How to go from a blank project to a printed floor plan in about ten minutes. No prior BIM experience required.
Create a project
From the home screen, click + New project. Give it a name (e.g. "Trial House"). You land in the editor with a blank floor-plan view.
Draw a wall
Press W or click Wall in the ribbon. Click the first end-point in the canvas, then the second. The status bar guides you — chain clicks to continue, Esc to finish.
Draw three more walls to close a room
Stay in the Wall tool. Click corners until you have a rectangle. Snap-points (endpoints, midpoints) glow as you hover so the corners land cleanly.
Place a window
Press N or click Window. Hover over any wall — a preview follows the cursor along the wall. Click to drop it. Esc when done.
Place a door
Press O or click Door. Same flow as windows. The door's swing direction can be flipped later from the properties panel.
Define the room itself
Click Room in the ribbon. Click each interior corner in order. When you're back near the first corner, click it (or press Enter) to close. The room gets an auto-number like 101.
Add a dimension
Press D or click Dimension. Click the first reference point (a wall endpoint), then the second, then click again to set how far the dimension line sits off the wall. Tab cycles through snap candidates if multiple are in range.
Switch to a sheet
The tabs at the top — A-101, A-201, A-001 — are pre-built sheets with title blocks. Click A-101. You'll see your floor plan placed inside a viewport.
Fill in the title block
Click any field in the title block (project name, address, architect, date). Type to edit. Changes save automatically to that sheet.
Export a PDF
Use the export menu (top of the screen). Pick Export current sheet (vector PDF) for a crisp, scalable PDF — that's the one to send to contractors. The raster option is faster but at fixed DPI.
Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y — undo / redo
Works for every edit. The undo stack survives until you reload the page.
Esc — cancel current tool, return to Select
If you ever feel stuck mid-tool, Esc gets you back to Select.
V — toggle 3D view
Read-only orbit camera. Useful to sanity-check that walls and openings are where you think they are.
Snap toggles (Snapping group in the ribbon)
Endpoint, midpoint, on-element, perpendicular, grid. Leave the master toggle on; snapping is what makes the corners line up. Grid snap is on by default at 1 ft spacing — change the spacing in the dropdown next to the Grid button.
If you opened the editor directly (e.g. via a bookmarked URL) before creating a project, you'll see a pre-loaded demo scene — walls, a roof, a stair, a few dimensions. That's a sandbox for poking at tools without committing to anything. Click the TraceBIM brand mark in the top-left to return to the project list and start a fresh, empty project. Once you have your own project loaded (URL ends in ?project=…), the demo content goes away and the canvas is yours.
Your work auto-saves every few hundred milliseconds — there's a save-status pill in the top header (between the sheet tabs and the ? help icon) that says Saving… / Saved / Offline. If it sticks on Offline, refresh the page; the engine queues unsaved edits locally and replays them when the server comes back. If a tool stops responding, press Esc and try again. If the canvas goes blank, refresh — your last save is the source of truth.
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