> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.synaps.app/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.synaps.app/video-tutorials/autocad-to-synaps.md). # From AutoCAD to Synaps: drafting and rendering Learn Synaps CAD drafting: trace a sketch, generate layouts, draw walls, place furniture and create interior renders in this video tutorial. Follow Melos through sketch tracing, layout generation, manual drafting, furnishing and camera rendering in one project. {% embed url="" %} **Presented by:** Melos Azemi · **Published:** 2026-08-25 · **Length:** 22:11 Original video: [Why I switched from AutoCAD to Synaps](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8suCiUfa24). ## Sections at a glance
Chapter and summaryAutomatic source captions (verbatim recording; may contain recognition errors)

0:00 Trace a sketch

Turn a sketch into editable geometry and inspect the result.

I got certified in AutoCAD back [music] in 2016, but now 9 years later, I found an alternative that has finally replaced [music] that workflow and in fact has elevated further and allow me as an architect to [music] just be able to produce work much faster and in a better user experience. So, today I'm going to actually cover Synapse, which you can find synapse.app in the link below. And it is completely free to get started and create an account. And [snorts] once you're inside this dashboard, I'm just going to go ahead and get started from scratch. Now, before I show you the manual drafting experience, [music] which you are probably expecting here, I actually want to show you a very cool feature. >> [music] >> So, we know how most architects start their design process with a sketch. Well, most of the time they actually have to get that sketch and then translate it back to CAD while tracing everything manually. Well, in Synapse, what I found is that [music] this sketch or floor plan that I drew, I'm able to just upload it. Synapse will automatically detect it. I can click trace and then I can just click trace floor plan as well. And >> [music] >> in about 50 seconds to a minute, it will actually get us a fully editable floor plan based on the sketch. And even if the image was not taken in complete parallel and if it's skewed, it will automatically fix that. [music] And it will also do an automatic scale check, which usually takes some sort of standard object like [music] a door and then scales the rest of the floor plan based on that. Now, something that I would like to emphasize here as well is that this is not supposed to be a one-click final output. Instead, this is something that you can iterate from much faster. Maybe the value is even more visible in a larger-scale floor plan. But, as you can see, I have the actual sketch here and if I move it away, you can see that it traced the floor plan. Now, it has [music] added this weird corridor here and the reason behind that is that it has gotten this kind of >> [music] >> pathway from the landscape, which we can just delete, and we can edit everything else just to our liking to continue and added this further. We can change the actual size of the walls as well. It has also traced the furniture, which we can move around, too. And [music] honestly,

2:16 Generate a layout

Explore floor plans from a boundary and a written brief.

other than like some minor stuff, like the door orientation in some places, for example, in the bathroom, this is [music] supposed to be opened on this side. Other than that, I think it has gotten like most of the stuff correct, which is absolutely amazing, and it still blows my mind. Now, another thing that I want to show you, once again, before we get started on the manual drafting, [music] is that if you actually use the polyline right here, I can just draw a shape. So, let's say something like this, which is [music] a bit more unusual, right? And what I can do is I can click on the floor plan generation here. I can click with boundary. While I have the boundary selected, I can type in two-bedroom apartment. And I can even be more specific with a prompt, so I can say entrance from the right side. It has an open living, dining, kitchen [music] area. I can click send, and once again, in about 50 seconds to a minute, we'll have the floor plan generated, which is still [music] fully editable even after the generation. Now, I would like to repeat this just to kind of get the expectation correctly, because in the current AI era, there's all sorts of ridiculous claims from software. This is not meant to be [music] a final output. This is just to explore floor plans a lot quicker, especially for like weird corners, where you're doing like multi-unit apartments, and you just want to get some sort of generations faster. Like, we [music] can just duplicate this boundary and retry again with another prompt. So, this is more so to get ideas and understand more. So, this is more to get ideas and generate them [music] much faster rather than being like a final output. So, you can see what it created based [music] on this unusual shape. And then we can do another test, for example, here. I can use the same prompt. I can say [music] two-bedroom apartment, and it will generate something different completely. And then we can compare, for example, layouts side by side. So, now we can see that we have another generation right here, and this time I did a three-bedroom [music] apartment. And you can kind of compare and and test things out as you go. Now, one other cool feature that I'm going to show you right after we finish with a manual drafting, which by the way has a lot of gems and cool user experiences in [music] there, is that I'm going to show you how we can turn a 2D floor plan into a real-scale 3D render

4:36 Draft the plan

Draw walls, configure openings, and define rooms and circulation.

