Reading a drawing is not the same as rebuilding it
I wanted to see a house before and after its renovation. I had the architectural plans, sections and elevations, followed by the electrical, plumbing, heating and structural drawings. I used an AI assistant to turn those documents into an interactive model in the browser.
Useful did not mean correct. The first roof had exposed triangular gables. The roof plan showed shallow slopes enclosed between straight-topped end walls. The entrance had acquired a basement volume it should not have had. And the stairs looked like stairs until you tried to follow them.
Those details needed correction. A plausible shape is a starting point; the plans and checks against the actual house decide whether it represents the house.
What this model shows
The two versions share a coordinate system. The renovation adds 200 mm of external insulation, changes openings and partitions, rebuilds the roof, and encloses the balcony as a winter garden. The proposed finish is light grey with darker grey details.
The internal flight uses 15 rises and the balanced turn drawn in the plan. The basement has a separate straight flight from a raised landing. The front entrance uses the three 140 mm rises and 270 mm goings marked in the drawing. The floor build-up meets those landings without gaps. Floors can be isolated or separated to inspect the connections.
Electrical, water, waste and heating geometry is traced from the proposed installation drawings. Lighting and socket circuits use separate colours; so do hot and cold water. The heating waves outline zones. They are not a literal drawing of every underfloor coil.
Assumptions worth keeping visible
- The old roof heights differ between the section and elevations. The model uses the section’s +6.680 m ridge and +6.030 m eaves.
- The proposed section gives +7.175 m at the ridge and +6.245 m at the eaves. Combined with the roof plan’s 5.13 m half-span, that is about 10.28°, beside a nominal 10° callout. The plan footprint is preserved.
- Cable and pipe heights are approximate where the plans do not give them. The gas connection comes from the report; there is no gas-routing drawing.
- Truss positions follow an indicative layout. The supplier still owns the final structural design. The visible web members and railing profiles are simplified.
- The entrance has a raised floor and subfloor space, as clarified during reconstruction. It is not a basement room.
- Street View was partly obscured by trees. The original render texture is an approximation, and the site surfaces are schematic rather than a survey.
The model is for inspecting the reconstruction. It is not a set of construction instructions.
Sources and implementation
The geometry comes from VBS projekce’s architectural, installation and structural documentation, dated 2024. The supplied source sheets remain private; this page contains the reconstructed geometry and traced service lines.
Winter-garden frame and glazing details use Hobbytec’s ZANIA VISION product photographs as a visual reference. That product uses double glazing; the project specifies triple glazing. This is a reference for appearance, not a selected product.
Three.js renders the model. The page uses the blog’s shared controls and light/dark appearances. The drawing-derived model and its limitations are the point of the exercise; the renderer does not resolve conflicting measurements for us.