Software · Architecture & drafting

Architecture software online — floor plans, elevations and sheets

CivilOS is free architecture software that opens in a browser tab. You can lay out a concept plan, draft it properly with walls that have a thickness and doors that belong to those walls, dimension and hatch it, and plot the result to an A1 sheet with a title block, a north dial and a scale bar. It is written for architects, draughtsmen, civil engineers, builders and students working on Indian projects — houses, shops, offices, warehouses and sheds — who want to get a drawing out today rather than negotiate a licence first.

What you can do

Architecture work in CivilOS runs from a rough programme through to a plotted sheet. These are the parts you will use most.

Feature	What it does	Export
Create Your OWN Plan	Generates a concept floor plan for a home, office, shop, mall, warehouse or PEB shed from your brief — the first honest layout to argue about	PDF sheet, DXF
Space Planning	Builds an area programme and layout against National Building Code references, with a shared vertical core. No AI in the calculation	Programme sheet
IndoCAD command line	A real command line with the aliases your hands already know — L, C, PL, TR, EX, OS, ZW — plus absolute, relative and polar typed coordinates	R12 DXF
Architectural objects	Wall with thickness, hosted door, hosted window, column, beam, grid axis, stair and room tag with a traced area — not just lines pretending to be walls	R12 DXF
Layers	AIA and NCS naming out of the box: A-WALL, A-DOOR, A-GLAZ, A-ANNO-DIMS, so a consultant opening your DXF knows where everything lives	R12 DXF
Blocks and hatching	Over 200 blocks to insert — furniture, fittings, sanitary, vehicles, trees — and hatch patterns for materials	R12 DXF
Dimensions	Aligned, linear, angular, radius and diameter dimensions with object snaps so they land on the geometry, not near it	R12 DXF
Plot to sheet	A0 to A5 and ARCH sheet sizes, plotted to a chosen scale, with a title block, north dial and scale bar	Printed / PDF sheet
Import and IndoCAD Viewer	Opens DXF and DWG files for reading; the Viewer lets you measure and mark up a sheet somebody sent you	Marked-up sheet
Indo-Revit and Interior Studio	Take the plan into levels and walls for elevation views and schedules, or into rooms, furniture and finishes for an eye-level view	IFC4, on screen

Drawing for an Indian project

An architectural drawing in India has to survive three separate readers: the client, the municipal office and the contractor who will actually build from it. CivilOS is shaped around that.

For the client, Create Your OWN Plan and Interior Studio get you to something visual quickly, and Site Geo shows the plot on live satellite imagery with its area and FAR so the conversation about how much can be built starts from a number rather than a hope. For the approving authority, Space Planning works from National Building Code references for room sizes and circulation, and the plot-to-sheet route gives you the scale bar, north direction and title block that a submission drawing is expected to carry. For the contractor, the same drawing feeds Quantity Survey and BBS for takeoff and reinforcement scheduling to IS 456, IS 2502, SP 34 and IS 13920, and Cost Estimator for pricing against CPWD DSR 2023, a State PWD schedule of rates, or plain market rates — so the plan, the quantity and the cost are all describing the same building.

How to draw a floor plan and get a sheet out of it

Start from the brief, not the mouse. Use Create Your OWN Plan or Space Planning to fix the room list and the areas before any line is drawn. It is far cheaper to lose an argument here.
Set up layers. Draw walls on A-WALL, openings on A-DOOR and A-GLAZ, dimensions on A-ANNO-DIMS. The AIA and NCS names are already there, so you are not inventing a private convention.
Draw the walls as walls. Give each one its real thickness. A 230 mm external wall drawn as a single line will cost you when you dimension it or take quantities off it.
Place doors and windows into the walls. They are hosted, so they cut the wall they sit in and move with it if the wall moves.
Type your coordinates when accuracy matters. The command line takes absolute, relative and polar input — for a 3600 mm room, typing beats aiming at a pixel.
Add columns, grid axes, stairs and room tags. A room tag traces its own area, so the schedule of areas comes off the drawing instead of a separate spreadsheet nobody updates.
Dimension, hatch and annotate. Use object snaps so every dimension attaches to real geometry, then hatch materials and drop in blocks for furniture and fittings.
Plot it. Choose the sheet size and the scale, fill the title block, check the north dial points where north actually is, and print or save the sheet. Export R12 DXF for anyone who needs the geometry.