just by basically dragging and dropping a camera onto the floor plan. But first, let's just start with a manual drafting. [music] So, let's get started by activating the wall tool. We can do that either by clicking this icon here or using the W key as a shortcut. And let's draw a 9-m wall by clicking nine and [music] clicking enter. And [snorts] then we can go upwards for another 9-m wall. As you can see, it automatically snaps us, so we get a perfect [music] rectangle. Now, if you're using Imperial system instead of meters, you can just go down here and choose the actual inches or feet [music] option in terms of units. With that said, we now have the exterior walls of the apartment. I can actually switch to polish mode, which is more so for like [music] graphical representation or markups and all of that. And I'm just going to sketch somehow how I envision this to be. So, over here, we're most likely going to have like a living room. We're going to have a dining room here with the kitchen [music] towards the end. Let's have the entrance with a clear circulation path right at the center. We're going to have the bedroom [music] to this side, and then we could probably have the bathroom [music] right here, right? So, this is just kind of sketching and then we have one balcony or a terrace, which is going to be accessible right from the living room and then also from the bedroom. So, with that in mind, let's go back to drafting mode [music] and I'm going to use the wall tool again. I'm going to divide this area in half and I'm going to change the wall alignment to center just to make sure that you are completely precise while doing that. Now, the interior walls, I'm going to select both of them and I'm going to change the thickness to 0.15 [music] m, which is 15 cm, which is also a lot more appropriate for this. Now, the bedroom might need to be a bit smaller because I like more breathing room here for the living room. And then what I will do is that I will actually draw a wall which connects to uh the right side of the exterior walls. I'll change the thickness to 0.15 and I will measure this to be 2.2 m [music] exactly in terms of width. And one thing that I don't like about this maybe is that this turn this actually creates some sort of dead end corridor. So, instead, I will actually close this [music] off for some sort of storage area and I'll turn this to 0.15 as well. And this could be very useful for like winter clothes or some sort of equipment [music] that you don't need all the time. Now, over here we will arrange most likely an L-shaped kitchen or uh basically just a galley kitchen >> [music] >> with an island, which we will check in just a second. Um and this is probably all we need in terms of walls as of now, but we can move [music] these around as we go. So, next up, let's add the doors. So, we are actually going to add one door here at the entrance. We're going to have another one to the [music] bedroom. We are also going to have one more here to the bathroom. And then finally, let's add one more here for the storage area. Now, the reason why I added the wall here is basically [music] that way, the smells and everything, the noise and everything else from the kitchen doesn't necessarily have a direct connection to the entrance. >> [music] >> And especially the entrance is usually known as a dirtier area and the kitchen being an area which is so sensitive to dirt coming in from the outside and all of that, we definitely need some sort of division between these two. I mean, it depends how closed of a floor plan you want, but honestly, I wouldn't even mind if we had the completely closed floor, but in this instance, I don't think it's absolutely completely necessary. Now, the actual width of the entrance door is going to be 1,100 mm or 1.1 m. And then we can leave some more space here [music] to add some sort of area where you can hang clothes or even put in shoes. Now, I'm thinking that maybe the storage area we could also just leave as a connection with the bedroom, so I can master bedroom with a closet here, which could work [music] just as fine. With that said, let's go ahead and add the windows. So, we're going to have a larger window on this side and then another one over here. And why I just stopped at this is because I actually want to show you a very cool drafting [music] experience, which is the window configuration. So, I'm going to select the window, and if I click here to configuration, instead of searching through a library for the right window, I can actually just click plus plus plus and choose [music] the right amount of sashes that I want here or actually take them off. I can also add a transom or remove the transom. I can also change the mechanism. So, for example, I can make this a sliding window. I can click apply, and I can see that [music] this is a sliding window and we can change its width to however we like. [music] And we can also do the same thing for doors. So, even if you wanted to keep the storage [music] here, we wouldn't necessarily keep a hinge door because it just um would waste too much space, >> [music] >> but instead we could just make it a pocket door, something like this. And you can see that it automatically fix that through the [music] window through the door configuration, which I think is a very neat way to allow you the control that you need on window and door configurations. Now, with that said, I'm going to go ahead and actually [music] use the room tool. So, basically what the room tool does is that it will add a hatch within the area and it also shows area size. So, I'm going to use the room tool on each one of the areas and as you can see, it automatically detects the boundary based on where the walls of the floor plan are. And we're going to keep it like this for now. However, if we do want to divide, for example, this without >> [music] >> having to draw walls, we can also use the room divider. So, we're probably going to divide this across here. >> [snorts] >> And this could be called the living area. And then [music] we can add one room, which is separate for the kitchen. And then another one here for the foyer. >> [music] >> So, what I can do is now I will make sure that these are at least aligned up to a point, [music] that way there is some hierarchy in terms of where these are placed. And we can rename them appropriately per room, so I can just double click. I can rename this as kitchen. I can then double click, rename this as living room. And then the same for this [music] as foyer and so on. Now, here for the terrace, what we can do as well is that we are going to just draw rectangle using the rectangular tool or using the R key as a shortcut and I can get started once over there. And then actually keep [music] this at 1.2 m. And then while we have the rectangle selected, we can also change its fill. So, we can go to hatch. >> [music] >> And we can actually search for tile. So, we can keep this tile. We can also change it to a more terrazzo tile. And then we can also change the scale [music] to make it a bit larger or let's just make it 2.5. We can also change the background [music] to completely white if you want that, change the stroke or anything like this. We have full control over this. And then what I can do is that I'm also going to use the wall tool while activating it with the W shortcut. And I can change the wall width with 0.12 or maybe [snorts] even less. So, let's do 0.08. And this can serve as [music] some sort of railing here. And let's [snorts] change the alignment to the right. So, let's go for something like this. And even this is too thick for a railing. So, let's do 0.4. And then we can also change the fill to be [music] just a light blue. And then we can also change the stroke of the wall here to be, let's say, five points in terms of the stroke. Okay, so next up it's time to kind of

