Early access. Drafting from a sketch is switched on for a small number of pilot companies, on the Company plan and above, in England first. If you don’t see Draft from sketch in your project’s Drawings, it isn’t on for your company yet. Request access and tell us what you’d draw with it.
Konverge reads a hand sketch, a site photo or a marked-up print, plus a one-line brief, and draws a clean drawing at a stated scale. It shows every figure it used and marks every guess, so you can check and measure them before anything is issued. The issued sheet is an ordinary Konverge drawing, and it comes with a PDF and a DXF.
What it’s for, and what it isn’t
Use it for contractor drawings:
- As-built and record plans of what was built.
- Logistics and phasing plans: site layout, access, compounds, phasing.
- Clean redraws of a marked-up print.
It is not for structural design, fire strategy, temporary works design or Building Regulations submissions. Those need a competent designer.
Before you start
- Get every figure in shot. The drawing can only use the dimensions you wrote down, put in the brief or measure later.
- Use a JPEG or PNG photo, or a one-page PDF. A multi-page PDF needs the page saved as its own PDF first. iPhone HEIC photos need exporting as JPEG.
- A password-protected PDF needs saving without the password.
- Very large or very detailed images are made smaller in your browser before they’re sent. If one is still too detailed, crop it to the part you want drawn.
1. Start a draft
- Open the project’s Drawings, at the top level or in a folder, and choose Draft from sketch.
- Under Sketch, photo or one-page PDF, choose the file.
- Under What should the drawing show?, write one line, and add any figure that isn’t on the sketch. For example: “As-built of the rear extension, 100 mm block walls, door 900 wide”.
- Optionally pick the Kind of drawing (As-built, Logistics, Redraw, or Not sure) and the folder to Issue the sheet into.
- Choose Draft. The first time, it reads Agree and draft: drafting sends your sketch and brief to Konverge’s AI provider, Google Gemini.
Drafting usually takes under a minute. You can leave the page: the draft carries on and waits in Drawings under Drafts from sketches, marked Ready to check.
2. Check what it drew
The draft opens with Your sketch beside a Preview, not issued. The header shows how many things there are to check, and the sheet size and scale.
- Check these first lists every guess as A1, A2 and so on. Guesses are drawn on the sheet with “c.” in front, for example “c.1,200 mm”.
- Figures read shows each figure as written, the value used, what it measures and where it came from: the Sketch, the Brief or Measured.
- Dimensions splits them into Given, Worked out and Guessed.
- Tidied by Konverge lists anything it tidied up from the sketch, so you can check it.
Check every figure against your sketch, even when there’s nothing left to measure.
3. Measure the guesses, then update the drawing
- Choose Measure next to a guess.
- Choose A measurement and enter the Length you measured in millimetres (2.45 m and 245 cm work too) and What you measured, or choose A correction and say What is actually there.
- Choose Keep answer. Answers wait until you send them.
- Choose Update drawing. Konverge redraws only what your answers measure; nothing else moves, and the current drawing stays until the update works.
Changed in this update then shows what is No longer a guess and any New guesses to check. You can send up to 20 answers at a time.
4. Fill in the title block
In Title block, set the Drawing title, the Status (As-built, Record, For information, For comment or For construction), Approved by, Client and Site address. Prepared by is your company and Drawn by is you, when you issue it. Saving the title block uses no AI.
Only a competent designer should approve a drawing For construction (CDM 2015 and Building Regulations Part 2A).
5. Issue it as a sheet or a revision
- Choose Issue sheet.
- Choose New sheet (a sheet number, SK-1 by default, a name and a folder), or New revision of… an existing sheet. A new revision supersedes the sheet it revises, as with any revision; that sheet’s markups and pins stay on it.
- Tick I have checked this drawing and I am its author.
- Choose Issue sheet (or Issue revision).
The sheet opens in Drawings once it’s ready, usually within a minute: tiled, searchable and measurable at its own scale, like any other sheet.
6. Download the PDF and DXF
On the draft, under Issued files:
- Download PDF: the drawing of record, as issued.
- Download DXF: for CAD, at true scale in millimetres (1 unit is 1 mm), with a layer for each kind of line.
The same downloads are on the issued sheet’s Details tab, which also says “Generated from a sketch by” the author, and “Not checked by Konverge”.
You are the author
When you issue a drafted drawing, your company is Prepared by and you are Drawn by. In the app’s own words: “Konverge doesn’t check drawings. Not for construction unless reviewed and issued by a competent designer.”
Konverge reads your sketch and draws what it shows. It doesn’t know what isn’t on the sketch or in the brief, and it doesn’t check that the design works. Check every figure, measure every guess, and only issue a drawing you would put your own name to.
If something goes wrong
- Konverge couldn’t draft this one: choose Try again, or start again with a clearer image with every figure in shot, and say in the brief what isn’t on the sketch.
- This is taking longer than usual: choose Try again. Your sketch and brief are kept.
- Try again on a ready draft reads the sketch again and replaces the drawing; figures you’ve checked may change, and the run counts towards your AI limit. Discard removes a draft you don’t need.
- Drafting has its own monthly limit inside your company’s AI limit, and up to three drawings can be drafted at once in a company. Owners and admins can see what’s left in Settings → AI.
- If the company owner has turned AI off, drafting is off too.