> 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/drafting-workflow-walkthrough.md). # Drafting workflow: tracing, openings and wall construction Learn Synaps drafting with plan tracing, walls, rooms, configurable doors and windows, furniture, construction layers and dimensions. An overview of moving from existing plan material into editable drawings, configuring openings and wall layers, and exploring a rendered view. {% embed url="" %} **Presented by:** Melos Azemi · **Published:** 2026-07-01 · **Length:** 22:18 Original video: [I found an AutoCAD alternative](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hinB0AIuISE). ## Sections at a glance
Chapter and summaryAutomatic source captions (verbatim recording; may contain recognition errors)

0:00 Explore starting points

Trace existing plans, import drawings and generate layout ideas.

I became a certified AutoCAD drafter at 16 years old and now 10 years later I think I found a replacement which absolutely has blown me away. So I'm inside synaps.app and this is a web-based app without needing to download anything and it has the best drafting capabilities that I've seen out there plus a lot of supplementary AI automations which are going to help you tremendously in your drafting process. First of all, I'm just going to show you one of the coolest features out there. If I upload a floor plan which has been drawn by hand, a sketch, even an old PDF, drawing image or anything like that, I can just click trace floor plan and it will automatically trace this in seconds with doors, windows, walls, furniture and everything else and it will make it fully editable without having to do any manual work. And a lot of architecture interior design projects start with an already existing plan uh for example renovations or heritage projects or anything like that. And the part which I think has absolutely no benefit for architects is that they have to go and manually trace everything over. This saves a lot of time and obviously it saves more time for even bigger floor plans. This is just a quick example of what it can do. But as you can see now it's placing all of the furniture right inside our floor plan. Obviously not all of it is perfectly aligned in terms of furniture and and as you can see it's missing kind of some stuff. But the cool part is that it's fully editable and we can fix anything out here ourselves. So if we just move this away, you can see that we have all of the rooms. Uh we can edit anything we want. So the walls or even this, we can kind of move it to whatever direction we want. Uh windows and everything else. So this is just one of of the cool features here. Now something else which is very nice as well, especially if you're looking for an AutoCAD alternative, is that Synapse fully supports importing DXFs as well. So, I'm just going to click import DXF right here on this button. And then in a few seconds, we'll have the full DXF imported right onto our canvas. Now, you can see that we have a fully imported DXF right here with full elevations and hatches and everything like it had in AutoCAD. So, even the sides plan, it has all of the lines and it preserves them perfectly. Okay. So before I show you the actual drafting u manual drafting process which allows you like full customization, I just want to show you one more cool thing which is one of the many cool things that Synapse has. And by the way, if you want to try it out for yourself, you can get it for absolutely free in the link below and get a bunch of AI credits for absolutely free as well. And I'm just going to draw a more unusual shape I would say for uh let's say an apartment. And something like this would take some time to figure out for an architect in terms of how to organize it. >> [snorts] >> But in our case, we have drawn the polar line. We can select this. We can go to floor plan generation. We can choose boundary. And I can just type in threebedroom apartment. And in a few seconds, we should have a full floor plan generated right here inside this boundary. Now, this is not meant to be a final product that you don't have to iterate after do any edits to it later, but it's a very good starting point to get over the blank canvas syndrome. And on top of that is also a very good way to test out multiple design options very very fast. So like you can try four or five variations of this in like 3 minutes um within this boundary which is very very cool. And on top of it it it's still fully editable even after it's been generated. And it's one of those that really does make sense as you can see even in terms of uh functionality. Now like in terms of preferences you can even be more specific. You can say like open living, dining, kitchen space. Now, this space, I mean, this makes I think spatially uh sense at least [music] from what I can see. Maybe this sort of like uh maze looking hallway. We can just kind of change it up a bit. We could probably just make the entrance wider and make modifications to all of this, right? But it's much faster than having to do everything manually. But you can see that it preserved the shape perfectly fine. We have the master bedroom, the other bedroom as well. It did not add one of the bedrooms that it was supposed to add. So like in this instance, we asked for a threebedroom. Uh but I think we can uh re generate something else and we can see the results of that. In the meantime, I can just type in threebedroom apartment with an open layout. I can click send. Now, while that gets generated, I can just get you a little bit more familiar with all of the user interface. Right here, you can control the layers in terms of what gets in front of which layers. For example, the sink is going to be in front of the rooms and everything like that. That way, the hatches don't come above it. And I'm going to show you a little bit about the hatches in just a second. And then over here, we have the assets. So, Synapse has a bunch of ready to use assets which you can just drag and drop. For example, this is just a cool ancient Pompei kind of asset library. But we have even more day-to-day usual ones like all of these sinks over here, the bathroom assets, the bedroom assets, the living room assets. And one cool part that we're going to see later on is that the ones that you see with like an orange camera and the ones that don't have an orange camera, but rather have it like transparent. Keep an eye on those because I'm going to show you something very cool in just a bit. And by the way, you can see all the assets are very high