12:15 Furnish and style

Place furniture and apply floor finishes.

furnish this [music] up. And for the furniture, we can go to the asset library inside of Synapse, and you can see that there are different categories [music] for the living room, office, bedroom, etc. So, let's go ahead and open these up. Let's go first with the bedroom. So, I'm going to drag and drop first the bed here. And [music] you can see that this is automatically added here, which I think is just a very fast way to furnish everything up. Then we can drag and drop nightstands as well. We can [music] add this right next to the bedroom, and then we can also add it on the other side. Now, one thing that I'd like to point out regarding the asset library is that if you actually just hover on top of these assets, you will see a small camera orange icon there. >> [music] >> And the difference between the ones that have it gray and the ones that have it orange [music] is that the ones that have it orange will actually appear on our 3D view that we're going to set up later. [music] So, I'm just making sure that I am actually deciding um [music] this beforehand when I'm choosing the assets. So, then we can search also instead of just scrolling through. So, then we can also drag and drop wardrobe. So, [music] this could be one. And then we could also add another one right in front of [music] it. So, these could be parallel and if you wanted to, we could also make this a closed closet. So, I can actually drag that wall over. I can duplicate this door. I can drag it right onto the wall and we will use a configuration now where I will make it a sliding door. I'll make also a [music] vertical handle and make it a pocket door as well. And [snorts] now you can see that we can also change >> [music] >> its width and we get a small wardrobe, a small closet, but nonetheless a useful one. Now, to elevate this further, I I can also add with a rectangle here something which will simulate carpet. [music] We'll go to hatch and then we can also add that dramatic >> [music] >> style hashing here. Let's also change the background. Let's increase the scale to three and let's actually put [music] in front. I'll also lower the points of the stroke to two and maybe even make the stroke a bit lighter to something like this. Okay, so now I will keep the bedroom selected. I'll add a completely white background on um [music] the bedroom as well. Now, for the bathroom, I'll go to fill and then we can change [music] this to tiles which are more appropriate for the bathroom as well. So, [music] let's also add a completely white background in this. Now, let's go to the bathroom category since we have it a lot [music] closer by so we can drag and drop a bathtub right here. We can resize it if you want to or we can also leave it like this for some sort of supplementary stand for anything we might need nearby it. Then we can also add the sink right here and then let's also drag and drop the toilet here. Now, the bathroom seems a bit too big for what we need actually. So, what we can do is we can actually leave even more room >> [music] >> the foyer and then also the closet, right? So, what I can do here is that [music] I am going to give some more extra room to the foyer and same thing for the closet here. And now these make sense a bit more in terms of spatially. So, right here, the reason why we're arranging the kitchen [music] like this where we have the sink on the side rather than being here frontal is because we have very limited lighting and lighting is coming from the side. If you actually left [music] it in the wall here, when someone is working in the sink, it will automatically block all the light coming in. So, this way at least there is some natural sunlight coming in the kitchen. Okay, so now we have some sort of like schematic plan where you can see the doors, the

16:04 Detail the construction

Build wall layers and explore drawing tools.

