Getting Started with Pro 3D CAD Studio: Browser-Based Architectural Modeling

The layout follows the convention every modelling package shares. On the left is the tool rail: select, line, rectangle, push/pull, tape measure, eraser, and the move, rotate and scale gizmos, each with a single-key shortcut. In the centre is the viewport with a precision floor grid and coloured axes — red for X, green for Y, blue for Z. On the right is the tabbed inspector holding the outliner, layers, material picker, environment lighting and the asset library. Along the bottom, a status bar shows live cursor coordinates, the active units and the current shortcut hints.

Navigation follows the same muscle memory as desktop CAD: drag to orbit, scroll to zoom, shift-drag to pan, and Esc to cancel whatever you are in the middle of. Camera presets jump to top, front and side views, and you can switch between perspective and orthographic projection — use orthographic when you are checking that two walls really line up.

Start with the rectangle tool and click two opposite corners on the grid to define a floor slab. Every outline you draw is extruded immediately to the height in the dimension box, so type an exact value before drawing rather than eyeballing it afterwards. Set the dimension to 0.1 m for a floor slab.

Now draw the walls as thin rectangles around the perimeter, set the dimension to 2.7 m, and you have a room. Switch to push/pull and drag any face to adjust its height interactively; grid snapping and vertex snapping keep corners meeting exactly. Use the tape measure to confirm the internal span, switching between metres and feet as needed. Cut a doorway by drawing a small rectangle on a wall and pushing it inward with a negative height.

The hollow/shell function turns a solid box into a walled enclosure with a wall thickness you specify, which is far quicker than modelling four separate walls when you just need a container, a cabinet carcass or a planter.

Accuracy in CAD comes from constraints, not from a steady hand. Grid snap rounds every point to your chosen step — 0.1 m for furniture detail, 0.5 m for massing studies. Vertex snap pulls new points onto existing corners so geometry actually touches instead of nearly touching, which matters enormously when you export to another application.

Type dimensions rather than dragging wherever an exact value is known. A 2.4 m worktop typed in is correct; a dragged one is approximately correct, and approximations compound across a model until doors no longer fit their openings.

The material panel is organised into categories — landscape and grass, wood, concrete, glass, brick and stone, tiles, metals, fabrics, and custom colour swatches — with procedurally generated textures so nothing needs to be downloaded. Select an object, click a swatch, and it is painted. Custom hex colours cover brand-specific work.

Lighting does most of the work in a presentation render. The directional sun has intensity, elevation and azimuth controls, which together let you set a time of day; low elevation gives long, dramatic shadows, high elevation gives flat, neutral documentation lighting. Ambient light fills the shadow side, and contact shadows plus ambient occlusion add the subtle darkening where surfaces meet that makes a scene read as solid rather than floating.

Modelling every chair by hand is a waste of your time at concept stage. The built-in warehouse holds around a hundred pre-built assets across furniture, home appliances, architecture and decor, and office and retail, all constructed from primitives so they load instantly and add nothing to page weight. Click to insert, or drag onto the viewport to place at the cursor.

A separate symbols panel provides standard 2D and 3D floor-plan markers — doors, windows, outlets, switches and light points — for annotating layouts. And ten starter templates load complete editable scenes such as a modern living room, a modular kitchen, a bedroom with built-in cupboards, an office layout, a retail display and a garden patio. Loading a template and modifying it is usually the fastest route to a finished concept.

Drag an OBJ, STL, GLTF or GLB file onto the viewport to bring in existing geometry — a manufacturer's model, a scanned object, or work from another package. Images can be dropped in as reference planes, which is how you trace over an existing floor plan.

Export as GLTF for web viewers and game engines, OBJ for broad compatibility with older CAD software, STL for 3D printing, or a high-resolution PNG render of the current camera view for a client deck. Every one of those files is written by your browser to your download folder. Nothing about your design — geometry, materials, imported models or renders — is ever uploaded, which matters when the model is an unreleased product or a client's private property.

The studio opens on tablets and phones, but the workflow assumes a mouse and keyboard. Precision snapping needs pixel-level pointer control, the gizmos need click-and-drag on small handles, and the single-key shortcuts are the difference between fluid modelling and constant menu hunting. Desktop GPUs also handle large scenes and shadow maps far more comfortably.