5:23 Draft walls and rooms

Draw a compact apartment and define its spaces.

quality as well. Now over here, it regenerated the same floor plan. As you can see now, it has got a ride with all the three bedrooms. Um, and maybe the entrance, it goes straight into the kitchen, which is not as cool, but we could easily tweak that as well, and we can try out many other options. Um, in just a second, too. Let's get into the actual drafting a little bit. So, right here, we have the walls option, and I can just click W to activate it. We can get started. As you can see, it snaps very well. It has very high precision. I'm going to click 6 m for the length. And let's do about 8 for the length. Actually, that was the width earlier. And as you can see, it automatically snaps to be aligned with that corner over there. So, now, for example, we have the exterior walls of the of, let's say, a small apartment. Right? Then, right here in the middle, we can just quickly do a division. Uh, and what we're going to do with this is let's go ahead and we can change the thickness of like 15 cm. By the way, if you use the imperial system or anything like that, you can change the units right here in the bottom right. Now let's say that I want to make this wider. Uh the faster way we can do this is for example I can just click right here [snorts] and I can say extend it this way or both ways or just on the left side. But let's go for this way. And I can say let's make it 8 m. And I [snorts] click okay. And now it just extended that for 8 m as well. And now I can draw a wall right down the middle. I can hold shift in order to lock it in the 90°. I'll make this wall a bit shorter. And then I'll close this off right here. I'll keep those interior walls selected and I will make them 15 in terms of width. I'll divide this part as well for the bathroom. Now, we're just doing a small draft of a small apartment just to show you how this whole thing works. And then right here, I'm going to leave like a small buffer zone for the entrance. We're going to have the bathroom, the actual uh bedroom, and the living space with a kitchen and a dining area as well. So, now what we can do is we can very quickly use the room tool right here. I'm going to apply a room for the bedroom. Another one for the whole space right here. And then this is going to be for the bathroom. And we can rename. So, for example, I can just double click. I'll go inside. I'll type in [music] bedroom. So, this is going to be the bedroom. I'll make sure that these have some sort of alignment in order to, you know, just be cleaner graphically. And then I'll type in right here living room, kitchen, and entrance. I'll just do living room and kitchen. I'll click enter and I'll do this on the bottom left. Now, even in areas where we don't have like a a full on wall division, we can go right here at rooms. We can choose the divider. I'll click once on the starting point and another time right here. Uh exactly where we want to add a separate area. I'm going to go to the room. I'm going to select and click this once again. I will go inside and I will type in uh let's say foyer. I will make sure that this is aligned right there. And then this will be the bathroom. Okay. So next up, what I'm going to do is that I'm going to

8:27 Configure openings

Place doors and customize window frames and leaves.

apply the door. So the door tool is right there. I'm going to click once. This is going to be the entrance for the bedroom. I'm going to go ahead and create another entrance right here for the bathroom. And then I'm going to go ahead and add another entrance door right here. Now the entrance door, we're going to make it a lot wider because uh standard dimensions and a lot easier to get in furniture and and movement and everything like that. Now on top of these, I imagine we're only going to have openings on this side of the apartment. So I'll go right here. I will add one window for now there. And another one right there. We can go ahead and tweak the size on all of these. For example, this one. And then we can even just duplicate this. That way these are a bit more proportionate. And now I'm going to show you something which I think is absolutely amazing. So if I go and click this window right here, I can go to the configuration and I can add as many leaves or as many separate frames as I want. For example, what I can do is that this one I can make it for example this one I can um make it [music] open. So for example, as you can see right here, we are configurating all of it. And it just shows on the floor plan how it looks on elevation, everything like that. And the other two I will leave fixed. Um I'll just get this to the correct size like this. And then for example, we can just do the same thing on this other window right here. And I mean this user experience for the configuration is just so good without having to scroll through libraries and find the correct window. You can just click two buttons and get it to your type of window that you want. We can also control the sill here. You might be thinking on why we do that if you're just working in 2D. That's because I'm going to show you something very cool when we get to the polish mode. Now I'm going to extend this wall just a little bit because I want to make space for a small wardrobe there. And now I'm going to go to the assets. I can probably find something quite quickly if I just go to bedroom. I'm just going to drag and drop this bed right here. Then let's just add a nightstand on both sides of the bed. I'm going to drag and drop a wardrobe right here. We can resize this to not

