> 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/beach-villa-design-workflow.md). # Beach villa workflow: brief, drafting and visualization Design a conceptual beach villa in Synaps, from a site boundary and AI floor plan to layout refinement, landscaping and interior renders. Follow a conceptual beach villa from generated layout into manual refinement, configurable openings, wall construction and camera visuals. {% embed url="" %} **Presented by:** Melos Azemi · **Published:** 2026-07-24 · **Length:** 16:06 Original video: [I replaced all my architecture tools with this alternative](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHWOV5lJudg). ## Sections at a glance
Chapter and summaryAutomatic source captions (verbatim recording; may contain recognition errors)

0:00 Start with a brief

Use the site boundary and a written brief to generate a villa layout.

When I started working in architecture about 6 years ago, I had to hop on multiple tools in order to complete a single workflow. So I had to do drafting in AutoCAD, then do the 3D modeling in SketchUp, do the rendering in Enscape, then post-production in Photoshop, and maybe even enhance the graphical representation inside Illustrator. However, today I am merging my architectural workflow in one tool, which is Synapse. And [music] not only does this have a phenomenal drafting experience, but on top of that we also have floor plan generation, which makes sense even function-wise. It can turn hand sketches of floor plans into an actual CAD drawing in your computer automatically. And you can also turn your floor plans into real-scale 3D renders just by dragging and dropping a camera and typing the prompt. With that said, let me show you this workflow in action while I do a complete conceptual design of a beach villa. As we jump right into it, you can see that I already have a side plan of the project, which we are going to go ahead and draw the boundary of it. The brief says that we have to do a two-bedroom home. So I'm going to go ahead and select the floor plan generator. I'm going to click with boundary while I have the rectangle selected, and I will go ahead and type in this prompt which says generate a floor plan for a single-story two-bedroom beach house, a 10 by 12 m footprint, which is 120 sq m, open plan living, dining, and kitchen along the sea-facing wall, which is the north wall, and [music] basically the primary bedrooms and all the other rooms. And I'm just going to click send, and in a few seconds we are going to have a fully functional floor plan generated. And the cool thing as you can see about this that is it does make sense function-wise. And even after it's generated, it's fully editable, and we are able to turn it into a full project documentation in [music] just a second. And turn this [music] into a very technical drawing. So, first of all, I do see some issues, not only with the functional things, which are not so much issues, but rather tweaks that I'll add that I would like to make in terms of circulation and what makes sense better. So, initially, the first few things that I see is that the asset placement has to

2:17 Refine circulation

Adjust the entrance, rooms and door arrangements.

be just a bit more precise. And once again, this is not meant to be like a final generation where you just click send to AI and then you actually get the floor plan. It's meant to be a starting point to get you over the blank canvas syndrome, which is where it's the hardest part is to draw the first wall, and then you can make tweaks as you go or even generate multiple options and explore stuff much faster. You can see right here with the rectangle tool, I'm just adding a countertop to the basins here in the bathroom. And duplicating that to the other side as well, putting it behind the layers, and then I'm going to move forward to actually make them align perfectly. Now, on top of that, I'm going to completely remove the walk-in closet because there's not enough space for that in the bedroom, and then I will go ahead and switch the way of the opening that the door has. As you can see, it has a very cool user experience in terms of how you can switch sides and everything. So, this is not only a very functional tool, but also, I think it's very delightful to use. And one of the other things that I would like to change here in this floor plan is that the entrance is way [music] too narrow for my liking. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to actually make the kitchen [music] a bit smaller. That way I can allow more space for the entrance. And I really like that the entrance has some sort of transition from the outdoors to indoors. This is going to help to um have that feeling of arrival, and also to have some privacy and to not be able to immediately see from the entrance, you know, the bedrooms, the living room, [music] and everything else. And then also it will work as a safe zone to kind of stop noise from the outside and avoid the pollution coming from the road, cars, and everything else. And then right here in this bedroom, I'm going to add a walk-in closet. As you can see, I can go ahead and click in the configuration of doors, and I really do want to make this a sliding door. And on top of that, I can also turn it into a pocket door, and this customization is so cool because instead of having to go through a whole library of doors and try to find the exact one, I can configure it with two clicks to my liking, which is a much faster experience for the drafting. And on top of that, I mean, it worked very well function-wise because um >> [music] >> it just saves space to not have like a hanging door go in there. I'm going to do the same thing here for this area. Now, this area was something which I was thinking a bit in terms of what the destination of this function should be. I thought that a pantry there might be a uh good way to use that space, you know, it's easy access to snacks from like the living room or even from the connection to the indoor outdoor, and then also a not too far away from the kitchen as well. And as you can see now, I am just drawing the shelves for the pantry, uh which are not as detailed, but just to kind of have it an idea of how these [music] fit the overall dimensions. Now,

