Existing conditions drawings

A building changes for its whole life and its drawings do not. The original permit set, where one exists, describes a house before the porch was enclosed, the kitchen wall moved, and the stair rebuilt. The tax record carries a square footage somebody estimated. Existing conditions drawings replace both with a measurement: every wall, opening, ceiling height, and floor to floor height as it is today.

Architects and contractors usually call them as built drawings, and so does most of this site. The three names in circulation describe one building at different moments: existing conditions before work starts, as built when a surveyor or lender verifies finished construction, and record drawings for the approved set afterwards. The three terms, side by side.

Every project includes the capture package, which is the scan itself turned into files you can use: 3d walkthrough and 360 imagery, registered point cloud, and the floor plans as PDF. The plans are drafted to ANSI Z765-2021 with dimensions and room labels, and the room and opening report lists every room area and every door and window opening as a CSV.

Ordered on top, each at a published rate per square foot: cad floor plans, plotted drawing package, exterior elevations, reflected ceiling plans, roof plan, 3d model, revit or dwg, estimating export. An office that drafts its own base from the DWG export can skip all of them. What is in a set, sheet by sheet, and every file format.

The same visit produces different things depending on who ordered it. Architects need the base plan before schematic design. Interior designers need real dimensions before millwork is drawn. Remodelers need to bid against what is there. Restoration contractors and adjusters need a loss documented once. Owners need a record of a building that has never had one.

• As built drawings for architects: Renovations and additions on buildings nobody has measured accurately.
• As built drawings for interior designers: Specifying millwork, furniture, and finishes into real dimensions.
• As built drawings for remodelers and design build: Bidding and building against what is actually there.
• Loss documentation for restoration and insurance: Documenting a loss once, in the formats the claim runs on.
• As built floor plans for property owners: A permanent record of a building that has never had one.

Three options. The architect's own staff measures the building with a laser distance meter and a pad, which takes most of a day for a mid size house plus the drafting afterwards, and usually a second trip for what the notes missed. A drafter works from somebody else's field notes. Or a capture service scans the building and delivers the measured base in the formats the office already uses.

At Vernier the third option is one person. Ben Azoulay does the visit, the registration, the drafting, and the delivery, and the drawings are not sealed: they are the base your own sealed set is drawn over.

A time of flight LiDAR scanner paired with a 360 camera records a point cloud and a panorama from a scan position in every room, closets and mechanical rooms included, out to about 40m per position. The positions are registered into one model, and the plans are drafted from that model and checked against the cloud. A point cloud is not a Revit model explains the step between the scan and a file you can design in.

The scan records surfaces the laser can reach. It does not record:

• Parametric families with type, material, or phase data
• Anything behind a finished surface: framing, insulation, structure inside a wall
• Mechanical, electrical, or plumbing runs, other than visible fixtures and panels
• Building sections, wall sections, door and window schedules, and site plans
• Furniture, casework, or appliances, unless specifically requested
• Design intent of any kind. The model is the building as it stands today

Those still come from probe openings, record drawings marked as unverified, or a hand measured visit. A manual MEP and utility measurement add on exists for panels, meters, shutoffs, risers, and fixture centerlines, and it has to be requested before the visit.

10mm typically, camera to wall is the instrument's stated measurement uncertainty. The drafted plan is held to 0.5% on distance and 1% on square footage against the registered model, and every plan is measured to ANSI Z765-2021.

Accuracy on a plan is a distance figure, not a point figure, so plan your tolerances around spans. You can check the numbers yourself: measure a few long clear spans with a laser distance meter and compare them to the walkthrough's ruler. How the numbers are reached, and what gets in the way.

A licensed land surveyor establishes property lines, setbacks, easements, and elevation relative to a datum, and seals the result. An elevation certificate for flood zone work is a surveyor's document. In New York City the Department of Buildings uses the phrase existing conditions survey for a document prepared by a licensed surveyor, which is not this.

Existing conditions drawings document the building. Many projects need both, from two different people. Land surveyor, inspector, or as built drawings: which your project needs.

Send an address, a rough square footage, and what you need back, and a fixed quote comes back within one business day. The visit takes three to four hours for most houses. The capture package arrives within five business days of the visit, usually sooner, and drafted CAD, elevations, and ceiling plans follow in seven to ten business days. Revisions are included, and a return visit caused by capture conditions is not billed. The full schedule.