plan. Corners and walls pull the click onto themselves, so a dimension lands where the wall is rather than where the cursor was. esc to stop.

Measured off the drawing, in millimetres — or in feet and inches where the units are imperial. Drag one to slide it clear of what it measures.

Structure

Columns sit on a grid, so the grid is what you set out and the frame follows it: a column at every intersection, a beam between each pair. Lay one over the building to start, then take out the columns that are not there.

Stairs

Stairs need somewhere to go — add a floor first.

Click where the bottom step goes. In 3D the floor you click is the one it rises from. esc to stop.

Width Tread Max riser Shape

Turns at a half landing, halving the length it needs — the way a flight fits a room it is too long for straight.

The rise comes from the floor height, so these are the only dimensions a flight needs.

Rotation

Walkthrough

Eye height Speed m/s Collision

Objects

Click in either view to place . esc to stop.

This browser cannot write to a folder, so downloads last for the session. Chrome or Edge can save them into public/models/.

Loading the library…

CC0 models. Showing the first 60 matches — search to narrow it.

Load .glb model…

Points the catalogue at a folder of your own .glb/.gltf files, including subfolders. Name a subfolder kitchen, bathroom or site and its models file themselves there.

Snap to walls Rotation Scale Height

Ground Ground colour

Sun

az °

alt °

Intensity Exposure Shadows

Interior lights

Click in the 3D view — the light hangs at ceiling height above that point. esc to stop.

Intensity Colour Cast shadows Range

Materials

Tiles

Click a floor or wall in the 3D view first — tiles apply to that surface.

Rooms

Programme

Starts Manning × a gang

Weather and the calendar

Rain from Rain to A wet day costs % Holidays a month days Sundays off

days in all

working

curing

lost to rain

site shut

heaviest month,

Rain allowed for , on the trades that work in the open.

working waiting on the concrete

StageDays

PaymentsDue

Month by monthSpend

Estimated

The shortest honest programme: no monsoon, no festival, nothing waiting for delivery and no day lost to a payment that did not come.

Quantities

floor

volume

walls

ceiling

Paint

Ceilings too Coats Coverage

litres of paint

to cover at m²/litre, openings deducted.

Electrical

Reads the rooms and the furniture in them: a board by each door, lights and a fan, general sockets, an AC point — and a socket wherever a fridge, TV, desk or chimney stands. Run it again after adding furniture; it skips what is already there.

Click in either view to place. In 3D the floor you click is the one it belongs to. esc to stop.

Put a board in each room and a distribution board somewhere: points are fed from their room's board, and the boards from the DB.

Slack % Cores per run

m of wire

points · switches · boards · conduit, of which is submain. Runs follow the walls and drop to each point, plus % slack. outside the rooms (porch and gate lights), charged to the nearest.

Load and schedule

kW connected

kW demand

kW to sanction

A main, mA RCCB

earth strip

The schedule — every circuit with its breaker and its cable — comes with a paid plan. The load above is what the supply has to carry either way.

Estimated

Plumbing

A bathroom gets a WC, a basin, a shower, a floor trap and a geyser over the shower; a toilet the first two and a trap; a kitchen its sink; a utility its machine. Against the walls, off the corners, and clear of the door where another wall will take them.

Reads the WCs, basins, showers and sinks already placed: a fixture point for each, a stack and a geyser for every wet room, and one supply inlet.

Click in either view to place. esc to stop.

Supply line Slack % Hot water

m of pipe

15 mm CPVC cold
15 mm CPVC hot

fixtures · about fittings. Supply runs along the walls and up to the line at ; waste runs in the floor. with no stack to drain to. with no supply — place an inlet. wanting hot with no geyser.

Data and security

Click in either view to place. esc to stop.

m of cable

Nothing to run back to: place a rack, or the cable has no length.

Slack %

Solar

The panels may go anywhere on the roof. Set aside an area to keep part of the terrace for something else — the washing, a tank, or sitting out.

Stand height Wash line

kg of stand ·

of pipe · nozzles ·

Nothing is priced for the stand until there are panels to hold up.

No room for an array on this roof yet — or no roof. A kilowatt wants about eight square metres of terrace, and a system starts at half of one.

These are the panels that fit: laid on the terrace itself, back from the parapet by the shadow it throws, spaced so no row shades the next, and round whatever is already up there. Walk the model at nine in the morning in December and you can see what falls across them.

Estimated

Water

a day

overhead

sump

HP pump

head

Rainwater

a year

caught

pit

A recharge pit of about , sized to swallow a 50 mm hour off this roof rather than the year's total.

Nothing to harvest: either there is no roof yet, or it does not rain enough here to be worth a pit.

Supply

Hardness, ppm

ppm is water.

No treatment placed. An inlet filter, a softener or a drinking water purifier go in from the Plumbing section above, and each is sized against the demand here once it is on the plan.

