{draft} guide

{draft} (formerly uDraft) turns a plain-text description of a building into an architectural blueprint. You write statements — one per line — and the plan draws itself: walls, door swings, window symbols, dimension strings, room labels with areas.

Tap the eye to see the drawing. Type / for the insertion menu. A line starting with # is a comment the plan ignores; on a hardware keyboard ⌘/ (Ctrl+/ on Windows and Linux) comments out the selected lines and, pressed again, brings them back. Example plan in the ⋯ menu loads a complete three-floor cottage — stacked stairwell, kitchen island, a defined baby grand placed on two floors, an L-shaped desk — plus a site plan of its lakeside lot, to explore and pull apart.

The drawing is navigated hierarchically — floor › room › object:

Tap a room to step into it: the room is drawn in isolation — just its walls, openings and fixtures, its dimensions written outside the walls, and labelled arrows to the adjoining rooms (tap an arrow to walk into that room).
Inside a room, tap an object — a door, a sink, a stair — to select it: the view zooms to it and its own measurements (width, position, depth) draw beside it.
The breadcrumbs across the top (Main Floor › KITCHEN › SINK) are buttons — tap any level to go back up. Tapping empty space or ‹ steps up one level.
Long-press a room or object to edit it: a syntax-highlighted pane opens at the bottom with the DSL statements for that scope — the whole room's lines, or the one object's — and every keystroke redraws the plan live. The collapsed chip at the bottom reopens it; Esc or ⌄ closes it.
Scroll or pinch to zoom, drag to pan anytime (−/⛶/+ do the same; ⛶ re-fits the current scope).

Rooms — the spine

Rooms are declared with their interior clear dimensions (the usable inside space — walls are added for you), and each room is placed against a room declared above it:

room living   20' x 14'
room kitchen  12' x 10'   east of living, align north
room hall      4' x 10'   south of living, align west

The first room needs no placement — it is the origin.
east of living puts the room across a shared interior wall. Directions are compass only: north is up.
align north / align south (for east/west placements) and align east / align west (for north/south placements) pick which edges line up; add offset 2' to slide along the wall.
at 10', 5' places a room absolutely (x east, y south) — the escape hatch when relations can't express a layout.

Lengths: 20', 12'6", 4.5", 3.6m, 450mm. A bare number is feet (or meters with units: metric in the front matter).

Irregular shapes

Trace the interior outline clockwise with compass legs; close finishes the walk back to the start:

room porch outline E 8' S 6' W 8' close   south of living, align west

Openings

Doors, windows and cased openings punch through walls. A wall between two rooms is named roomA/roomB; an exterior wall is named room side:

door   living/kitchen 2'8"  at 2' from north, swing kitchen north
door   living south   3'    centered, swing in west
window kitchen north  3'    centered
opening living/hall   4'    centered

Position: centered, or at 2' from the north/west end (at 2' from south measures from the other end).
Door swing: the room it opens into (or in/out on an exterior wall) plus the hinge side (north/south on a north–south wall, east/west on an east–west wall).

Everything else

stairs  hall 3' x 9' up, along east
fixture kitchen sink 30" on north at 4'
label   living "Living Room"
note    porch "screened"
dim     living south
floor 2 "Second Floor"

stairs: width × run, up or down, flush along a side.
fixture types: sink, range, fridge, dishwasher, toilet, tub, shower, washer, dryer, water-heater, counter, island, bed, table, grand-piano, upright-piano, sofa, chair. Size is optional (each type has a standard footprint) — override it with 30" (width) or 6' x 3' (width × depth); at 4' positions along the wall.
label renames a room on the plan (the default is its id, title-cased); note adds a small parenthetical under the label.
dim adds an explicit dimension line on one side of a room. Overall building dimensions are automatic (dims: off in front matter disables).
# starts a comment (at a line start or after a space).

