One system · every discipline

Everything, built as one.

A building, its services, a circuit board and a chair are four designs on four pages. Here they are one system: one scene, one timeline, one sheet, with the checks only the whole can make. Click a subsystem, or any part of it, and its own editor opens. Change it, and the whole follows.

4 subsystems · 173 parts · 239 fasteners · 28 machines
0:00 / 2:31

Four subsystems, one build: change any subsystem and the whole follows: the scene, the lists, the sheet and the checks between them. Checks are early-sizing aids, not certifications.Open abcad

Arch

The building

A slab poured on the site, precast panels craned in and bolted, the roof lowered on. Change its length and everything inside it moves with it.

MEP

The services

Water, sewer and power from the street, then ducts, pipes, sprinklers and wiring made in the workshop and fitted piece by piece, sized from the room and the airflow.

Elec

The LED board

The same board the Electrical page edits, milled from a blank, populated by the pick-and-place, soldered and boxed on the wall by the light switch. Its editor is the board editor itself.

Mech

The chair

Two-by-fours cut on the mitre saw and nailed together in the room. Change the seat and the cut list, the nails and the build follow; the system checks it fits through the door.

Subsystems

Each thing keeps its own engine and its own editor

A subsystem is a design that already exists on its own page, wrapped with where it sits in the world and what it needs from the others: the services take the building's length, the board sits by the services' light switch, the chair stands in the room. Nothing is redrawn for the system; the same scene modules draw in their own corner of one stage, in their own units.

  • · One schedule: every subsystem's steps laid end to end, every id prefixed, so a click reads chair/seat-4
  • · One ground, one camera, one set of tags: the keys and labels of each scene carried into the world
  • · Rebuilt one subsystem at a time: dragging a part in the board editor rebuilds the box on the wall and nothing else

Checks between the subsystems

What only the whole can tell you

Each subsystem checks itself as it does on its own page. The system adds the checks that cross the lines: whether the chair fits through the door, whether the box on the wall is clear of the wiring and the pipes, whether the chair stands clear of the fixtures. Widen the seat, move the switch's wiring, lengthen the building: the answers change as you edit.

  • · Materials, parts and fasteners of every subsystem in one list, grouped by subsystem
  • · One instruction sheet, chaptered by subsystem, with every step's machine and fasteners
  • · Every editor live: design fields for the building, the services and the chair; the board editor for the board

The checks and the sizes are early-sizing aids for design. They are not certifications or stamped calculations.