5:21 Configure and furnish

Develop openings, finishes and outdoor furniture.

one thing that I can do is I'm going to go ahead and select the zone of the pantry here, and I'm going to make that with a tile hatch because it's going to be much easier to maintain. And I think this is very important because for example, in a zone like a pantry, we're going to have a much easier time to clean things up after things have spilled because a lot of food is going to be there, and basically we can do all the customization with the scale with correct kind kind orientation. I'm just going to duplicate that hatch onto the bathrooms as well. Over here on this bedroom, you can see that I'm going to be able to configurate the windows as well, similarly to how we did on doors. I'm going to leave an opening option for these windows. As you can see, the orientation is not set correctly because the window should open on the inside and not the outside. So, I'm just going to leave it on the outside and then I will do the same thing here for the other window. I'm just going to add another leaf. I'm going to make sure that it has a hung window window and the other one is fixed and then a construction with an actual frame and not just bare glass. And then you can see that we have the view of how it looks in the section and elevation and also in the floor plan. And I will click apply to get that on our floor plans. And then finally, for the better indoor-outdoor connection, all of the windows which connect the living room, the dining space, and the kitchen with [music] the actual terrace outside, I'm going to make them a sliding window, which is going to [music] be very easily customized through the window configuration. And then I'm going to go to the asset library, by the way, which has a huge asset library. You can just drag and drop almost anything that you want in your project. As you can see, I'm adding these sunbeds and then a coffee table, which is supplementary to keep stuff there and I'm going to make it just a bit smaller. >> [snorts] >> And then I'm going to go back to the wall. Now, this part I really, really like because this user experience to go ahead and add multiple layers with just one click to the walls, I think, is amazing. I am going to add a hatch for all of the layers which I am adding. So, there's going to be a layer for the insulation. [music] As you can see, I'm making the scale of it much smaller and also adding a stroke and a background to that layer. So, full customization per each [music] layer in

7:39 Detail the walls

Set construction layers and apply them across the plan.

the wall construction. And then also on the outside, you can see we can add a brick layer like we're doing right now or a concrete layer which can [music] work for any type of exterior material and I'm also making the scale that much smaller and a lighter stroke for those walls as well. And the other cool part is that I can also select the core wall and add another concrete stroke there. I want something more emphasized just to >> [music] >> you know give it really that feeling of a core wall and the rest of the layers you can see that I can go ahead and change the thickness of them to make sure that these look appropriate just like any real architectural project. So then I will go ahead and select all of the exterior walls that we have here inside Synapse and I can easily go ahead and copy the property of the wall that we configured it in order to paste [music] that same configuration to all of the walls which we have here in Synapse. I can just click to the eyedropper tool once, select the wall that we want to copy and as you can see now that is applied along the whole project. Now the only thing is that depending on the alignment of the walls you might have to reconfigure in terms of like the the layers and the order on which the layers are shown but other than that I mean this works perfectly fine and the next up just to add even more detail on the interior walls I'm going to go ahead and select them and I am going to add a hatch which is going to be a lighter hatch but also just the concrete hatch um to really give it that documentation look for architectural projects. Now I'm going back and enhancing a bit how the

9:10 Finish the site plan

Refine furnishings, landscape elements and dimensions.