Islands & free-standing objects

A fixture doesn't have to sit on a wall — drop on <side> and place it freely inside the room. That's how a kitchen island stands:

fixture kitchen island 6' x 3'  centered
fixture kitchen island 6' x 3'  at 2'6", 4'6"
fixture living  piano  at 9', 6" facing west

centered puts it in the middle of the room; at x, y measures from the room's north-west interior corner (x east, y south).
facing turns the object so its front faces that side (south when omitted). Wherever it lands, it must fit inside the room — an object poking into a wall is an error.

Custom objects — define once, place anywhere

define teaches the document a new object type — its footprint and a label — and fixture then places it like any built-in, on any floor, without repeating the dimensions:

define piano 5' x 6'6" "Baby Grand"

floor 1 "Main Floor"
…
fixture living piano at 9', 6" facing west

floor 0 "Basement"
…
fixture rec piano centered

Define an object above its first use — the top of the document, before the first floor, is the natural spot. Custom objects work on walls and free-standing alike. By default one draws as a plain box with its label centered — three clauses give it a real shape:

shape <name> borrows a built-in symbol, scaled to the object's footprint: any fixture type (grand-piano, upright-piano, sofa, chair, tub, …) plus round (an ellipse filling the box) and box. So define piano 5' x 6'6" "Baby Grand" shape grand-piano draws a baby grand — keyboard along the front, curved tail behind.
outline <walk> close replaces the w x d with the same compass walk rooms use, for orthogonal silhouettes — an L-shaped desk, a sectional. The footprint is the walk's bounding box: define desk outline E 6' S 2' W 3'6" S 2'6" W 2'6" close "Desk".
path … draws anything, SVG-style, in the object's own coordinates (from its north-west corner, x east and y south, the front along y = depth). Commands are absolute: M move, L line, H/V horizontal/vertical line, C cubic and Q quadratic curves, Z close. Several subpaths are fine (start each with M): define bath 5' x 2'6" path M 0 0 H 5' V 2'6" H 0 Z M 6" 4" H 4'6" V 2'2" H 6" Z.

Whatever the shape, facing turns the whole drawing (a grand-piano facing west has its keyboard to the west), and a size on the fixture line stretches it to that footprint.

Floors & stairs

floor <number> "Title" starts a storey; everything after it belongs to that floor (use 0 or a negative number for a basement). The preview shows one floor at a time — the tabs are ordered by floor number. Room names are per-floor, so every storey can have its own bath.

All floors share one origin, so the same relative placements stack rooms exactly on top of each other — the easiest way to align a stair shaft:

floor 1 "Main Floor"
room living 16' x 13'
room hall   5' x 9'   south of living, align west
stairs hall 3' x 9' up, along west

floor 2 "Second Floor"
room bedroom 16' x 13'
room landing 5' x 9'  south of bedroom, align west   # lands over the hall
stairs landing 3' x 9' down, along west              # same shaft

Each floor's stairs statement draws the flight you see on that floor (up or down labels the arrow). {draft} checks that flights stack: an up with no stairs over the same spot on the floor above gets a warning in the issue strip.

Site plans — the lot, the land, the house on it

A site sheet draws everything outside the walls: the surveyed lot, setbacks, ground contours, the house footprint, the driveway, wells, septic, trees. It appears as its own tab beside the floors. Start one with site, then read the lot straight off the plat — one course per line, clockwise from the point of beginning:

site "Lot 7, Loon Lake" scale 1"=20' north up
lot "LOT 7" S 77°30'00" E 150' "IPF"
course S 12°30'00" W 120' "IPF"
course S 45°00'00" W 60'
course N 82°03'44" W 118.14'
course N 12°30'00" E 180' "IPF"
setback 30'
setback 50' course 1

site takes a title, a scale (1"=30', 1:500, or just 30; the default is 1" = 20') and north — up, left, right, down or degrees — to turn the drawing the way the plat is drawn. Bearings are always true; only the sheet rotates.
lot + course: surveyor's bearings and distances — N 87°35'24" E 210.48' (also N 87-35-24 E, N 87.59 E, plain NE/S, or az 92.5). Courses may follow the lot line inline or on course lines below it. The figure closes itself back to the start; if the courses miss by more than half a foot the issue strip says by how much. A quoted string after a course labels the monument at its end ("IRF", "IPF"); one after lot labels the parcel. The area is computed and written at the centre.
setback 25' draws the building line inside every course; setback 50' course 1 overrides one side (the front). A building that crosses it — or leaves the lot — gets a warning.
Coordinates on a site are x, y from the point of beginning (x east, y south), the same convention as at inside a room.

