Tutorial 24: Plans & Sheets Model

Your panels already describe a whole building — cv-web reads them as plans. Open the Building workspace in the browser and walk the floor plans, roof plans, and foundation plan the model derives for you, alongside the wall/footing sections and the door and window schedules.

This lesson stays entirely in the browser. Where Tutorial 16: From CAD to cv-web carried one finished panel out to cv-web, this one steps back to the whole building: once a project’s panels and elevations are in cv-web, the app assembles a plans & sheets model from them — floor plans, roof plans, and a foundation plan rendered as drawing sheets, with wall and footing sections and door and window types collected beside them. Nothing here is drawn by hand; the plans are derived from data you already built. This is the capability cv-web’s Compare page lists as “Plans & sheets model — floor, roof & foundation plans.”

A live browser beta — read this as the map, not a click-by-click script

cv-web is in an active public beta, and the Building (Plans) workspace is part of it. Browsing a project is free; full in-browser editing unlocks with a membership (Membership & Tokens). Because the workspace is still moving, this lesson grounds you in what the model is and how to read it, rather than promising an exact pixel path for every control. The labels below are the ones the app uses today.

Note

This lesson also exists in the browser. Work it in ConstructiVision on the web — same steps, same values, so you can follow either and end up with the same panel.

What you will build

From a project already open in cv-web — the panels and elevations you carried over in Tutorial 16: From CAD to cv-web, or any team project from your cloud library:

  • a tour of the Building (Plans) workspace — cv-web’s plans & sheets model, reached from the editor’s Edit → Building menu;

  • the Overall Building Plan — the top-level footprint the model assembles from your panels;

  • the derived Floor Plans, Roof Plans, and Foundation Plan, each rendered as its own drawing sheet;

  • the supporting schedules the same model collects — Wall Sections, Footing Sections, Door Types, and Window Types — read from the sidebar tree;

  • a feel for the 2D / 3D viewport toggle that shows each plan flat or in the building context.

Before you start

  • You need a SimpleStruct account, signed in at simplestruct.com. If you do not have one, Create your account walks through it — note the account must use a company email address (public providers like gmail.com are refused).

  • You need a project open in the cv-web editor that already has panels and at least one elevation defined — the plans are derived from that data, so an empty project has nothing to draw. The simplest way to get there: finish Tutorial 16: From CAD to cv-web (which imports the tutorial project into your cloud library), then open it from Work with cloud projects.

  • A modern browser (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, or Safari). No install, no AutoCAD, no plugin.

Tip

No project yet? Any saved project works — open one from My Projects or import a .cvp file by drag-and-drop (Work with cloud projects). The richer the project’s panels and elevations, the more the plans model has to show.

Lesson

Step 1 — Open your project in the cv-web editor

Sign in at simplestruct.com and open the cv-web editor. Open your project — from My Projects if it is in your team’s cloud library, or by importing its .cvp file. The editor opens on the panel it last showed; the top bar carries the menus you will use next.

Step 2 — Switch to the Building (Plans) workspace

From the top-bar Edit menu, choose Building. The editor swaps its panel viewer for the Plans layout: a category tree on the left, a viewport in the center, and a properties panel on the right — the same three-pane shape the Elevations workspace uses.

The left tree is the table of contents for the whole plans & sheets model. Its top-level entries are:

  • Overall Building Plan

  • Floor Plans

  • Roof Plans

  • Foundation Plan

  • Wall Sections

  • Footing Sections

  • Door Types

  • Window Types

Each is a category the model fills in from your project data — you read them, you do not draw them.

Step 3 — Read the Overall Building Plan

Click Overall Building Plan. The center viewport draws the building footprint the model assembles from your panels — the perimeter outline, the roof plan laid over it, and a count of how many floor plans the model found. This is the orientation view: it tells you the model recognized your panels as a building before you drill into any one sheet. (If the footprint is a plain rectangle rather than the true perimeter, the model is falling back because it could not resolve the outline yet — a prompt to check that your elevations are defined.)

Step 4 — Open the Floor Plans and Roof Plans

Expand Floor Plans in the tree. Each floor the model derived appears as its own entry; click one and the viewport renders it as a drawing sheet — a titled, framed floor plan rather than a loose sketch. Expand Roof Plans the same way: the roof outline the model builds from your elevations shows as its own sheet, with the roof elements the project carries.

