Build deliverables
Floor plans, sections and elevations
One command from raw points to a drawing set - walls between their measured faces, doors with their swing, windows with their glass, dimension chains, room areas and levels, a legend, a scale bar and a north arrow - plus sections and elevations placed where they show the most.
Drawing and previewing are free. Saving SVG, DXF, PDF, GeoJSON and Shapefile is Pro.
Part of Point cloud to floor plan, Point cloud processing software, Scan to BIM.
When to use it
For a measured survey of an existing building: the plan an architect, a facilities manager or a surveyor needs, drawn from the points rather than traced over them. It works from any cloud N3D can open, from any scanner, and from an IFC model.
Step by step
- Open the indoor cloud (or an IFC model) and choose Process › Floor plan…. N3D builds the scene graph first (
Building the scene graph…), then draws. - In the first row choose the View (Plan, or one of the automatic sections and elevations), the Storey when there are several, the Sheet (A4 to A0, A3 by default), the Scale (fit, or 1:20 to 1:500) and the Units (m, cm or mm).
- In the second row set what is drawn: Dimensions, Room labels, Hatch, Poché, Rooms only, Turn to fit and Floor outlines. Under Show, switch whole layer groups on or off: dimensions, room labels, levels, the north arrow, scale bar, marks and legend, room colours, doors and windows, what is seen beyond, walls, notes, and the frame and title block.
- Zoom with the wheel and pan by dragging. Drag a dimension, a label or a mark to move it: a dimension slides along its normal and its witness lines stay on what they measure, so it keeps its attachment; a room label stays inside its room.
- The scale bar sits on its own strip directly above the title block, with the legend beside it; the north arrow is at the top right. Both can be dragged anywhere clear above the title block. Right-click a moved item for Reset position, or use Reset positions for all of them.
- Press ✚ note and click the drawing to place a note; its leader snaps to a wall. Fill in Project, Client and Drawn by for the title block.
- Save with SVG, DXF, PDF, GeoJSON or Shapefile. Change the View to save each section and elevation the same way.
What it was measured at
On S3DIS Area 4 (43 million points): 42 spaces found, and the plan, six sections and elevations, 21 files and the GIS layers written in 1.0 s. The scale bar, north arrow, legend and section marks collide with nothing on any test sheet (an automated overlap test), and every lettering height is on the ISO 3098 series.
What makes it a drawing and not a diagram
Walls are poché’d between their two measured faces, outer walls darker than partitions. Doors are drawn with their swing and windows with their glass, each with its own small dimension against the opening. Dimension chains run outside every face, and a wall earns a station on a façade’s chain only if it actually reaches that side. Room labels carry the area and the level. The title block carries size, sheet and revision, the scale and the units. The sheet follows ISO 3098 lettering, ISO 5455 scales, ISO 5457 margins with a 20 mm filing edge, ISO 7200 title block fields and ISO 128 line weights, and the DXF uses ISO 13567 layer names.
Sections and elevations use the same projection: a cutting plane through the building draws the walls it meets cut, in poché, with everything beyond in projection; slide the plane past the façade and it becomes an elevation. The planes are placed automatically where they cross the most rooms and openings, and the plan carries their marks.
From the command line
# the whole set: plan, sections, elevations and the GIS layers
n3d-render-cli floorplan --input area4.las --out plans/area4 --sections --sheet a2 \
--project "Area 4" --client "Client" --author "Surveyor" --vector area4.geojson
# one storey of an IFC, hatched poché
n3d-render-cli floorplan --input building.ifc --out level2.pdf --storey 1 --hatchLimits, stated
- Wall thickness is as good as the decomposition voxel: about ±30 mm on a real survey at the default voxel.
- Ends are joined within 0.9 m, and a wall running into another’s side within 2.2 m; wider gaps are left as the survey found them.
- A space that is long, thin and riddled with holes is lettered Open plan and not washed, rather than called a room.
- Levels are on the scan’s datum, not a project datum; there is not yet a field to type one.
- An interior-only survey has no outside to elevate: its elevation is the inner face of the wall, and the drawing says what it is.
- DWG is not written; DXF opens in every CAD package.
Related questions
Is the floor plan really automatic?
Yes. Process > Floor plan… builds the scene graph, finds the rooms by flooding the empty space, extracts the walls between their measured faces with their openings, and draws a dimensioned plan with room areas, a scale bar, a north arrow and a title block, plus sections and elevations placed where they show the most. On a 43 million point survey the whole set takes about a second. Nothing needs tracing by hand.
Do I need a particular scanner or capture app?
No. The plan is drawn from the points, so any cloud N3D can open works: LAS, LAZ, E57, PLY and the rest, from a terrestrial, mobile or handheld scanner. No trajectory, no panoramas and no upload are needed. An IFC model can be drawn too, from its own storeys, rooms and walls.
What does the drawing set contain, and in which formats?
A plan per storey, and automatic sections and elevations, at a scale from the ISO 5455 series (1:20 to 1:1000 when fitted to the sheet; 1:20 to 1:500 when set by hand) on A4 to A0. Each is saved as SVG (text stays text), DXF R2000 (model space in metres at 1:1, with real dimension entities) and PDF (vector, at the sheet’s true size). The building is also written as GeoJSON and Shapefile. Saving is Pro; the preview is free.
Which drawing standards does it follow?
Lettering from the ISO 3098 series only (1.8, 2.5, 3.5 and 5.0 mm), scales from ISO 5455, a sheet frame with a 20 mm filing edge per ISO 5457, a title block with size, sheet and revision per ISO 7200, pen widths and hatched poché per ISO 128, dimension text above the line as read per ISO 129, and ISO 13567 layer names in the DXF.
Can I move things on the drawing?
Yes. Drag a dimension, a room label or a mark to move it: a dimension slides along its normal and its witness lines stay on what it measures, a room label stays inside its room, and the scale bar, legend and north arrow move anywhere clear above the title block. ✚ note adds a note with a leader that snaps to a wall; a right-click resets a moved item. Further editing belongs in CAD, which is what the DXF is for.
How accurate are the walls?
Wall thickness is as good as the decomposition voxel: about plus or minus 30 mm at the default 50 mm voxel on a real survey, exact on a synthetic test. Ends are joined within 0.9 m and a wall running into another’s side within 2.2 m; wider gaps are left as the survey found them rather than bridged on a guess. Levels are on the scan’s datum.
More in the FAQ.