TraceBIM — Quickstart

How to go from a blank project to a printed floor plan in about ten minutes. No prior BIM experience required.

First: turn on Manual mode

The manual tools are hidden by default. Out of the box TraceBIM shows only the redline + AI workflow. The steps below use the manual drawing tools, which live in the left tool rail — and that rail only appears once Manual mode is on. Click the Manual mode button at the left end of the ribbon tab bar and switch it to On. (The keyboard shortcuts below work either way; it's the buttons that are hidden.)

The drawing-to-PDF loop

  1. Create a project

    From the home screen, click + New project. Give it a name (e.g. "Trial House"). You land in the editor with a blank floor-plan view.

  2. Draw a wall

    Press W or click Wall in the left tool rail. Click the first end-point in the canvas, then the second. The status bar guides you — chain clicks to continue, Esc to finish.

  3. Draw three more walls to close a room

    Stay in the Wall tool. Click corners until you have a rectangle. For corners that land exactly on each other, turn snapping on first — press S or use the snap button on the canvas (see Snapping below). Snapping is off until you switch it on.

  4. Place a window

    Press N or click Window. Hover over any wall — a preview follows the cursor along the wall. Click to drop it. Esc when done.

  5. Place a door

    Press O or click Door. Same flow as windows. The door's swing direction can be flipped later from the properties panel — it has Swing Side and Swing Face flip buttons.

  6. Define the room itself

    Click Room in the left tool rail. Click each interior corner in order. When you're back near the first corner, click it (or press Enter) to close. The room gets an auto-number like 101.

  7. Add a dimension

    Press D or click Linear Dim in the rail's Dimensions section (Aligned Dim and Angular Dim sit next to it). Click the first reference point (a wall endpoint), then the second, then click again to set how far the dimension line sits off the wall. Tab cycles through snap candidates if multiple are in range.

  8. Check your sheet

    The tabs at the top — A-101, A-201, A-001 — are pre-built sheets with title blocks, and A-101 is the one you open on. It ships with two viewports: FLOOR PLAN — LEVEL 1 and DETAIL AT CORNER. The + tab adds more sheets.

  9. Fill in the title block

    Open the Title Block panel in the sidebar — the title block drawn on the sheet is not click-to-edit. Fields are Firm Name, Project, Address, Project No., Sheet No., Sheet Title, Scale, Drawn By, Checked By and Issue Date. Changes save automatically to that sheet.

  10. Export a PDF

    Click the Views ribbon tab, then PDF Vector in the Print & Export group, for a crisp, scalable PDF. PDF Sheet next to it is faster but rasterizes at 150 DPI. On phones both live in the sidebar's Print & Export section instead.

Reach-for-this shortcuts

  1. Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y — undo / redo

    Works for every edit. Ctrl+Shift+Z also redoes, and Cmd works in place of Ctrl on a Mac. The undo stack is saved locally, so it survives a page refresh.

  2. Esc — cancel current tool, return to Select

    If you ever feel stuck mid-tool, Esc gets you back to Select.

  3. V — toggle 3D view

    Orbit camera. You can click elements to select them (Shift to add to the selection), but you can't draw in 3D — entering it switches you to the Select tool. Useful to sanity-check that walls and openings are where you think they are.

  4. Snapping — S, or the snap button on the canvas

    Snapping is off when a project opens. Press S to turn it on, or click the small snap button floating over the canvas (just above the zoom indicator) to open the snap options: endpoint, midpoint, on-element, perpendicular and grid. Grid snap is off by default too; its spacing is 1 ft, changeable in the dropdown next to the Grid row.

Opening the editor without a project

If you open the editor directly (e.g. via a bookmarked URL) without a project in the address, TraceBIM shows you the project list instead of a canvas — there's nothing to draw into until a project is open. Pick a project or click + New project. Once a project is loaded the URL ends in ?project=…, and the canvas is yours. Clicking the TraceBIM brand mark in the top-left takes you back to the project list at any time.

What to skip during this trial

Trial scope. Stick to straight walls and non-overlapping openings. The geometry engine handles curved walls, but the opening logic has rough edges around very-close overlaps and curved-wall hosts — they'll get fixed before general release. The Column, Beam and Slab buttons in the tool rail are greyed out and marked "coming soon" for the same reason.

If something goes wrong

Your work auto-saves a fifth of a second after you stop editing — there's a save-status pill in the top header (between the sheet tabs and the ? help icon). It reads Ready when there's nothing pending, then Saving…, then Saved · 12s ago. If the server is unreachable it shows Offline — N changes queued or Save failed — N changes queued and offers a Retry button — click it rather than refreshing. Either way your edits are queued locally and replayed automatically when the server comes back, so nothing is lost. If a tool stops responding, press Esc and try again. If the canvas goes blank, refresh — your last save is the source of truth.

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