This article walks through a full Giraffe workflow — from starting a new project to producing a finished set of drawings — using a simple terrace housing scheme as the example. It covers site setup, envelope and setback modelling, massing, entourage, and building a Paper Space sheet set with plans, elevations, an axonometric, grids, dimensions, area tables, and a render.
1. Set up the project
Go to File > New Project.
Choose a template if one is available for your area — templates bring in useful context data (zoning, elevation, aerial imagery) automatically.
Right-click on the map and select Set Project Boundary, then draw around your site.
Press Space to enter edit mode and adjust the boundary — for example, to stretch it to cover an adjoining site.
Save the project.
Why this matters: saving creates the project in the Giraffe database, and the project boundary is what geolocates the project. Get this right before doing anything else.
Once your boundary is set, turn off any layers you don't need yet (zoning, elevation, etc.) so you have a clean canvas to start massing on.
2. Block out a building envelope with setbacks
Giraffe's Flows let you generate a build envelope directly from setback rules:
Open the Flow menu and choose a setback/envelope flow.
Press Shift + A to enter edit mode on the flow.
Assign each boundary edge a role — front, side, side, rear.
Enter your setback distances (for example: 6 m front, 3 m sides, 2 m rear to match neighbouring properties).
Set a height limit for the envelope (for example, 12 m).
You can bring in zoning and elevation layers at this stage for a fuller site and context analysis if you have time.
Move the resulting envelope geometry onto its own layer — for example, a layer called Planning:
You can create a new layer directly from the geometry itself; you don't need to go through the Layers menu.
In the Layers panel, fade back or turn off layers you're not focused on to keep the view clean and diagrammatic.
3. Diagram the site plan
Before modelling actual buildings, it can help to block out the concept as a simple coloured diagram:
Draw your building zones and parking zones as simple shapes (rectangle or freehand).
Round corners, set line width to 0, and adjust fill opacity/colour so each zone reads clearly (for example, tan for building zone, grey for parking zone, green for garden zones).
Use Cmd/Ctrl + click to select shapes and move them to a dedicated Diagram layer, separate from your working geometry.
Add a north arrow: draw an arrow shape, remove the stroke dash (via the clear button), and shrink the arrowhead so it reads as a simple direction indicator.
Mark the site entrance with a short, thin arrow or line.
Lock the Diagram layer once you're happy with it, and switch back to your working layer to start real massing.
4. Model the massing
With the diagram as your guide, start modelling actual building footprints:
Press R for the rectangle tool and trace your building footprint against the boundary (for example, a 4 m driveway strip, then footprints of roughly 12.5 m × 10 m).
Apply a usage type to each shape (for example, a hardscape "Plaza" usage for paved areas) — usage types can add automatic properties like height.
Turn the envelope layer back on (faded back) as a guide, then draw your building volumes inside it.
Set the number of storeys with the T key (type/tag/level tool) — for example, two levels for a three-bedroom unit.
Use B for base point move to reposition and align geometry precisely by snapping to a base point.
Hold Option/Alt while clicking to copy instead of just moving — useful for repeating a unit type along a row.
Use X to split geometry — for example, cutting one long block into individual units, or trimming shapes to fit exactly against a boundary.
Use Shift + G to pull a face back a set distance (for example, pulling back 2 m to step upper levels back and create space for a roof terrace).
Varying unit types: as floor areas change (for example, a smaller unit at ~157 m²), reassign usage types accordingly (e.g., two-bedroom vs. three-bedroom) so your area calculations stay accurate.
Adding cores:
Draw a small rectangle for the core (for example, 2 m × 4 m).
Assign it the Core usage type (a default usage type available out of the box; custom usage types can also be created).
Clean up any stray nodes left over from splitting geometry — hold Shift + S to snap points together precisely.
5. Add gardens and landscaping
Use the rectangle tool to draw garden zones, snapping to building edges.
Give each garden a slightly different colour/height so they're visually distinct — this is especially useful when several private gardens sit side by side.
Use base point move (B + Option/Alt to copy) to duplicate and position garden shapes efficiently.
Select multiple garden shapes and use X to split/trim them so they fit exactly against boundaries and building lines, then delete the excess.
Use F (freehand/fit) and Y (grab/duplicate) for irregular landscaped areas that don't need to be perfectly square, varying colour/tone slightly for visual variety.
Once your massing and landscaping are complete, turn off the Planning layer to see the model with just its final building and landscape geometry.
6. Adjust colours with the Usage Editor
Default usage colours (e.g., a bright purple) are easy to change:
Select a piece of geometry with the usage type you want to edit (for example, a three-bedroom unit).
Open the Usage Editor — it will default to the usage type of your current selection.
Set a new colour (e.g., off-white for building massing) and save. This updates the colour for that usage type across the whole model.
You can also override colours directly on individual geometry if you want one-off variation.