furniture looks. I'm going to add a carpet right there in the living room where the sofas and the armchairs are um and this is going to be a very light colored carpet with a higher scale of hatch. I'm going to put that also in the back of the layers just to make sure that the furniture that we have there is set on top of it. And then just for some extra style points I'm going to go ahead and add this floor lamp right there and then also a coffee table, which I will rotate and make it the appropriate size for these sofas. Then I'm going back to the kitchen, add some of the fixtures, add the oven, add the fridge, and also the sink for that perfect work triangle in the kitchen. And I will easily just add the fridge by dragging and dropping that from the asset library, which is very well set up even with a search and also with the way that the categories are. So, it's very easy to find exactly what you're looking for. I'm using the polyline here to add another layer on top of the kitchen. And this layer is going to be for the upper cabinets. So, these upper cabinets I am going to go ahead and make them with a white fill first and then lower the opacity just to show that these are above the section line of where we have the floor plan. And then the stroke I'm going to make it with dash lines, exactly what you see on the screen. And maybe just increase the opacity of a bit and lower the points for that. So, then I just want to add a bit more detail to the overall vegetation on the outside, add some palm trees, add some trees that actually work well with the landscape and vegetation. And over here, I'm going to go ahead and add a bit of an organic shape just around the whole house for the gravel, which is just basically small stones that help with the overall setting of the landscape and also for the drainage of the home. Because that's basically where I can do and leave the gutters coming in from the roof, and it just works overall to drain any water leakage much better. And as you can see, I'm adding the stone hatch right there, adding a bit of a lighter stroke, and then adding some sort of organic shape as well to the entrance of the home here. I'm tweaking things up, and as you can see as well, there is a very good tool which allows you to draw any organic Um, just like any pen tool in design tools, but it also allows you a lot more customizability with the hatches, with the correct stroke size, >> [music] >> and all of that. Then, I'm basically just adding all of the dimensions here for the home. Chain link dimensions on all side. One line of the dimensions to go for all the openings and every single interception across that wall, and then one total dimension for each side. And then finally, I am going to go ahead and add the grid lines. Um, I just added a quick line. And then also a circle on top of that. Um, just to make sure that we also have a bit of detail of all of the axis of the project. Making them dashed super easily, super quickly. And then we can just duplicate this further along all of

12:17 Explore tracing and visuals

Demonstrate plan tracing, camera rendering and focused image edits.

the other parts where we have a grid line. Now, a very cool feature that I want to show you is that in case you have a floor plan which is a PDF or an image of another one or even a hand-drawn floor plan. Most architects start with something in most of the projects, especially if they're renovations. And what they do is that they go over the actual project [music] manually. But you can see that with Synapse, as soon as you drag and drop an actual, um, floor plan, it automatically detects it and it offers you the option to trace it. And you can see that once it does the walls, the windows, and doors, it automatically also places the furniture. And as I'm moving the image away, I mean, you can tell that it did a pretty good job over here. And I mean, this is amazing. It's one of those features which is supplementary to any professional workflow. [music] And it just makes everything much, much faster. And for the next one is where we actually can turn a 2D floor plan into a 3D render. As I place the camera starting point and the angle, you can see I can also press the focal length. And it immediately detects the furniture, also the height of the windows that we have set, the cell height, and it has the windows exactly as we configured them. I type in a very detailed prompt, and as I press render, you can see that it did an amazing job to turn that floor plan into this render. [music] The only error here is that it has added that window on the accent wall, but as I click segment, you can see that this makes a very good job in terms of making editable every single object inside the render separately. So then I can just click remove, and as you can see, we have the wall exactly as we needed to. And above that, if you click a wall, you can see you can change [music] the wallpaper or the wall color. If you click on a light, you can turn it on or off. And then you can even edit this further with a prompt. So for example, I just added add a TV stand with TV add a TV stand with a TV in that accent wall with something that matches the rest of the aesthetics of this project. And in a few seconds, you can see the output, and I mean, this is simply amazing because you can do everything in one tool. And then right here for the couch, or I mean, the armchair, I'm just replacing it with something that I found on the internet. And I mean, you can see that it just did a very good job. It seamlessly placed it there, and you cannot tell that it's out of place or anything like that. And I go through the same process with the kitchen, paste in a prompt. I go for no style at the preset that we already have at the front. I click apply. And in a few seconds, we're going to have that already generated. In the meantime, I'm setting up the camera for another exterior render, which by the way, you can do both interior and exterior renders. I'm going to place it right from the sea line, from the shore. I'm going to paste another prompt there. I mean, look at the kitchen. This is just a simply amazing render, and then we have that for the exterior as well. With the correct prompting, it did maintain a consistent look in the overall project and a feeling. And this is just a glimpse of what Synapse can do. You can see that it was generated floor plan just from a brief, then went on to edit it further, maybe tweak it a bit function-wise, made it look graphically more uh representative, more professional, and more documentation-like, and then turned those spaces into visuals, which, in my opinion, are just breathtaking. Even me that I've used this multiple times, I'm always always always impressed with what output this can produce. So, if you actually want to try it for yourself, once again, you can do so by clicking the first link in the description to get extra AI credits. And on top of all that, if you want to see more of Synapse, and if you want to see a professional workflow of drafting, visualizing, and everything in one app, you can go ahead and click the video right here.
## Related guides * [Turn a brief into an editable plan](/ai-workflows/brief-to-editable-plan.md) * [Draw and edit](/drafting.md) * [Trace a floor plan](/ai-and-automation/trace-a-floor-plan.md) * [Create an interior render](/ai-and-automation/create-an-interior-render.md)