10:43 Furnish the plan

Arrange assets and apply surface hatches.

leave too many gaps. And for example, we can also add like a bed bench right here. Let's just get a bit closer. I'm going to uh resize this to be just the size of the bed. Now, right here for the bathroom, I will just go ahead and click the tag. I can go to fill. I can go to pattern. I'm going to type in tile. And I can add a tile hatch pretty easily. I can lower the scale to three. I can um actually lower the stroke of the inside of the hatch. [music] So I can make it 3 pixels so it's lighter. I can also add a background so completely white background there or rotate it or anything that I want or maybe even make it like a gray stroke. U so full customization of the hashes which is absolutely awesome. And I mean, I didn't show you, but like there's a pretty good library of hatches here, which you can choose from, which is very, very cool. Now, here in the living room, I'm just going to place one armchair. And then I am going to go ahead and find a sofa, which fits well for our space. And then I will draw a rectangle, which we will turn into something which looks like a rug. [music] We can just apply this hatch. Let's add a completely white background to it. Then we can increase the scale to like 2.5. And let's make sure that these two assets are in front. Also, I'm going to select these other hatches and just add a completely white background to them as well. So then we can choose a coffee table. Something like this. And we can add just for extra then we can add like a TV console right there. And then for extra style points, we can just add a floor lamp, which looks something like this, which I think gives it a little bit of life. Then I'll just move this door a bit here. And then I'll duplicate this wardrobe. Um, this doesn't per say mean that we're going to use this for clothes, more so for like shoes or hanging clothes or maybe even a mirror there. And then let's go to kitchen. We can apply these cabinets right here. I'm just going to add these filler panels. Uh let's make the stroke grayish. So, let's duplicate this on the other side as well. And we're going to need a sink here. So, I can just type in sink. Uh let's just add a smaller one that doesn't take up too much space. And then we can go for like a dining table, which is not too big and fits maybe three to four people. Okay. And then once again, just for extra style points, I'll add this onto our table right here. And we probably could add this to our table as well. Once again, just for extra style points. I mean, this looks cool. And and maybe beautiful drawings is not all what architecture is about, but it just adds a bit more character to everything. Now, let me go to the bathroom assets. I'll go ahead and just add a bathtub here quickly. I can resize it to make it look bigger. We could even just have like a shower there. Here on

13:48 Detail and dimension

Add wall construction layers and drawing dimensions.

the sides, we could have some sort of cabinet just for extra storage here in the bathroom as well. I'll just make sure this is at front. And then I'll extend this. [snorts] Actually, I think I'll just rotate this over here. I'll drag and drop um this toilet seat right there. And then we can kind of move that away from the shower a little bit even though there's not like there's going to be a weird gap otherwise. So I might as well just continue it. Okay. So we did add some furniture. We did populate it. Now I'm going to show you something else which absolutely blows my mind every time. So if I just click this exterior wall I can just click add. Right. I can click add right again. As you can see now we have multiple layers in the walls. Now on top of that what I can do is that I can choose this layer to be 16 cm and then this one for example to be 0.05 m and now you can see we have these three layers will these three different thicknesses. Now on top of that we can choose what kind of hash we want in each layer. So for example in this one I'll [snorts] go ahead and type in insulation. I will use this stroke. I will rotate it by 90°. I will make this smaller and I will add a background hatch. So now we have the insulation layer here. I mean this is so cool to work with. And by the way, you can move these around and change them, which I think is absolutely brilliant idea and and very fast to draw in. And then I can just go ahead and use a concrete hatch right here for this outside part. A much smaller a much smaller scale. And then also a background right here. And then finally for the core, I'm going to go ahead and use this concrete hatch. Let's go for a darker stroke with a fully white background. Let's make the scale 1.5. And we have something like this for this wall. Now, the cool part is that I can just select all of these other walls and I can apply these properties in. And now we have all of them with the same style for the serial walls as well. I'm not going to add multiple layers, but I will add a hatch for them as well. I'll just apply this concrete hatch, darker stroke. Let's make a smaller scale. I'll just do two for this. And then a completely white background as well. And now [snorts] we have this floor plan right here, which I think um I mean the whole workflow is just absolutely amazing in my opinion. I feel like the hatches are a bit too busy. So what I'm going to do is that I'm going to select this interior hatches. I'll go to wood and and I will just make the whole stroke like 30% or maybe 40%. And the same thing here for the bathroom because it was looking just way too busy and the everything was competing with each other. And now we have a clear hierarchy of the actual walls. Now on top of all of this just to show you like a full documentation process, we can even go to dimensions. We can choose locked and chain dimensions at the same time. Once on the starting point, another time where we want to take the dimension. Let's go just a little bit backwards to like uh we'll just say 1 m from the starting point and then we can continue with the rest just like this super quickly and easily. So now we have added the dimensions as well. I mean we can very easily add annotations you know we have the leaders the arrows uh we can add all the axis as well. One more thing which [snorts] is worth noting in my opinion is that you can also have a door configuration just like we did with the windows. For example, if there's like not enough room for like a hanging door, we can do like a pocket door and everything like that. On top of all of this, if we switch to polish mode right here, we have a bunch of tools which are more so for like graphic presentation, the pen tool, but the lasso tools. And these lasso tools are applicable for this camera right here. And now what you can do with this camera is absolutely insane in my opinion because if I just click once for

