Quick start

ILX Drawings. Quick start.

A new project

Every project starts with a short questionnaire. Give the project a name, then describe the house.

Here we ask for two stories, a two-car garage, four bedrooms, two full baths and one half bath. Tick the rooms you want, such as a front porch, and pick the foundation, the walls and the roof.

Further down, you can set size targets, such as the living area or the overall width, and mark any of them as a must. If you would rather draw the plan yourself, Start blank opens an empty project instead.

The line at the bottom keeps a running count: nineteen rooms across two stories. When it looks right, click Create layout.

The layout

A few seconds later, every room is laid out as a tile, on both floors. The walls follow the tiles automatically.

The panel on the right adds it all up: 3,600 square feet of living area, four bedrooms, two and a half baths, two stories.

Drag a tile to move it, pull a handle to resize it, or type an exact size in the inspector. Edges snap to their neighbors, so the walls stay clean, and every change can be undone.

Across the top are the steps of the job, in order: layout, walls, doors and windows, structure, MEP, sheets, 3D and the site. The number keys jump straight to each one. Your work is saved as you go.

Self-design

Now let the program do the heavy lifting. Click Self-design. The list shows everything it will do: doors and windows, access and egress, floor and roof framing, beams and footings, wall bracing, electrical, plumbing and heating and cooling, furniture, cabinets, section cuts and details.

Click Run self-design. The result lists what was placed, room by room and system by system, followed by the checks.

Items you placed by hand stay as they are, and only the automatic items are replaced, so you can run it again after every change. Everything it proposes is a starting point for you, the designer of record, to review.

Here is the house in 3D, built from the same model. Drag to orbit, scroll to zoom, and click any wall, window or piece of furniture to select it and edit it.

Review the checks

The Checks panel lists every open item: structure, plumbing, bracing and the residential code checks, each with a short explanation of what is wrong and the code section it comes from.

Click an item to see it on the plan. Many items have a Fix button that applies the suggested change in one step, and you can undo it like any other edit.

Other items need a decision from you, such as moving a wall or enlarging a window. Make the change, and the list updates as you work. Work down the list until only the items you have reviewed are left.

Project setup

Before the sheets, open Project setup. The tabs hold everything the drawings and the calculations need: the title block, the design criteria, the building, the code checks, the energy inputs, the structure, the bracing, the materials and the systems.

On the Title block tab, enter your firm, the engineer or architect of record and the license number. These appear on every sheet.

Enter the project address, too. It goes in the title block, and the Look up site data button uses it to find the design values for the site and to make the vicinity map.

The Design criteria tab lists the loads and the site values the design uses. Check them against your local requirements. Click Save as my defaults, and every new project starts with your firm's settings; a project can still change any value for itself.

The sheets

Open Sheets to see the drawing set. It is built live from the model, so it is always up to date. The list on the left has every sheet, grouped by discipline. Click one to open it.

There is a cover sheet with the sheet index and the design criteria, the floor plans, the elevations, the structural framing plans, and the mechanical, electrical and plumbing plans. Change the plan, and every sheet follows.

Pick the sheet size and the plan scale for the whole set, and fill in your title block once in Project setup. Any text on a sheet can be edited in place.

Export

When you are ready, export the whole set as a PDF at true paper size and scale, or as DXF files for your CAD software. You can also export a single sheet. The calculation package has its own button.

The File menu has the rest: a 3D model as IFC and other formats, the materials list and cost estimate, and the calculation packages, one for each discipline, with its own cover and contents.

You can also download the whole project as a file, to keep a copy or to share it, and open it again later.

That is the whole workflow. For every step in more detail, watch the full design video. Start your free 30-day trial at ilxdrawings.com. Questions? Write to us at services@ilxstudio.com.