3D architectural design: construction document examples

Types of drawings and construction documents that you need for your 3D architectural design and to convey your project ideas in a clear and convincing way

The design team is primarily responsible for taking a client’s idea and bringing it to life using their professional skills. For this reason, many different types of drawing can be used during the process of designing and constructing buildings to achieve an end result that aligns with the client’s desires and to verify if the project is feasible.

Technical construction drawings are used by architects and designers for a number of purposes: to develop a design idea into a coherent proposal, to communicate ideas and concepts, to convince clients of the merits of a design, to assist a building contractor, or to make a record of a building that already exists.

In this focus article, I’ll show you some technical drawing and construction document examples that you can generate for your 3D architectural design using ACCA’s software Edificius.

Architectural design | drawing produced with Edificius

Working Drawings

Working drawings, and more generally project drawings, provide all the project information necessary to implement them.

In order to create executive working drawings, you certainly need a 3D architectural design software to generate the different 2D views of the model (plans, elevations, sections, etc.).

Starting from your 3D model in Edificius, you can automatically obtain 2D drawings complete with technical information with a single click.

Then you can easily drag and drop the single drawings, including images and renderings of your architectural project, into the title block of your choice and layout them as required.

All the views generated (plans, sections, etc.) are always dynamically linked to the BIM model. They get automatically updated each time the model is modified, or viceversa, and are ready to be presented to clients, public authorities or to be published on websites, social media and blogs.

Download a drawing model example

3D architectural design and photorealistic renders

Although they are still indispensable, it is no longer enough to present an architectural project on the basis of classical technical drawings: plans, elevations and sections. Often clients require project renderings and 3D representations to be able to visualise the project choices and details to be reproduced in a more realistic way.

What are photorealistic renders? What are they used for?

Photorealistic renderings are images processed on a PC using a specific software, with the purpose of realistically representing an architectural project before its actual implementation. In this way it is possible to communicate architectural choices in a clear and immediate way even for those who are not experts.

To produce professional renders it is fundamental to manage:

the model
materials
natural and artificial lighting
the scene set-ups.

Photorealistic render produced with Edificius

Typically, very long rendering times and a good deal of experience are required.

On the other hand, with Edificius, by taking advantage of Artificial Intelligence (AIrBIM), you can produce astonishing super-fast photo-realistic renders.

The integration of BIM architectural design and the AMD Radeon™ ProRender ray tracing rendering engine has in fact created a revolutionary technology that allows you to create professional renders without being an expert, without wasting time making adjustments, and most importantly, without post-processing operations with other dedicated software.

AIrBIM also allows you to change settings ‘in progress’ while the render process has already started and see the changes applied to your render in real time.

The images produced can be exported, printed or used in working drawings that you can layout directly with Edificius.

Archviz presentations

Have you ever had to present your project to a client and felt that you could not fully communicate your architectural ideas?

The client is generally not a technical expert and, therefore, you should opt for a clear and engaging type of communication.

Technical drawings (plans, elevations and sections) may not be sufficient to convey ideas and often static images (renderings, photo-inserts, etc.) give only a partial view of a complex model. A video presentation can help in this case to overcome these difficulties.

To make an impressive video presentation you can use BIM Video Studio, the video editing tool available in Edificius.

You can insert different contents:

texts
images
video clips
solar lighting
effects
artificial lights
objects visibility.

You can use videos that you have already created in the Edificius Real-Time environment and edit them to suit your needs. For example, you can add fade-in and fade-out effects to each clip, change its duration, add text (adjustable in size, background transparency, font and position), images or views of the graphics and set the sunlight.

The result will be a stunning video that actually shows the design choices that you wish to communicate to your client.

In addition, the videos you create in the BIM Video Studio environment are dynamically linked to the BIM model. In fact, each change applied to plans, sections, axonometric views and other representations of the 3D model automatically update the generated videos.

Export in various formats (IFC, DWG/DXF, OBJ)

If you need to collaborate with other technical experts involved in the architectural design process, it is fundamental to be able to export the model in various formats.

With Edificius you can export your model in the open IFC format, in DWG/DXF or in OBJ.

This is how easily you can collaborate with colleagues who are not using your same 3D architectural design software.