These sheets are the “sheets” half of plans & sheets: the model does not just hold plan data, it lays each plan out as a page you could send or print. Move between floors and roofs from the tree — the viewport follows your selection.

Step 5 — Read the Foundation Plan

Click Foundation Plan. The model renders the foundation sheet derived from the panel bases and footing data. Together with the floor and roof sheets, this completes the three plans the Compare page names — floor, roof & foundation — all three assembled from the one project.

Step 6 — Walk the sections and schedules

The tree’s remaining categories are the supporting detail the same model collects:

  • Wall Sections and Footing Sections — expand either for the individual sections the model cut, each labeled and selectable as its own sheet.

  • Door Types and Window Types — the opening schedules gathered from your panels’ doors and windows, so a repeated door or window is described once and referenced everywhere it occurs.

Everything here traces back to panel and elevation data you entered earlier in the curriculum — the model is a reading of your project, kept in step with it.

Step 7 — Toggle 2D and 3D

The viewport offers a 2D / 3D switch. In 2D each plan is the flat drawing sheet you have been reading; in 3D the same selection is shown in the building context, so you can see where a floor or roof sits in the whole model. Flip it a couple of times, then leave it wherever you prefer to read.

Check your result

Tip

This lesson lives entirely in the browser, reading a model the app derives on the fly — there is no CV-CHECK-LESSON24 command (that checker grades a single AutoCAD drawing, and there is no drawing here). Check the outcomes yourself against the list below.

You should now be able to verify all of the following:

  • You are signed in at simplestruct.com with a project open in the cv-web editor.

  • Edit → Building opens the Plans workspace, with the category tree, center viewport, and properties panel visible.

  • Overall Building Plan draws your building’s footprint, not an empty canvas.

  • Floor Plans, Roof Plans, and Foundation Plan each render as a drawing sheet when selected — the three plans the Compare page names.

  • Wall Sections, Footing Sections, Door Types, and Window Types list the supporting detail the model gathered from your panels.

  • The 2D / 3D toggle switches the selected plan between its flat sheet and the building context.

If a category is empty or the footprint falls back to a rectangle, the model has less to work from than it needs — add or check the project’s panels and elevations, then return to the Building workspace. Sign-in loops or a read-only banner are covered in Troubleshooting → cv-web (simplestruct.com).

Watch this lesson

Transcript (23 captions)

0:01 — Tutorial 24 — a panel book is not the whole set. Plans, sections and schedules are how a building gets built.

0:08 — Start from a sample building — a full multi-panel project, so there is something real to look at.

0:14 — ConstructiVision Sample Building — 60 panels. Nothing you do while looking around changes anyone's data.

0:20 — The cv-web editor, with your project open.

0:22 — Building mode is the Plans workspace.

0:25 — A category tree on the left, the viewport in the centre.

0:29 — Eight categories — the sheets a set is actually made of.

0:34 — The Overall Building Plan — the composite footprint, roof and elevation outline together.

0:38 — This is the sheet you hand someone who asks what the building is. Everything else refines it.

0:44 — Floor Plans expands to one node per level.

0:47 — The badge counts what is in each category — no guessing whether a level exists.

0:53 — Roof Plans the same way — each roof as its own sheet.

0:58 — The Foundation Plan — what the panels land on.

1:01 — Footings, piers and slab edges, in the same project data that drew the panels. One model, many sheets.

1:07 — Wall Sections — the cut through, where a wall's assembly is read.

1:12 — Footing Sections — the same cut at the base.

1:15 — Then the schedules. Door Types collects every door in the project as a type, once.

1:21 — Window Types does the same for openings — a schedule, not a redraw.

1:25 — Schedules are derived, not typed. Change a door on a panel and the type it belongs to is what updates.

1:32 — Flip the whole workspace to 3D — the same sheets, standing up.

1:37 — Plans read flat; the building reads in the round. Both are the same data.

1:41 — And back to 2D. Non-destructive, so switch whenever it helps.

1:45 — This is the set, in a browser, with no AutoCAD open — and it is the same project the plugin drew.

Where next

  • How the project got into cv-web: Tutorial 16: From CAD to cv-web — export the panel data from AutoCAD and hand the project to the browser.

  • The browser companion in full: Using cv-web — cloud projects, analytics, learning progress, and account tools.

  • Your team’s project library: Work with cloud projects — open, save, and import the projects this workspace reads.

  • What browsing vs. editing costs: Membership & Tokens — free viewing, and what a membership unlocks.