How to use it
You describe a building in ordinary words. We draw it. You look at it, change what you want, and ask for a price.
Open the designer There is a Show me how button at the top of it. It points at each part of the screen in turn.
1. Say what you want, in your own words
There is a big box on the right of the screen. Type your building into it.
Say these three things first:
- How big. Like 60x100. That means 60 feet wide, 100 feet long.
- What it is for. A shop. A barn. A warehouse. A hangar.
- The doors. How many, and how wide.
So a good first try looks like this:
60x100 shop with two 14 ft roll-up doors, 16 ft eave, in Austin TX
You do not have to write it neatly. Plain sentences work. "I need a 40 by 60 barn for horses" is fine.
Everything is in feet. Not metres.
2. Press Create Model
It is the green button under the box. Wait about twenty seconds. A building appears. You can drag it around with the mouse to see all sides.
Two buttons at the bottom left, + and −, move you closer and further away.
3. Change it — this part is free
Under the green button there is a smaller box that says What should change? Ask for one thing at a time. Then press Change.
- add two windows on the left
- make it dark grey
- raise the eave to 20 feet
- take the small door off the front
The rest of the building stays exactly as it was. This is the part most people miss, so it is worth saying twice:
Use the small box to change things. If you type your whole description into the big box again, you get a different building, and it costs you one of your free designs.
4. Read the Advice tab
Along the top of the panel there are four tabs: Design, Advice, Feedback, Quote.
Advice has a number on it. That is how many things this building still needs before somebody can price it or your county will allow it to be built.
- Required — must be sorted out first.
- Recommended — worth doing, but you can leave it.
- Worth knowing — just information. Open it if you like.
Some of them have a button that says Add to description. Press it and it writes the fix into your description for you. Then press Apply to the building to make the change. Both are free.
One of them will ask where you are building. Answer it. Snow and wind strength are set by county, and an engineer needs them to sign the drawings. We never guess them.
5. Ask for a price
The green Quote tab, top right of the panel. Fill in your name, phone and email, and it goes to a supplier.
If that button is grey, look at the Advice tab. There is something marked Required that has to be answered first. The reason shows just under the tabs.
What things cost
- Five designs free. No account, no card, nothing to fill in.
- Ten more when you make an account with your email.
- A hundred more for $5, paid once. There is no subscription and nothing renews.
Only the green Create Model button uses one up. Changing a building, reading advice and asking for a price are all free.
If a design fails, it costs you nothing. If you type something too short to mean anything, we stop you before it counts.
Words you will see
- Eave
- The height of the side wall, where it meets the roof. A 16 ft eave means the wall is 16 feet tall.
- Roll-up door
- The big one a truck drives through. It rolls up into the wall.
- Walk door
- A normal person-sized door.
- Pitch
- How steep the roof is.
- Bay spacing
- How far apart the steel frames stand inside. We pick this for you.
- Lean-to
- A lower roof added along one side, open or closed. Good for parking.
- Span
- The width, with nothing holding the roof up in the middle.
- Red iron
- The heaviest kind of steel frame. Needed for wide or tall buildings.
- Slab
- The concrete floor.
- Snow load and wind speed
- How much snow the roof must hold and how hard the wind can blow. Set by your county, not by us.
- Permit
- Your county's permission to build. An engineer has to stamp the drawings before you can get one.
If something goes wrong
- Nothing happens when I press the green button
- Look under the box for a line of red writing. It says what is missing. Usually the description is too short.
- It asks for a phone number
- We need one before the first design, so a supplier can talk the price through with you. Put it in on your account page.
- I have run out of designs
- Make an account for ten more, or buy a hundred for $5. Both are on the right of the screen.
- I paid and my designs have not appeared
- Wait a minute and reload the page. The payment company tells us separately, and it is sometimes slow. Your account page lists what you were charged. If it is still wrong, tell us and we will fix it.
- The building is not what I asked for
- Use the small What should change? box to correct it. That is free. Say one thing at a time.
- I want my account and my designs deleted
- Ask us on the contact page and we do it. The privacy page explains what we hold.
Still stuck?
Write to us on the contact page. A person reads it. Tell us what you typed and what you expected — that is usually enough for us to see the problem.