What CivilOS does not do

These are real gaps, and you should know them before you commit a deadline to this app:

No paper space, layouts or viewports. Plotting is a direct plot-to-sheet of what you have drawn. There is no model-space-to-multiple-viewport workflow and no multi-sheet layout manager.
No XREF and no LISP. You cannot reference another drawing into this one, and you cannot script or automate the editor.
No annotative text or annotative scaling. Text and dimension sizes do not adapt themselves across viewport scales.
DXF write only. CivilOS reads DXF and DWG, and writes R12 DXF. It does not write DWG, and it does not write RVT.
No rendering engine. The 3D views are real-time shaded views. There is no ray tracing, material library or lighting rig for a presentation render.
No structural analysis, no MEP sizing. There are MEP symbols and discipline layers such as E-POWR and M-PIPE for drafting services on a plan, but nothing calculates loads, ducts, pipe sizes or member forces.

Where a browser tool fits alongside desktop packages

Desktop architecture packages are the working tools of established practices, and for good reasons: a large project set means dozens or hundreds of coordinated sheets, external references shared between consultants, annotative standards enforced across a studio, specification data, rendering, and a documented approval trail. Those are demanding requirements and mature desktop software handles them. CivilOS does not attempt that territory and is not a substitute for it.

What a free browser tool is genuinely good for is the volume of smaller, faster work that sits underneath: a residential naksha, a shop or clinic fit-out, a warehouse or PEB shed layout, a revised plan a client asked for over the phone, a site-office sketch that has to be measured off a received DWG, coursework and teaching, and the very common Indian situation of a competent draughtsman with a laptop and no budget for a seat licence. It is also useful when the machine is not yours — a client's computer, a college lab, a cyber café — because there is nothing to install and nothing left behind. When a drawing has to graduate to a desktop package, R12 DXF and IFC4 are the doors out.

Start a floor plan now — free architecture software in your browser →

Frequently asked questions

Is this really free architecture software?

Yes. CivilOS opens in a browser tab, costs nothing, and needs no installation or licence key. You can add it to your home screen as a PWA. The only usage limits are fair-use limits on the AI assistant features; the drafting, plotting and export tools are not metered.

Can I draw a house plan (naksha) and print it to scale?

Yes. Draw the plan in IndoCAD, then plot it to an A0 to A5 or ARCH sheet at a chosen scale. The sheet carries a title block, a north dial and a scale bar, so what comes off the printer reads as a drawing rather than a screenshot.

Can I open a DWG file my architect sent me?

Yes, for reading. IndoCAD imports both DXF and DWG, and the IndoCAD Viewer lets you open, measure and mark up a drawing you have received. Export is R12 DXF only — CivilOS does not write DWG files.

Does it have a command line like desktop CAD?

It does. IndoCAD has a real command line with familiar aliases — L for line, C for circle, PL for polyline, TR to trim, EX to extend, OS for object snap settings, ZW to zoom window — and you can type absolute, relative or polar coordinates instead of clicking. It is not AutoCAD: there is no LISP scripting and no XREF.

Will a drawing from CivilOS be accepted for municipal approval?

CivilOS produces the drawing; approval is decided by your local authority under its own byelaws and normally requires the signature of a registered architect or licensed engineer. There are no pre-approved municipal templates in the app, so check setback, FAR, ventilation and parking requirements against your city's rules before submitting.

Which Indian codes and rate schedules does CivilOS reference?

Space Planning works from National Building Code references. Reinforcement scheduling follows IS 456, IS 2502, SP 34 and IS 13920. Costing uses CPWD DSR 2023, shipped as 3,047 items of data, along with State PWD schedules of rates and your own market rates.

Can I work in Hindi or a regional language?

Yes. The interface is available in 24 languages, including Hindi, Telugu and Tamil, and you can switch language at any time from settings without losing the drawing you are working on.

Draft for checking. Plans produced here are a design and drafting output, not a sanction. Local byelaws, fire and life-safety requirements and structural adequacy must be verified and signed off by the registered professionals responsible for the project.