Room-first building study
Start with the spaces and how they work together. Derive the footprint, shared walls and openings from that layout. Use this workflow for residential, commercial, industrial, civic or other buildings. Select deliverables by the requested phase.
Plan a new building
Read planning.md. Establish use, level count, named spaces, clear dimensions, equipment/furniture, circulation, access, service routes, and site constraints from the brief. Author the layout and checks for that project. Show comparable SVG options when a layout is still being chosen. Continue from an already reviewed option when one exists.
Use the reusable rectangle, topology and clearance helpers for rectilinear plans. Choose an appropriate geometry representation and checks for other shapes. The bundled house recipes are worked examples. Start a new design from its own space program and assemblies.
Choose the construction system
Carry the project's construction system and unit standard into modeling. For
timber framing, use framing.md and
building_study.framing.profile for actual US/imperial or metric stock and
spacing. Inherit a stated preference. If the standard affects the design and
is still unknown, clarify once while developing the room program. A display
unit choice alone leaves stock dimensions unchanged.
For other systems, declare the assembly materials, section dimensions and spacing/grid inputs that apply. Preserve those inputs with the native model and takeoff. Treat these as schematic design inputs. Structural engineering and code compliance are separate tasks.
Model, verify and measure
- Model a reviewed plan: use blender.md. Author a project-specific Blender recipe for the relevant levels, structure, roof, openings and fit-out. Keep the model editable and stage assemblies with stable component IDs. Coordinate service reservations when detailed meshes are outside scope.
- Quantities or cost: use materials.md. Inventory the original construction objects, define categories and measurement methods for the project, separate purchasing allowances and use explicit dated rates.
- Reproduce the example: use commands.md. The house CLI has three authored arrangements and one reviewed family-wing Blender recipe. The twelve-layout fallback is a separate stock-plan generator.
Preserve these invariants
- Use a shared coordinate basis and convert once to Blender metres. The bundled SVG contracts use integer-mm room datums. Keep exact sub-millimetre framing conversions where needed. Derive the footprint from the room union and assign shared walls and hosted openings a single owner.
- Read the semantic geometry and openings from the reviewed source. Keep the source hash with the native model and reject stale or unsupported edits.
- Check usable dimensions, functional fit, connected circulation, both-side door pads and full swings. Check aligned vertical openings and headroom when applicable. Verify actual fixture and equipment geometry in the saved model and state which checks are schematic or conservative.
- Reuse the same source components for the completed building and construction stages. Exclude presentation copies from material quantities.
- Keep unsuccessful layouts visible as failed attempts. Use fallback layouts only when selected and recheck coverage, identity and access after any repair.
Included tools
scripts/building_study/ includes shared geometry, clearance and Blender
helpers plus the family-wing implementation. scripts/plan.py exposes the
stock recipes and validates their supported semantic SVG schemas.
scripts/build_blender.py, verify_blender.py and takeoff_blender.py
reproduce the example in separate background Blender processes. Write generated
files outside the skill and keep the active Blender session intact.
Blender 5 and its bundled Python can run the core tools. Only the optional
compose_review.py uses Pillow for a captioned GIF and floor pair.
Deliver source identity, actual checks, review limits and the remaining design decisions. Follow the destination project's workflow for adoption.