17:40 Render and refine

Create camera images and edit objects and materials.

the starting point and another time for the direction. You can see that it will show the space in 3D. But we can also have like a wider view, we can move this backwards and it will update all itself. And if I actually go back to drafting mode and I do like a zero uh cell and then 2,200 mm height. And if I go back right here to the camera and let's just say I just make a small rotation, you will see that it will automatically update the windows as well, which I think is pretty awesome. Uh, now I'm just going to do like a parallel type of composition for this shot. And then I can also lower the height. So let's say 120 cm. And now right here I am just going to go ahead and paste a prompt. I'm just going to click no style. Right here we have even uh presets. And if I just click apply, we'll get a realistic render with just one click of placing the camera here based on the floor plan, which is real scale and not just another random um AI generated images. And I think this is so cool because you don't have to jump tools between AutoCAD, SketchUp, Nscape, or whatever else you create renders with. But you can do all of these in one place. As you can see, this render is uh absolutely stunning in my opinion. I mean, the lighting comes in well. Now the cool part about all this is that now even after it has been generated we can edit it further with prompt or boost the resolution or anything like that. But if I click segment I think this is one of the most wonderful things which like this tool allows you to use AI but still maintain control and customize it to your liking. So in this instance we can just segment the image and by the way as you can see it's fully like real scale based on the floor plan. we will just se um segment this image. And what this will do is that it will segment each element inside the render to be editable separately. So you don't have to type in like change this armchair or change this wall and then the AI has to guess what kind of wall you're talking about. But for example, like you can see we can select the wall. We can change the wallpaper here. We have some wallpapers ready for us to use. Um the curtains or anything like that. Or even for example, if I just choose this armchair, I can just click replace element and I can upload an armchair which I want to replace it with. In a few seconds, we'll have the exact armchair from the image replace right here for us. And yes, like as you can see, it also like tags them. And one thing that I absolutely love about this is for example, if you have like a lamp or a pendant light or anything like that, as you can see, it just changed the armchair to what I had in the image. But for example, if you click the lamp, you can turn it on or off, which I think is super cool because [music] depending on what it is, it understands the context and it changes like the modification you can make. So as you saw the wall, you can add a wallpaper. If you click floor, you can change the flooring. Uh you can change the element, you can turn on the television, for example, you can turn on the light. As you can see, now it turned on the light. It immediately applied a difference there. So this is just absolutely amazing. Now, let's try another one right here for uh the kitchen and the dining. I'll lower the height of this view as well. I'll go ahead and paste this prompt right here. So, now we have this image right here. And I mean, the chairs are a bit out of scale and this is not absolutely amazing, I would say. But like the kitchen looks fine. And then we could probably just make this look a lot prettier. Uh we could probably just say So now I can just select these. I can click select, replace element, and I can just upload this image of this other dining table. In the meantime, I can just get back here. I can place a camera and take another render of the bedroom. I will just go for a lower angle. And then I'll just do 0 mm for the sail, 2.2 m height, and then I will apply this prompt right here. And now we have had added this I mean better looking dining table. What we can do as well is that we can say add a painting in the wall and we could probably just add more layers with lighting and everything else and edit this further. And now we have this render of the bedroom which I think is absolutely stunning as well. But I mean you guys let me know what you think of this. For me this has taken the spot out of any other architecture tool because it just has everything in one place and everything that you need from drafting to visualization to even documentation and being as specific as you want. It's on the web. It has multiplayer collaboration, so multiple people can work in the same time on the same file. And if you actually want to try it for yourself, once again, you can try it in the first link below. And if you want to actually learn more about how I use this tool to do a complete beach house project, go ahead and watch the video right
## Related guides * [Trace a floor plan](/ai-and-automation/trace-a-floor-plan.md) * [Generate a floor plan](/ai-and-automation/generate-a-floor-plan.md) * [Draw and edit](/drafting.md) * [Create an interior render](/ai-and-automation/create-an-interior-render.md)