About Auto Builder
Auto Builder is a free website that turns a house extension, a whole-house renovation or a new house idea into scaled drawings for planning and Building Regulations, worked out in your own browser.
Who makes it
Auto Builder is made and run by an independent individual in Devon, UK. It is not a company of architects or a council service. It is one of a small family of free tools by the same person, alongside Model my Property and Auto Field Maps, each built to save people time and money on jobs that usually mean paying someone or wrestling with paperwork.
What it does
You upload a floor plan, such as an estate agent's plan, a survey or your own sketch with the new walls drawn in a colour, and choose whether you are extending a house, renovating a whole house or building a new one. The site reads the walls, builds the house in 3D and puts on roofs. You set the true scale from one wall you have measured, then adjust walls, heights, roofs, doors and windows.
From that it draws:
- A3 planning sheets: existing and proposed floor plans, all four elevations, roof plans and a block plan, with title blocks and scale bars, plus a sheet for your Ordnance Survey location plan.
- A planning statement written from your drawings, which you can edit, print or download as a Word file.
- A permitted development check of each extension against the Class A rules for houses in England.
- Building Regulations sections at 1:50, annotated plans, a U-value table and a written specification.
It is for homeowners and self-builders who want to see what a project would look like, find out whether it may need planning permission, and turn up to an architect, technologist or the council with clear drawings instead of a sketch. See how it works for more.
Why it is free
There is no account and nothing to pay. The site is paid for by adverts from Google AdSense. The privacy policy explains how those adverts use cookies and how to choose non-personalised ones.
Your plans stay with you
Plans you upload are read and traced in your own browser, and your drawing is saved in your browser's own storage so it is there when you come back. They are not sent to us. If you type a postcode when starting a plan, only the postcode is sent to postcodes.io to find your council. The 3D view and PDF reader are loaded from public code libraries, and the adverts come from Google. You can delete your work at any time with "New plan" or by clearing this site's data in your browser.
Where the information comes from
The permitted development check follows the Class A rules for houses in England, and the Building Regulations specification follows the Approved Documents for England. Councils are found from your postcode using postcodes.io, which is built on open data from the Office for National Statistics and Ordnance Survey. The location plan is one you buy and upload yourself, and it carries its own copyright line. The services the site loads from are listed in the privacy policy.
Its limits
Contact
Questions, mistakes spotted, or ideas for the site are all welcome. Email [email protected]. It is a one-person project, so replies may take a few days, and I can't give advice about a particular property or application.