road "Loon Lake Road" along course 1 width 50' "State Route 12"
building from floor 1 at 50', 75' "Cottage"
building shed 12' x 10' at 120', 40'
driveway 10' from 76', -10' to 66', 50' to 60', 72'
well at 25', 60' "Well"
septic at 95', 95'
drainfield 40' x 24' at 90', 110'
tree 30" "oak" at 118', 60'
line "Loon Lake" smooth -60,196 0,204 60,210 120,204
contour 1010 index -20,40 40,45 100,42 160,48
contour 1008 -30,75 40,78 100,74 160,80
note at 10', 10' "Zoned R-1"

building from floor 1 stamps that floor's actual walls onto the lot (the north-west corner of its walls at at; rotate 10 turns it clockwise). building <w> x <d> at … draws a plain footprint.
road draws the right-of-way beyond one course (edge line, dashed centre line, name); driveway is a smoothed band of the given width through its points.
Features: well, septic, tank, drainfield, pad, deck, patio, pool, shed, garage, barn, pin, pole, hydrant, manhole — each works as its own statement (well at …) or as feature <type> …, with an optional <w> x <d>, rotate <deg> and a "Label". Point symbols (wells, pins) draw at paper size; areas at true size. A defined object can be placed with feature <id> at ….
tree: caliper, species and position; the canopy is a foot of spread per inch of trunk unless you give canopy 30'.
contour: an elevation followed by the points the line passes through (smoothed); index makes it a heavy line. line draws any other polyline — a shoreline (smooth), a fence (dashed).
note at x, y "text" places free text.

Every site element is tappable (long-press edits its line; a lot opens with all its courses and setbacks). Exports print the site sheet at its own scale, with a north arrow and a graphic scale bar.

Front matter

---
title: Lakeside Cottage
units: imperial        # imperial | metric
scale: 1/4in           # print scale: 1/4in, 1/8in, 1:50, 1:100
dims: auto             # auto | off
walls:
  exterior: 6"
  interior: 4.5"
---

Exports

From the ⋯ menu: SVG (vector drawing), PNG, PDF — printed at true scale (put a scale ruler on it) and, in single-file mode, a copy of the whole app. The plan itself (text + full history) is kept by Save to device — see History.

Comments

Select a statement (or a few words of it) and long-press the selection (right-click on a desktop) → Comment. A card opens under it; the commented text keeps a soft highlight — tap it to read the thread, reply or Resolve. ⋯ menu → Comments… lists every open and resolved comment (tap one to jump to it). Comments follow the text as you edit and are saved with the document.

Documents and history

The ‹ button at the top left lists every plan you have drafted in {draft}, each one exactly as you left it — tap to open, + New to start another, ⋯ on a row to rename, duplicate or delete. What you type is remembered on the device as you type it, so switching plans never loses anything.

The list's search bar searches plan names and their text, showing the matching lines under each plan — tap one to open the plan on that line.

Save (⋯ menu → Save, or from the History sheet, where a note is optional) writes the plan's text to your device as a file — just the DSL text — and keeps the same snapshot in the plan's history. Every save is a new file: name-A00.uni, name-A01.uni… The name is asked for once, when the plan is created, and never changes (the title at the top is separate); the version counts up by itself, and Save as new major turns A07 into B00. On desktop Chrome and Edge you pick the folder once and later versions land in it silently; on iPhone and iPad the share sheet offers Files; elsewhere the file downloads. Tap any version in History to restore it — the old text comes back as the current, unsaved state. Open from device brings a .uni back (name and version from the file name). Everything is offline; nothing leaves your device.