Estimated

Garden watering

Reads the trees, shrubs, beds and hedges already placed: a bubbler at each tree, emitters along each bed, sprinklers across the ground inside a boundary wall, and a tap to feed them.

Click in either view to place. esc to stop.

Head overlap

Spacing as a fraction of the head's radius. 1 is head to head; a square grid stops covering past 1.41, where the middle of every four heads is beyond all of them.

Drippers /m²

m of pipe

drippers · sprinklers · taps. Peak draw an hour with everything open. with no tap to run back to.

The cooling load is worked out on the server, so it needs an account. and it appears here. Everything measured from the drawing — quantities, paint, carpentry — stays on this machine and needs no account.

Gas

Nothing burning yet. Place a hob, a gas geyser or an oven from the Plumbing section, and a cylinder bank or a meter to feed them.

Estimated

Of everything this tool measures, gas is the one where being roughly right is not good enough. Take it to a licensed fitter: the line is theirs to size, to install, to test and to certify.

Fire

A detector in every room the design asks for — smoke, or heat in the kitchen — spread across the room and half a metre off the walls, where air still moves. Then the parts that belong to the way out rather than to a room: the panel just inside the front door, a call point at every exit, a sounder on each floor and the extinguishers the floor is due. Ordinary devices afterwards: drag them, delete them, run it again for what is left.

smoke wanted

heat wanted

placed

of the wrong sort

/ extinguishers

of alarm cable

longest escape of

Show the way out

Drawn from the middle of each room to the nearest external door, through the doorways rather than through the walls — on the plan, and painted on the floor of the model. Red is a room further from a door than the limit allows.

There are devices with nothing to report to. Place a fire alarm panel and the loop back to it is routed and measured.

What this height turns on

Estimated

Life safety is not something a drawing tool certifies. This counts devices and measures distances so the questions get asked early; what a building actually requires is read from the by-law by somebody who signs for it.

Lift

Required at this height.

Estimated

A lift is a supplier's design in a hole the builder leaves. Take these sizes to a lift company and build to their drawing, not to this one. And a lift is never an escape route.

Drainage

of sewer

a day

people

There is a tank on the plan with nothing running to it. Place a soil stack, and an inspection chamber if the run needs one, from the Plumbing section.

Estimated

A septic tank and its soakaway are engineering, and a sanction will want a percolation test. This measures a drawing; it does not certify a design.

Specification

Each scheme is applied, re-measured and priced in turn — a house with ceilings in every room is a different house to measure — and the building goes back to what it was when they are done.

Plot and by-law

Tag the plot boundary on the drawing — the Plot role in the Tag tab — or type its area below, and the building is measured against it.

By-law

Reading for .

Road width Road is to the Plot area

of plot

built

coverage %

FAR

still allowed

Limits, to overrule

Coverage % FAR Front setback Rear setback Side setback Height limit Parking wanted Parking shown

Estimated

This is arithmetic against numbers somebody typed. It is not a sanction, and the by-law presets are simplified and dated — the authority's current schedule is the only one that counts.

Foundation

Ground Bearing capacity Founded at Plinth height Built as

footings at

strips wide

raft over

kN on the worst column

excavated

carted away

of PCC

of RCC

of steel

of plinth fill

Estimated

A foundation is an engineer's signature and a soil test's number. This sizes one to spread the load it can work out over the ground it has been told about — it is a budget and a sanity check, not a design.

Flooring

Through the house Where it is wet

LaidArea

of bedding

polished

underlay

thresholds

build-up

Estimated

Areas are the rooms as drawn. Cutting, borders and a laying pattern are the tiler's, and a pattern can add a tenth to what has to be bought — the tile take-off in the Look tab counts the cuts for a room that has been set out.

Inside finishes

False ceiling

Where Made of Dropped by

Walls

Finish Bathroom tiling Toilet tiling Kitchen splashback

Skirting

Made of Height

of ceiling

tiled

lined

painted

of skirting

lowest

Estimated

Openings are deducted from the tiling as a share of the wall rather than one by one, so a room with an unusual window is worth checking by hand.

Roof finish

Laid to falls

Waterproofing Walked on

At the outlet Falls, one in

laid

–

tanked

kN/m² on the slab

W/m²K

Heat it keeps out

W/m² through it

W/m² bare

TR not needed

Estimated

The U-value here is the layer in series with a bare slab, and the load is stated for an engineer to design the roof for. Neither is a thermal model nor a structural check.

Outside finish

System

Primer coat

outside

l primer

Heat it keeps out

W/m² through it

W/m² in the deepest shade

TR not needed

Estimated

Coverage and repainting intervals are the ordinary figures for these systems, not a manufacturer's warranty for the one that gets bought.

