Launch HN: Drafted (YC P26) – Models for residential architecture

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!

30 points | by PrimalNick 3 hours ago

14 comments

  • hyperberry 2 minutes ago
    I'll bite. I'm currently building a new home based on plans of my own design, literally taking a lunch break now from hanging electrical gangboxes.

    Do you have a background in homebuilding? Or have you ever built anything before?

    Visualizing the design is one thing, but the feasibility must be considered -- and often vetted through engineer(s) -- from the initial design phase. And even then, despite the best planning attempts, inevitably there will be some issues that need to be addressed 'on-the-ground' during construction.

    I think you may be onto something, and I believe LLM models could be capable of accounting for e.g. code restrictions, structural considerations, MEP conflicts, etc. Most of the 'knowledge' homebuilders accumulate is trainable and repeatable. And- at least in the US- most of it has been codified/standardized in the IRC. But still there are tons of little caveats & gotchas to consider. Maybe those details could be addressed directly in your system prompts?

    Also curious: what kind of "other files" does Drafted export "for the rest of the pre-construction process"? IDK to what extent you've used any existing home design software, but Home Designer/Chief Architect are capable of creating a (detailed) BOM for the entire build, down to every member of framing lumber. If the user chooses to enter price information, they can also provide cost estimates. A seemingly obvious AI-assisted improvement would be gathering price data automatically- say from the Lowe's or similar Big Box Hardware nearest to the user's location. And ideally keeping it updated as lumber & other materials fluctuate in cost.

    To me a really capable AI design software could also be capable of: - Basic electrical load calculations - HVAC/ Schedule D [ductwork] design - Structural considerations- e.g., recommending a joist plan: type/size/direction/spacing of floor joists + validating against IRC and/or joist manufacturer load tables - and a whole lot more

    I have a number of other ideas in case you're interested. Feel free to send an email (in profile).

    PS- are you familiar with BIM software (like AutoDesk Revvit)? There a lot of 3D modeling capabilities you could borrow that go way beyond floor plans and aesthetic architectural considerations.

  • ____tom____ 2 hours ago
    There is probably more money in this as entertainment than architecture. And less liability.

    How many of us have made house plans at some point?

  • cgillett 2 hours ago
    This is fun! I hadn't thought about how much possibility space there was in home layouts until now. Some layouts make a lot more sense than others.

    I've thrown some weird setups at it like a high bedroom:bathroom ratio and it's doing a great job at distributing bathroom access between the bedrooms, and arranging the bedrooms around shared spaces.

    Thanks for sharing.

    • PrimalNick 2 hours ago
      Thank you for trying it out :)

      There's an insanely big probability space and everyone has very unique desires/preferences when designing.

      I'm really excited to see what people come up with.

  • whymsicalburito 2 hours ago
    This is interesting and cool for entertainment, but it's extremely hard to picture using this as a replacement for an architect.

    We're building an ADU right now and the floorplan design was a very small part of what our architect did. So much more of the value came from the relationships he has with the structural and geotechnical engineers we used as well as the relationship with our city building department.

    This really strikes me as a product in search of a problem.

    Maybe a homeowner could use this for initial planning before finding an architect to use, but at that point you're competing with pencil and paper.

    • pbreit 1 hour ago
      How much structural and geotechnical detail does an ADU need?
  • nibab 3 hours ago
    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

    • PrimalNick 3 hours ago
      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.
  • summermusic 3 hours ago
    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

    • PrimalNick 2 hours ago
      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.

      • pbreit 1 hour ago
        I try to avoid hating but that's pretty rough.
    • tadfisher 3 hours ago
      Also they only support single-story homes but that image includes a staircase
    • stonogo 3 hours ago
      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.

      • PrimalNick 2 hours ago
        We had a bug with our furnishing generations that is now fixed, we are working on backfilling all of the old renders that had the issue. Hopefully this fixes most of the room rewriting that's happening.
      • pbreit 1 hour ago
        Bidet?
        • PrimalNick 29 minutes ago
          A bidet would be cool and something we can add to the roadmap!
  • realty_geek 1 hour ago
    Is there something similar to this which lets you visualize floor plans from listed homes when you are house hunting?
    • PrimalNick 23 minutes ago
      I haven't seen anything that can do that. If you're wanting to walkthrough a house that's listed, some houses have 3D walkthroughs.

      We are working on being able to upload a floor plan to start editing, which hopefully opens this door a bit.

  • w10-1 55 minutes ago
    As others have mentioned, building custom homes is the last place I'd use AI.

    But if you're considering a pivot, interior design would be a great direction!

    Given the space and furniture I have or could buy, what are my alternatives for flow and light and usability? What if energy or allergens are an issue?

    This could engage users and has natural add-on's for buying things that would help monetize with price discrimination. End-users could be happy to explore, but you might have more features for designers.

    You could fine-tune based on all the home-decorating videos and materials, add MCP for physical models (layout/positioning, environment), and use video models for ingesting current and visualizing results.

  • LoganDark 25 minutes ago
    This looks awesome for showing an architect what you have in mind. I would not try to replace one though.
  • twostorytower 3 hours ago
    ADU's are extremely popular in California. Are you going to add support for designing ADU/garage conversions?
    • PrimalNick 2 hours ago
      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 :)

  • roamerz 2 hours ago
    Going to give it a try! Would love to see an option for an engineering stamp for brace walls, hold downs, etc.
    • PrimalNick 2 hours ago
      Let me know how it goes!

      Engineering would be awesome! We want to get to training the model on structural constraints. We will start with basic foundation drawing, but will get deeper as we have the bandwidth to do it.

  • glerk 2 hours ago
    This is really cool!

    First thing that came to mind is that I would use this for a sim city style video game

    • PrimalNick 2 hours ago
      We've had people design a house in the software and then recreate it in the sims. We also added .GLB file types because game designers were wanting to put houses in their video games.
  • J7jKW2AAsgXhWm 3 hours ago
    Do you support 2 story homes?
    • amir_karbasi 3 hours ago
      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.

      • PrimalNick 2 hours ago
        Yeah - we are working on adding multi-story in the next 2 months.

        I'd love to have you try it :D

        Zoning constraints will likely be another few months beyond multi-story.

  • svemyh 3 hours ago
    Great product from a great team!