Represent the built environment with ease.
The Building tool shortcuts to all of the Building Usages in your project template.
What is a Building Use?
The Building usage type is intended to represent built form. Building usages count toward FSR/FAR calculations, site coverage, and overshadowing.
Building Type Properties:
Efficiency
For Residential types:
dwellings
dwelling count
dwelling count per level
For cost analytics:
hard cost
soft cost
sale price
net rent
etc.
Drawing Methods
Giraffe offers 3 methods of generating building geometry:
- Rectangle: Start with a 90° rectangular shape. Great for regularly shaped geometry.
- Spine: Start with a single line. Great for long buildings or L- and U-shaped geometry.
- Irregular Shapes: Draw a polygon with any number of points.
Rectangle
Click the tool in the draw palette, then select the Usage you would like to apply.
Click once to initiate the shape and a second time to define the width. Pull to specify the length. Click to end tool command.
Spine
In the draw palette, select the diagonal 2-dot icon next to the Usage you would like to apply.
Click at each corner of the line. Double Click at the final node to exit the tool.
In the Properties palette:
Scroll to the Geometry section (toward the bottom of the properties form)
Select the width of the geometry.
Select whether the geometry offsets from the spine to the right, left, or both.
Irregular Shapes / Polygons
In the draw palette, select the polygon icon next to the Usage you would like to apply.
Click to start your custom polygon. Click at each control point.
Double click to end/close the polygon.
Building Examples
Using these simple drawing commands and the edit tools, you can create almost any building form.
