Annotate elevations, sections, and plans with the level numbers, dimensions, and grids reviewers expect on a construction or planning-submission set, generated straight from the model instead of redrawn by hand.
Turn on section levels
Level labels and dimensions on an elevation or section tile are controlled from that tile's own floating controls, not from the Insert bar.
Select an elevation or section view tile.
Open appearance ▾ and turn on Section levels.
Choose the tile's defaults: Labels, Dims, the Level word (default "Level"), a Number style, whether to Reverse the count from the top, what number to Start at, and a dimension size.
Section levels has to be on before anything in Section # below is visible on that tile.
Override a single geometry
Select a geometry in the view and click Section # in the Insert bar to change how that one geometry is labeled and dimensioned, separately from the tile's defaults.
Labels → Level number → Hide: drop the level number from this geometry's storey label and keep just the usage text. If the geometry has no usage assigned, hiding the number leaves nothing to show, so the label disappears.
Dimensions → Overall from RL → Set datum…: anchor this geometry's overall dimension to an absolute level instead of its own base, for example a basement at
-1. Decimals and negative values are both allowed, and this overrides a tile-wide "overall from" storey setting.Dimensions → Combine → Group selected: select the stacked uses of one building, for example a podium, tower, and basement, and give them a single overall dimension spanning the whole stack. Floor-to-floor dimensions stay per use. Choose Ungroup to undo it.
This section → Annotate → No: exclude this geometry from dimensioning entirely, regardless of which layers are visible on the tile.
Section dimensions already respect a tile's visible layers: a geometry on a layer you've hidden on that tile is skipped automatically, without needing Annotate → No.
North arrow
Click North in the Insert bar to place a north arrow on the current view. Select it and open its settings to set its bearing, in degrees clockwise from true north.
Level marker
Click Level in the Insert bar to place a spot-level marker, a leader line with a value you can edit freely, for example FFL 815.32. Select the marker to change its value, text size, colour, and whether it shows a leader tail and a level line.
Grid
A grid line is drawn on the live Giraffe map, not directly on the paper sheet, so it appears on every plan-view tile that shows that part of the site.
Click + Add to map in the Insert bar.
Under Annotations, choose Grid.
Draw the grid line on the Giraffe map.
A grid line renders on plan-view tiles as a dash-dot line with a labeled bubble at each end. It doesn't appear on elevation, section, or 3D tiles. A grid line can also act as a breakpoint for a dimension line that has "intersect" turned on, splitting it into per-bay segments automatically.
Grid lines don't have a settings panel inside Paper. Edit a grid's label or style from Giraffe's own map feature panel.
Other map-drawn annotations
+ Add to map also places these directly on the Giraffe map, the same way as a grid:
Viewbox: a polygon that defines a section or elevation view.
Dimension: a plain manually-drawn dimension line, separate from the automatic dimensions in Section # above.
Annotation line: a plain reference line.
Symbol and Symbol (behind): a filled or outlined shape overlay, with Symbol (behind) drawing behind building fills.
Label: free text at a point on the map.