Design the building. Prove the numbers.
Give it a site and your planning controls. Build Design Solutions generates apartment buildings, townhouse rows, duplexes and house lots with floor plans, parking, costs, feasibility and the engineering disciplines, each checked against your controls. Then export to Excel, CAD and BIM.
No install/Access by request, no card/Works offline once installed/XLSX, DXF and IFC
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From an address to an exported feasibility in four moves.
Everything happens in one browser tab. No model to build first, no spreadsheet to keep in step.
Set up the site
Search the address to pull in surrounding buildings, roads, trees and terrain from open data. Where the cadastre is open, the lot and its planning controls come with it. Draw the boundary, pick it from the map or import a DXF survey, then set a setback for every edge and mark the frontage.
Set the criteria
Height, storeys, FSR, coverage, separation, unit mix, parking rates and the typologies to try, with Australian defaults you can change. Or describe the project in plain English and let the assistant fill them in.
Generate and compare
The engine tests hundreds of orientations, depths and typologies inside your buildable envelope, keeps the required separation, sets storeys under your caps, plans every floor and basement, and ranks the options for yield, amenity, sun or profit. Usually in under three seconds.
Refine and export
Refine the option you like by hand while the unit program, compliance, costs, engineering and return update as you go. Export an Excel report, CAD drawings or an IFC model for Revit, ArchiCAD and the other BIM tools.
Plan, floors, 3D and report, all from the same model.
Change anything in one view and the others follow, because they are drawn from the one design, not from separate drawings.
FloorsEvery level planned, down to the furniture
Cores, corridors and apartments with rooms, windows and doors. Drag a party wall to resize a unit, change a unit to common area, step down into the basements.
3DReal sun, real shadows, a presentation render
Orbit the massing, colour it by sun hours, slide the sun through any day of the year, then switch to the realistic render or ask for a photographic AI render.
EngineeringEight disciplines sized from the option
Structure, civil, geotechnical, hydraulic, mechanical, electrical, fire and the NCC architecture checks, each naming the clause it follows.
ReportQuantities, costs and the return, measured live
A bill of quantities measured from the design with editable rates, then revenue, GST, finance, profit, margin, residual land value and a sensitivity grid.
The full feasibility workflow, in the browser.
Site to spreadsheet without switching tools.
Site, zoning and overlays
Draw or edit the boundary, or find the lot from an address with its zone, FSR, height, minimum lot size and any heritage, flood, landslide or acid sulfate soils mapping, wherever the state publishes open data. Zone rules say what you can build. Import context from OpenStreetMap or a DXF survey.
Topography and services
Surveyed contours for New South Wales and Victoria, LiDAR elevation for Queensland and the national elevation model elsewhere, labelled on the plan and shown as a 3D surface. Record the water, sewer, stormwater and electricity at the frontage and get the demand, substation, meter and detention sizing with the connection costs.
Generative massing
Linear bars, L, U, courtyard, H-blocks and point towers. Choose which typologies to try and what to optimise: yield, amenity, sun or profit.
Townhouses, duplexes, houses and granny flats
Houses mode lays out townhouse rows with shared driveways, duplex lots and house-and-land subdivisions with a new road, or a single house on one lot with or without a granny flat. Every lot gets its area, frontage, coverage, garden and garage checked; granny flats are checked against the complying-development limits and shown with their cost, added value and rent.
Floor planner
Every floor laid out with lift and stair cores, corridors and apartments, drawn with their rooms, furniture, windows and doors. Drag party walls to resize units, change a unit's use to common area or open space, and overlay another level for reference.
Dwelling planner
Click any dwelling for its room schedule and a detailed plan: bedrooms, living, kitchen, bathrooms, laundry and hall with doors and sized windows. Drag partitions, slide or resize openings, and check minimum dimensions and target areas with colour overlays.
Basement parking
Ramp at the frontage, aisles and perpendicular bays, accessible bays near the cores and storage cages. Levels are added until demand is met.
Live unit program
Units by type against your target mix, average sizes, GFA, GBA, net sellable area, efficiency, coverage and FSR, all updating as you change anything.
Compliance checks
Zone permissibility, height, storeys, FSR, coverage, setbacks, separation, depth, unit sizes, rooms, sun, cross-ventilation, parking, deep soil, landscaping and flood floor levels, with heritage, bushfire and soil constraints flagged, each shown as pass, warning or fail.
