Getting started

Open the studio and pick what you're planning. A new house, a remodel of your home, one room, or the demo. Templates are real walls and rooms, so you can change any of them.

Your project saves in this browser as you work. Nothing is sent anywhere unless you choose to.

Drawing rooms and walls

Rooms draws a whole room at once. Drag a rectangle, or click once and type a size like 12 x 14, then press Enter. Sizes are inside the walls, so a 12 by 14 room has 168 square feet of floor.

Draw a room against another one and they share the wall between them.

Walls draws one wall at a time. Click to start, click for each corner, and click the first corner again to close the shape. While drawing, type a length like 12' 6" and press Enter to place the next corner exactly that far away. Press Esc to stop.

Ending a wall on another wall joins them there. Rooms appear by themselves wherever walls close a loop.

Changing walls

Drag a wall to slide it. The whole straight line of wall moves together, and walls joined to it stretch to stay joined.

Drag a corner to reshape the walls that meet there. Drop a corner on another corner or on a wall to join them.

Pick a wall and type a new length in the panel. The far end moves along the wall and the rest of the plan follows, so square rooms stay square. The small arrow next to the length picks which way it grows.

Pick a room and type a new width or depth to resize a rectangular room.

If a change would push walls through each other, make a wall too short or squeeze a door off its wall, it's not made, and a short message says why.

Doors and windows

Pick Doors or Windows, then click a wall. The door opens toward the side of the wall you clicked on, and the distance to each corner shows before you click.

Drag a door or window to slide it along its wall or onto another wall. Drag the dots at its ends to make it wider or narrower.

In the panel, change the style and size, flip which side it hinges on or which way it swings, or type the distance from each corner.

When a wall changes length, its doors and windows keep their distance from the corner that didn't move.

Furniture

Open Furniture, pick a piece and click the plan to place it, or drag it onto the plan. Press R before clicking to turn it. Pieces placed near a wall turn their back to it.

Drag a piece to move it. Drag the round handle to turn it, or the dots on its sides to resize it. The panel has exact sizes, turning, mirroring, finishes, duplicating and locking.

If a piece goes into a wall, overlaps another piece or blocks a door, the panel says so.

Materials

Open Materials, pick one, then click a floor or one side of a wall. The panel for a room, wall or piece of furniture also has its finishes. Building sets the outside of the house.

A room's panel also turns its floor, so boards or tiles run across, down or diagonally, and makes the pattern smaller or larger.

3D

Switch to 3D or Split at the top. Dollhouse cuts the walls low so you can see every room. Full height shows walls at their real height. Top looks straight down.

Walk puts you inside at eye height. Drag to look around, walk with W A S D or the arrow keys, and hold Shift to go faster.

In Walk, walk up to a door and press E to open or close it. A closed door stops you walking through. Walk up to a sofa, chair, stool, bench or bed and press E to sit, then look around with the arrow keys or by dragging. Press E again to stand up. A button shows what E will do, and you can click it, or click the door or seat itself.

Click anything else in 3D to pick it and change it in the panel. Everything you change in the plan changes in 3D at once.

Remodels

A remodel has two versions of your home. Existing is how it is now. Proposed is the copy you change.

Draw Existing first, or trace it from a plan you have. Then press Plan the changes, or Plan a remodel on any project. Existing stays as it was.

On Proposed, pick how to compare at the top. Show what changed marks walls that went in red and new ones in green. Show the old walls outlines Existing on top. Side by side shows both.

The panel lists every change, from walls and rooms to doors and furniture, and the change in floor area.

Pretecture can't tell which walls hold your house up. If you move or take out a wall, have a qualified professional check before any work.

Tracing a plan you have

Open Trace and choose a picture or PDF of a floor plan. Click two points on it you know the distance between, type that distance and press Enter. The picture scales to match.

Draw walls over it. Walls drawn over a picture are marked as traced until you check them, because a picture's scale is never perfect.

Use the slider to fade the picture, or hide it.

Measuring and units

Measure draws a dimension line between any two points. Room labels show each room's size inside the walls and its floor area. Pick a wall to see its length on both faces.

Change units at the top. You can type any unit in any field, like 3.8 m in a feet project.

Lengths are kept to the millimetre, about 1/25 of an inch.

Saving and backups

Your project saves itself a moment after each change. The note at the top says when it's saved.

Projects live in this browser. Clearing your browser's data removes them, so download a backup now and then from Export. Open a backup from the studio's start page.

If you open one project in two tabs and change both, Pretecture asks which version to keep.

Exports

Export makes a PDF or a picture of the plan you're looking at, or a backup of the whole project. These are free, with no watermark.

Plan Plus and the Renovation Pack add detailed sheets for one project. See pricing for what each includes.

Paid sheets

Plan Plus and the Renovation Pack are bought from Export once they're on sale. Each is one payment for one project, and you can download the sheets again whenever the project changes.

Pick the page size and the scale before downloading. Largest that fits picks the biggest standard scale the plan fits at. Print at actual size, not fit to page, then measure the bar on the sheet with a ruler to check the print is to scale.

The Renovation Pack needs a remodel, with an existing and a proposed plan. Its sheets show both plans at the same scale, a sheet of the changes, the changes listed with room areas, and two 3D views.

Bought sheets in another browser? Sign in with the email you paid with and they work there too.

Sharing and your account

Share at the top of the studio makes a private link to the project as it is now. Whoever has the link can look and walk through in 3D but can't change anything. Switch links off on your account page.

An account is free and optional, with no password. We email you a code to sign in. It keeps one project online, so you can open it on another computer, and it keeps your purchases and share links.

Keyboard shortcuts

V, W, R, D, N

Select, walls, rooms, doors, windows

F, P, M, T, I, B

Furniture, materials, measure, notes, trace, building

3

Switch between the plan and 3D

Ctrl Z, Ctrl Y

Undo and redo

Delete

Delete what's selected

Arrow keys

Nudge, hold Shift for bigger steps

Shift R

Turn furniture 90 degrees

Ctrl D

Duplicate furniture

Space and drag

Move around the plan

Alt

Hold to skip snapping

Esc

Stop drawing, or clear the selection

?

Open or close the studio's help

What Pretecture isn't

Pretecture makes concept plans for planning a home and talking it through. They aren't construction drawings or permit drawings, and they don't check building codes.

It can't tell which walls hold a house up. Furniture and door warnings are a nudge, not a code check. Check every size on site before any work.