7. Add entourage (people and trees)
Open the Content Library and search for trees (for example, gum trees) and people.
Place trees around the site, then rotate (try increments like 45°) and scale each one slightly differently — varying rotation and scale on repeated content makes a scene look natural rather than copy-pasted.
Place people in key areas — entourage becomes especially useful once you start rendering, as it helps convey scale and life in the scene.
Use F and Y to quickly array and duplicate entourage items across an area.
Move all entourage onto its own layer (e.g., Crowd) so it can be toggled on/off easily later — for example, you'll want people visible in a rendered perspective but hidden in a technical plan.
8. Build your Paper Space sheet set
Once the model is in good shape, switch to the Paper app (beta) to lay out your documentation.
Add a plan
Add a Plan view and set its scale (e.g., 1:100 or 1:50).
By default the plan is cut at a set height (e.g., 1.2 m) with cut lines shown in black. Change the cut colour setting to cut by entity colour to have cut elements shown in their own usage colour (for example, revealing the core in white).
Switch the render mode to Shaded — this shades everything beyond the cut plane, giving the plan more depth than a flat hidden-line view.
Add grids
Click Add to map > Grid to place a grid line along a reference (for example, the boundary).
Each grid line is simply a line with a Grid property set to true, plus a label — label each one (A, B, C, etc.) and the labels will appear automatically in the plan view.
Add dimensions
A dimension is also just a line, but with a Dim property set to true.
Turn off "overall dimension" and enable intersection-based dimensioning so the dimension shows the distance between the specific grid intersections it crosses, rather than an end-to-end measurement.
Tip: dimensions and grids will look messiest when your grid lines don't perfectly align — take the time to align them precisely for a clean drawing set.
Manage entourage visibility per sheet
Move people/crowd entourage onto a dedicated layer (e.g., Crowd) if you haven't already, then toggle that layer off for plans/elevations where you don't want people cluttering the drawing, and on for renders/perspectives where they add life.
Add an elevation
Option/Alt-drag an existing plan view to duplicate it, then convert it to an elevation (e.g., a north elevation) at your chosen scale (e.g., 1:50).
By default, elevations calculate RLs (reduced levels) from every maximum and minimum point in the model, which can create visual noise from small incidental geometry (like thin diagram overlays).
In the RL settings, choose None and manually enter only the RLs you want shown (for example, 0, 6.4, and 9.6) for a clean, readable elevation.
Insert an area table
Giraffe can generate area tables automatically from modelled geometry:
Insert a table — by default it reads GBA, GFA, and NSA directly from the model since areas are calculated from explicit geometry.
If certain usage types (e.g., cores) are throwing off area efficiencies, you can use the built-in AI chat to adjust the table on the fly. For example:
"Give me a table of areas, just GFA, set core GFA equal to zero." The assistant writes the logic needed to query the model and rebuild the table accordingly.
"Remove everything that is not type building section" to exclude non-building geometry (trees, plazas, etc.) that may have been swept into the table.
"Give me the area of every green polygon" or "give me that as a total called landscape area" to generate a custom rollup — useful for values (like total landscaped area) that don't map to a standard area type.
Preview the result, then insert the table into your sheet.
Note: the AI chat can distinguish between different coloured/typed polygons and produce custom totals, which is useful for one-off metrics that aren't part of the standard area schema.
Add an axonometric
Duplicate an existing view and convert it to an axonometric.
Set the render style (hidden line or shaded).
In Layers, make sure any layer you want visible in the axo is turned on globally — if a layer (e.g., Planning) is off in another view, it won't show up in the axo either, and turning it on globally will make it reappear in all views. You may need to turn it back off elsewhere afterward.
Add a perspective render
Duplicate a view and convert it to a Perspective.
Adjust levels (e.g., split by level) and set the camera framing.
Turn the entourage/crowd layer back on and reposition people so they read well from the chosen camera angle.
Optionally round the corners of massing shapes for a softer, more presentational look (Giraffe supports a corner-radius property, or you can round corners manually).
Apply a render style — for example, an ink-and-watercolour render — for a more presentation-ready image.
Add titles and finalize the sheet
Double-click into a title block to edit it, and drag in your project name, sheet name, and a north point.
In sheet settings, name each sheet clearly (e.g., "Midrise Plan") and connect the title to your project data where possible so it updates automatically.
Copy title blocks between sheets to keep formatting consistent across your set.
10. Export to PDF
Once your sheets are complete, go to sheet settings and choose Download PDF to export your full set — plans, elevations, axonometric, and area tables — as a single document.
Recap: starting from a blank site, you can move through project setup, envelope and setback modelling, massing, landscaping and entourage, and a full Paper Space sheet set — including plans, elevations, an axonometric, grids, dimensions, AI-generated area tables, and a rendered perspective — in well under 20 minutes.