Help centre · Getting started

Getting started

Start your first project from the welcome card, a template, the guided start or a sample, and choose metric or imperial units.

Stori3D runs in your browser, so there's nothing to install. Open it and you can start modelling straight away, with or without an account. This article takes you through your first project.

Start a building

When the model is empty, a welcome card called Start a building offers three ways in:

Draw your own walls starts the guided start (see below).
Or start from a template opens a starting layout you can change: House on a plot (two bedrooms, open-plan living, a garden), Office fit-out (open plan, meeting room, office and kitchen) or Retail unit (shopfront, sales floor, store and WC).
Or look around a finished project opens one of the sample projects.

If you'd rather start from a blank model, close the card. It stays closed for the rest of your session.

Follow the guided start

The guided start takes about five minutes. A card beside the model ticks off each step as you do it:

Draw walls: click to start a wall, then click at each corner. Type a length and press Enter to be exact.
Close a room: finish on the first corner. The room appears with its area.
Look around: orbit, pan and zoom. The card explains how for your device, whether that's a mouse, a trackpad or a touch screen.
Open the plan: plans, sections and elevations all come from the same model.
Share a link: anyone can open it in a browser, with no account.

Each step has Skip, and you can close the guide at any time. When you're done, the card suggests what to do next: furnish the model from the Library, paint it with real materials, or add a roof.

Open a sample project

The samples are finished projects to explore and take apart. Open them from the welcome card or the File menu:

Open sample project: Villa Horizon, a two-storey house with a cantilevered upper floor.
Open apartments sample: Parkside Apartments, twelve flats over a ground-floor car park.
Open furnished villa sample: Villa Calma, a family villa furnished with Stori3D's own furniture.

A sample opens as a scene on this device, and you don't need an account. If you're signed in, you can save your own copy to the cloud. If what's open has unsaved changes, or is only on this device, Stori3D asks before replacing it.

Keep your work

Without an account, your work autosaves in this browser. Once you've made a few changes, a Keep this project card suggests saving it to the cloud, so you can open it anywhere and share it. Choose Sign up free, or Save to cloud if you're already signed in. Not now hides the card for three days. Saving and projects explains the difference.

Choose metric or imperial

Units belong to the project. Open Project in the side rail and pick Units:

Metric: metres and millimetres, areas in m², drawings dimensioned in mm.
Imperial: feet and inches (to 1/8"), areas in ft², drawings in feet and inches.

Fields, labels, plan dimensions, the grid, snap sizes and schedules all follow this setting. You can type a length in either system in any field, such as 3500mm, 3.5m or 12' 6". A plain number is read in the project's main unit: metres in a metric project, feet in an imperial one.

Find your way around

The File, Edit, View and Help menus are along the top. On a phone they're in the overflow menu.
The side rail opens the panels: Projects, Comments, Levels, Tags, Scene, Library, Site, Project, AI agent and Settings.
The Properties panel edits whatever you've selected.
The toolbar along the bottom of the view holds the drawing tools, the camera commands and Walk through.
Help → Search commands (Shift+S) finds any command by name.

Next, learn to move around the model in Navigating the model, or start drawing in Walls and rooms.

Still stuck? Contact us, or ask in the app: Help → Contact support.