windows, some of the furniture and everything else here. Now, another very interesting part of the user experience that Synapse offers is a multi-layer wall. So, if I select this wall right here, I can add a layer to the left of it, a layer to the right of it, and we can actually add [music] different layers to this. So, we're going to select the core first and we're going to select a concrete layer. So, I will choose this one. I will give it a darker gray and then a completely white background. I will lower the scale of it to like one or let's do 1.5 and then we have that for our concrete wall. And then over here, we can go to fill. I can go to insulation. I'll choose this one. I'll rotate it for 90°. I'll also lower the scale to one. I'll add a completely white background and then a darker gray stroke. And then let's lower the thickness to .12. And then finally for the complete outer layer, I will go and use [music] the brick hatch. I will rotate it for 90°. I will lower the scale >> [music] >> to 1.2 or and and let's also make the thickness .1 here or .12. And then for the internal layer, this one will be very thin. It will rotate it to 90° as well, and a completely white background, too. So, now you can see we have multi-layer walls on the exterior. And now we can actually select all of the exterior walls, >> [music] >> and then we can use the eyedropper tool to copy the same configuration for all of the exterior [music] walls as well. And let's just make sure that this sits in front, and then we're going to have something [music] just like this, which I think honestly, this year's user experience just makes life much easier. Because since I guess most of you come from AutoCAD, you'd know that just to get [music] this you would need to draw a line all over the perimeter, offset it, change the hatches on each one of them, make sure the thickness is correct, draw poly lines to check the distances, all of that. We don't need to do that. I mean, the user experience is much, much, much faster. And by the way, all of the manipulation tools for like poly lines, and rectangles, all of these are completely available inside of Synapse, just in case you miss them from AutoCAD. >> [music] >> Uh but basically, over here we can use uh the Boolean operations. We can also use the trim tool just like we have in AutoCAD. So, all of these are completely available for us, just like they're in AutoCAD. I won't go ahead and demonstrate all of these because you're mostly familiar with them since you're coming from AutoCAD. It's just good to know that they're available for you just in case you need them for elevations, sections, or even in floor plans. So, now I'll also go ahead and add the grid lines. >> [music] >> And I will make it a completely dashed line, so this can have a dash 15 and a gap of, let's say, eight. And now that we have the dashed [music] grid line, and then let's also add a circle on these. And then we can also use a dimension tool, and we can choose the option of the chained and locked dimension. Basically, now we can just go ahead and add a little bit more of a detailed look to the plan with dimensions as well. Okay, so now that you kind of get the idea of how we can [music] draw a floor plan, and also take

19:08 Render and edit

Compose camera views, generate images and refine them.

it to an even more detailed level, I'm going to show you how we can take this floor plan and turn it into a 3D [music] realistic real scale render as well, right? So, we can switch to polish mode here. We can choose the camera tool. I can click once to place in the floor plan and [music] then another time to give it a direction. I can change the focal length here and you can see already a preview [music] of the floor plan turning into a 3D view on the right side, right? And we can also change the angle, etc. etc., right? So, then I can also go back to the floor plan. I can select the window here and I can [music] change the ceiling height to be at zero and the sill height to be at [music] zero and the height of the window to be 2.1 m. And then once I go back here, I can also type in [music] create a realistic render of a contemporary living room and uh I don't know, let's say Stockholm apartment, right? And we can click send. I'll choose no style here. I can click apply. And [snorts] you can see that in just [music] a few seconds we'll have this turned into a realistic 3D render. So, now you see how we turned this into [music] a render, which is real scale. And on top of that, the beautiful part about this is that this is not the end. This is not the final result in terms of you get a render and that's it because then we can also go ahead and click segment and what the segmentation does is that it will isolate each and every single element inside of the render and it will allow us to actually make changes to each of them. So, for example, you can see the text, the couch, the plant, the ceiling, um and the walls and everything else. And based on what we're selecting, it will also show the option of changing paint, [music] adding or changing wallpaper, same for all of these elements here, too. So, I can actually select the couch here together with all its elements. I can click replace element and I'll upload a screenshot of another sofa here. [music] And once I click replace elements, in a few seconds it will actually isolate, once again, just the sofa and replace it with the ones that I attached as an [music] image. And voila, there is the sofa that we actually attached. And I mean, this is just insane on how much control we have even after something has been generated. Now, we can also edit with prompts. For example, you can say um add a TV stand on the right side [music] of the image, and also add ceiling magnetic [music] strip lighting. We can click apply, and we can also make these changes via a prompt and not only by the segmentation. So, now we have this generated, and you can see that the ceiling lights are obviously overdone. All right, so this is just a taste of what Synapse can do. And if you actually want to try it out for yourself, you can do that in the first link [music] below. However, what you can do next is you can see me doing a full project inside of Synapse. [music] So, from floor plan to sections, to elevations, to visualizations, and all of that in the video right here.
## Related guides * [Find the right controls](/get-started/draft-and-polish-modes.md) * [Trace a floor plan](/ai-and-automation/trace-a-floor-plan.md) * [Generate a floor plan](/ai-and-automation/generate-a-floor-plan.md) * [Create an interior render](/ai-and-automation/create-an-interior-render.md)