Launch HN: Drafted (YC P26) – Models for residential architecture
13 points by PrimalNick an hour ago
13 points by PrimalNick an hour ago
I’m Nick, founder of Drafted (https://www.drafted.ai). We’re training models that generate residential architecture from structured design constraints.
Product demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QkJ7jNU9y4
Residential architecture is still one of the most expensive, slow, and inaccessible creative processes in the world. Designing a custom home typically costs $10,000–$50,000 or more, takes months, and requires making major decisions before most people can even visualize the outcome. As a result, the vast majority of homes are built without direct architectural involvement.
Our goal is to teach computers how the built environment works so anyone can imagine, explore, and eventually create physical spaces tailored to them.
Today, users can design homes using simple inputs such as: - Square footage targets - Footprint shapes - Lot boundaries - Room placement preferences - Spatial relationships and constraints.
Our models generate complete floor plans and matching exterior elevations in seconds. Users can explore designs in both 2D and 3D, iterate instantly, furnish interiors, experiment with materials, and export CAD, PDF, and other files for the rest of the pre-construction process.
One of our newest capabilities allows users to draw any footprint shape and generate a complete home layout inside it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZJhBm7-OHI.
Over the past month, more than 120,000 people have used Drafted, generating over 325,000 home designs.
If you're building a home, developing property, working in architecture, construction, or AI, we'd love to hear your feedback!
I just looked at the very first one featured on your website ("Sprawling Dark 5 Bed")[1]: - A car parked in the garage perpendicular to the door and the other differently-sized car - A bedroom missing a closet - Attached bathrooms with multiple sinks - An office with a weird entrance from a dead space from the garage - External doors that open the wrong way (against fire code in most places) - Closet doors opening inward - Both doors of the top-left bathroom opens into the sinks (why two sinks?) - The top-left bathroom has a weird dead space between the shower and bathtub (why both?) - the random little floating feature in the middle of the open floorplan space doesn't make any structural or aesthetic sense - The two bedrooms in the lower left with the weird bump-out for the windows that make no sense - The window placement for many windows don't make sense and don't even line up with the 3D view of the house - The hallway on the left that turns and goes to nowhere for no reason - The additional random inaccessible dead spaces next to the bottom right bathroom It took me just a few minutes to see this. I hope nobody ever builds a home based on these plans. [1] https://cdn.drafted.ai/thumb/drafts/23025/generations/94729/... Edited for formatting, to add a few points I missed, and to add a link to the image I appreciate the feedback. They aren't perfect. The renders are just aethetic images that often rewrite the plan, the base plan that you can download doesn't include these. We are working on adding the generation for these objects directly into the base generation to fix these issues. They currently just serve as a way to get more context quickly so people can understand the floor plan better. If you're someone looking for a schematic design level tool that can allow you to explore design for free then this will allow you to develop ideas and figure out a starting point to work off of. We will continue to improve the model and build out more tooling for guiding it. Also they only support single-story homes but that image includes a staircase This is a lot of fun. https://cdn.drafted.ai/thumb/drafts/27019/generations/98723/... - off-bathroom conference room! - side-by-side toilets - garage inaccessible except via bathroom it's engrossing! Also most (but not all!) of the designs seem to omit laundry facilities. I wonder whether there's a pattern there. im currently building a home. one of the biggest issues is FAR which is very much driven by local laws. are you intending on addressing that at some point ? looks great btw. congrats Thank you! After we get through building out the basic design tooling, we plan to get more into designing a specific plot of land and will look at adding zoning related contraints. ADU's are extremely popular in California. Are you going to add support for designing ADU/garage conversions? Right now we are focused on single-family ground-up design. There are people using it for ADUs, but it's not trained to do that well. We plan to make the model better for ADU's after we get through multi-story houses :) Do you support 2 story homes? Doesn't look like it. From their FAQ: "Drafted is focused on single-level floor plans today. Multi-story homes, second floors, and basements are in progress and expected to become available soon." I'd love to see a two storey use case in the future! I have a few designs for a small plot of land in Toronto (2500 sqft lot) and would love to try and make alterations based on my zoning constraints.
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