The lines of the brief

01Open a line

Click a line of the brief to open it. A line can name a room standard and a furniture set, each measured from the room's own outline, ask for daylight and for an aspect, and set a least clear width. Its name, its quantity and its area are edited in place, and it says which row of which file it came from.

Here the 2 bed 4 person flat asks for Dual aspect (the London Plan 2021, policy D6): once the flats are drawn, each is read for the directions its windows face.

02Add a line

Press Add a line under the brief, type its code, its department, its name, its quantity and its area each, then press Add to the brief. A line typed by hand is a line like any other, and the brief's history says who added it.

03Relationships

Under Relationships, pick two lines and how they relate: next to (they share a wall or a door), opens into (a door or an opening between them), within (a walk through the doors of at most so many metres) or apart (a walk of at least so many). Each relationship is checked on the plan once the rooms are drawn.

04Mix and yield

Mix and yield builds the mix of homes from the dwelling types of the Nationally Described Space Standard (NDSS 2015, Table 1). Pick a type of home, say how many and press Add (here six 1 bed 2 person, six 2 bed 4 person and three 3 bed 5 person homes), then give the storeys. At each type's least floor area and the efficiency, it says the floor the mix needs, here 978 m2 net, 1,222.5 m2 gross and 407.5 m2 on each of three storeys, against the homes the model holds. Further down, Storeys from the site sets the brief against the plot's rules of Part 2, and Brief to building hands it to the engines that lay out buildings, the subject of Part 4.