Network and cameras

-port PoE switch

W of

U of rack

longest run

What is watched

% of the wall

/ ways in

worst gap

% seen twice

on one camera

Lens Sensor Resolution

A mm lens on that sensor sees across.

How far it is worthDORI

Recording

Camera bitrate Keep for, days Only on motion

-channel recorder

TB of footage

a TB disk

Cable to buyBoxes

Estimated

Where a camera may point, and what happens to what it records, are not questions this answers. It counts the ones close enough to the boundary for somebody to have to think about it.

Wet areas

Fill

of fill

tanked

kN/m² heaviest

Nothing to drop yet. Say which rooms are bathrooms in the Rooms section and their floors are cast lower, with the fill and the tanking counted.

Estimated

The load the fill puts on the slab is stated so that an engineer can design for it. Nothing here checks that the slab under it carries it.

Ventilation

placed

of duct

An exhaust point is placed from the Electrical section; its duct is routed to the nearest external wall and measured with everything else.

Estimated

Air changes and openable area are practice and the NBC's figure respectively — a sanction is read against the local by-law, and that is somebody's signature rather than this tool's.

Coordination

hard

too close

checked in ms

Nothing fouls anything: no run passes through a beam or a column, and every pair keeps its clearance. Add a frame in the Build tab and it will be checked against that too.

Showing the first 40 of , worst first.

Clearances

Estimated Runs routed along the walls at each service's own chase height, then checked against each other and against the frame.

Every run takes the longer leg first — it is one rule, not a design
Clearances are ordinary residential practice, not a code citation, and every one of them is editable above
Power and data are held apart where they run together, not where they cross at a right angle
Only beams and columns are obstacles: not walls, not ducts, not what is already built on site

Coordination is engineering — this finds what is worth looking at, and a services engineer decides what to do about it. It measures a drawing; it does not certify a design.

Air conditioning

The working is part of Studio

The tonnage each room needs is above, and it is the number you would buy from. Studio opens a room to show where its heat comes from — walls, glass and which way it faces, the roof, the people — which is what makes a size arguable rather than asserted.

Outdoor design Indoor set point m² per person Appliances W/m² Air changes/hr Shading Insulated roof

TR to install

TR of calculated load across rooms, each rounded up to a size that is sold. An estimate at one design hour — no thermal mass, no shading geometry, and every room assumed occupied at once.

Woodwork

running feet

of run. Measured along each unit's longest plan dimension, as carpentry is quoted.

The cost estimate is worked out on the server, so it needs an account. and it appears here. Everything measured from the drawing — quantities, paint, carpentry — stays on this machine and needs no account.

This rate card prices nothing. The quantities above are measured and correct; what is missing is what things cost. Set the rates in and the estimate follows.

These rates were carried across, not researched. Only the Indian card was priced from its own market; the rest is that card converted by one figure for — what a square metre of building costs there against what it costs in India, times the exchange rate. Expect the right order of magnitude and not a quotation. The cost half of it is . The currencies are those of . and the estimate follows; what you set is kept.

Cost estimate

all in

per sq ft over ( sq ft), everything below included.

Estimated Measured off the drawing as tagged, at the rates set on this account. It is a budget to work from, not a quotation: what a builder will actually charge is theirs to say.

Measured work

Total

The builder's rungs are charged on everything before them, which is why % and % come to more than their sum. The fees and the contingency are both a share of the works cost, and the sanction charges are by the square metre — so nothing about them moves when the specification does. Wastage sits at what the rate card says — the ordinary allowance is already inside every rate, and the purchase list shows it material by material.

labour (%) material

About man-days at a day, which is people on site across the working days of the programme.

Show work worth nothing

The bill lists every line the take-off reaches, so work nobody has priced shows as a row worth nothing rather than as no row at all. at nothing here. The totals are the same either way, and the export follows this switch.

The take-off is part of Studio

Above is what the building costs and where the money is. Studio adds the list underneath each of those figures — every quantity, every rate, room by room — which is what a quote is written from. It also prices at your rates rather than ours.

Subtotal
Contingency %

Materials to buy

Walls built of

The order wastage included

The purchase list is part of Studio

Studio turns the quantities above into what to order — bricks, bags of cement, cubic metres of sand and aggregate, kilos of steel — each with its wastage shown and the quantity it came from beside it.

Estimated

Sharing

This project belongs to somebody else; you have it as .

Notes

Say something

Nothing said yet. A note left on the plan carries the spot it is about, so "this beam is in the way" arrives attached to the beam.

History

Every save keeps a version here. The last twenty are kept — a history to walk back through rather than a backup service.

Model export IFC4

Walls, slabs, the frame, the rooms and the openings, with the areas measured here attached to each space. Written in the browser, so nothing is uploaded.

Generated

cut

unattached

csg ms

Tagged groups

Nothing tagged yet.

esc clear · ctrl+A all · del untag