Quantities and costs
An automatic bill of quantities measured from the design, from excavation, retention and piling to the frame, facade, glazing, lifts, fit-out, the services, sprinklers, EV charging, solar, detention and retaining walls, with unit rates you can edit.
Feasibility
Revenue by typology, GST, selling costs, land, duty, fees, contributions and finance, giving profit, margin on cost, residual land value and a price and cost sensitivity grid.
Versions, presets, compare and share
Save numbered versions with notes and a discipline, see exactly what changed, restore or branch any of them. Save settings as presets, add your own typologies, rules and KPI formulas, compare options side by side, and share a view-only or copyable link.
Watch the tutorial →Eight disciplines, sized from the option you are looking at.
Set the inputs for each group and the results, checks and plant rooms follow the design. The quantities price in the Costs tab, and the report and Excel export carry them. Every figure names the NCC or Australian Standard clause it follows, for the consultant of that discipline to confirm.
NCC class and construction
Building class and type of construction, adaptable and livable units, storage, bins and bicycles.
System, grid, slabs, loads
System by storeys, the column grid checked against the car bays, slab thickness, column size, wind and earthquake, concrete and steel quantities.
Stormwater and site levels
Impervious area and rational-method flows, on-site detention, rainwater tank, outlet size, ramp gradient and driveway width, cut and fill and retaining walls with terrain loaded.
Soil, footings, retention
Boreholes, soil and AS 2870 class, bearing, pad or piled footings, basement retention, rock, groundwater, acid sulfate soils, fill and contamination.
Water, sewer, fire water
Simultaneous demand and service size, pressure and booster, hot water, sewer size, pump station and the fire water supply.
Cooling, ventilation, lifts
Air conditioning system and cooling load, exhaust, car park ventilation and apartments per lift.
Demand, EV, solar
Maximum demand, substation and switchboard, EV-ready spaces and chargers, solar PV and battery, secondary supply.
Type, sprinklers, exits
Rise and type, effective height, sprinklers, hydrants and hose reels, exits and stairs, detection, FRLs, fire control centre, tank and pumps, bushfire BAL.
Concept-stage estimates for comparing options. Not an engineering design, and not a substitute for the consultant's advice.
engineering disciplines sized from each option
narrated video tutorials with written steps
export formats: XLSX, DXF, IFC4, OBJ, PNG, JSON, PDF
states and territories with lot or planning lookup
to generate and rank a set of options, usually
Take the result into the tools you already use.
Built for the first, fastest question: what fits?
Architects
Test massing options before the first sketch and bring numbers to the client meeting.
Developers
Screen sites in minutes: yield, parking, cost, profit and the residual land value you can afford to pay.
Planners and valuers
See what a set of controls produces on a real lot, and compare scenarios side by side.
Builders
Early quantities and a budget from the design itself, ready to refine with your own rates.
Fifteen short tutorials, one feature at a time.
Narrated videos of about a minute each, in the order you would use the designer, with the steps written out and a transcript on every page. Plus three quick start guides and the user manual.
Access is by request.
Tell us who you are and what you are working on. We review every request personally, set up your account and email you a sign-in link: no password, no card. Partners and testers with an access code are in straight away: enter the code with your request.
Everything in the designer
- Unlimited designs, generated options, exports (XLSX, DXF, IFC, OBJ, PDF) and AI briefs
- Apartments, townhouses, duplexes, house lots, single houses and granny flats
- Lot and planning lookup, contours, services, the engineering tab and the realistic 3D render
- Works offline once installed; your designs stay on your device
- New features as they land, and a direct line to the team
Building something bigger? A custom version of the designer trained on your own data is a separate project: talk to us.
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Your typologies. Your cost database. Your feasibility model.
We build private versions of the designer for developers and practices: your apartment plans and standards digitised as typologies, your design rules, your QS rates and bill-of-quantities lines, your feasibility model wired in, and BIM output to your template.
- Typology libraries from your existing projects
- Rules and ratios that match your design standards
- Connection to your feasibility spreadsheet or system
- Team accounts and private hosting on request
- Pro accounts upload previous designs, photos and quotes as training data from their account page (watch the tutorial)
Questions people ask first.
What is Build Design Solutions?
How much does it cost?
Where is my design stored?
How does the AI generate designs?
Can it design townhouses, duplexes or house-and-land lots?
Does it cover the engineering disciplines?
Which file formats can I export?
Does it check planning compliance?
Can I use my own site survey?
How do I get access?
Does it work offline?
See what fits on your site.
Request access, load the sample, and have ranked options with floor plans and a feasibility before your coffee cools.