Atlasly for Rhino: site context, massing and planning drawings

Atlasly supports early design work across RIBA Stages 0–3: site context, feasibility, massing, option comparisons, early environmental checks and drawings for planning readiness.

Start with	Ask for	Review in Rhino
An address	“Import the site around NOMA, Manchester, 250 m around it”	Buildings, roads, water, parks and terrain
A drawn plot	“Give me 8 massing options for 12,000 m² of residential, max 40 m”	Labelled options scored against the brief
Selected blocks	“GIA per floor and total, assume 300 mm external walls”	Measured areas with the assumptions stated
A proposal	“Show shadows at 9, 12 and 3 on 21 March”	Shadow shapes for an indicative early check
A working model	“Location plan at 1:1250 with red line”	A scaled sheet to review before export

The result is editable geometry and drawings in your working file. You can continue designing with Rhino’s usual tools.

Start with a place, rather than an empty viewport. Atlasly imports surrounding buildings as solids, roads by type, rail, water, parks and terrain, positioned for sun studies. The internal NOMA, Manchester benchmark imported a 500 m square in about 3.5 seconds.

Every building records where its height came from: a tagged height, a storey count or an estimate. That distinction matters when deciding which neighbours need better survey information.

Already have OS or CAD data? Atlasly can resolve metre/millimetre mismatches, move far-away British National Grid coordinates to the origin while recording the offset, extrude footprints using OS Building Height Attribute values, place buildings on terrain and separate CADMapper’s merged building mesh.

Try: “Extrude the buildings using the BHA heights”, then “Put the buildings on the ground.” Open map context is a starting point for design; review estimated heights and source coverage before relying on them.

Draw or select the plot and give Atlasly a floor-area target, use, height limit and setbacks. It generates options and scores floor-area fit, height, sunlight on open space, plan depth and open space. Labels and side-by-side placement make the trade-offs easier to review.

Concept illustration created for this article. These are not screenshots or measured project results.

Ten available typologies include courtyard, U, L, parallel bars, tower on podium, twin towers, point blocks, stepped courtyard, linear slab and full block.

Keep developing an option with “Slice the blocks into floors at 3.15 m floor-to-floor” or “Set back the top two floors 1.5 m from the street side.” Ask for 6, 8 and 10-storey scenarios, or an indicative home count with the efficiency assumption stated.

For an envelope check, ask “Does it fit under a 30 m height limit and a 5 m boundary setback?” Atlasly identifies the blocks and sides that fail those inputs. A geometric pass does not establish planning permission or resolve other policy constraints.

For a drawn plot, Atlasly can report area, dimensions, road frontage by street name, the tallest neighbours with distance and direction, and ground slope. Direct-sun studies can compare 21 March, 21 June and 21 December.

That gives architects and urban designers a common basis for discussing a site: which edge addresses the street, where taller neighbours sit and how the open space behaves as the proposal changes.

Try “Analyse this plot”, then use the findings to refine your next option. For the wider due-diligence context, see our guide to 3D site context for architecture.

Atlasly draws shadow shapes at chosen dates and times. It can also compare a proposal with the existing situation using Vertical Sky Component (VSC) at neighbouring windows and garden sunlight on 21 March.

The early VSC checks flag values below 27% and below 0.8 times the existing value; garden checks examine the two-hour sunlight criterion. These are screening indicators to help identify where specialist review is needed, rather than a complete assessment of every applicable criterion.

Ask “Rough VSC for the ground-floor windows opposite” or “Does the garden behind no. 14 get two hours of sun on 21 March, before and after?”

These are indicative early-stage checks using BRE 209 methods, not BRE-compliant reports. Geometry quality, window locations and the surrounding context affect the result. A daylight and sunlight consultant should assess the scheme for formal use. BRE’s daylight and sunlight guide provides the underlying practice guidance.

Request a plan cut at a stated height, a section through a stair or along a line, or elevations of every facade. Cut lines remain separate and source layers are retained.

Atlasly creates A0–A4 layouts at scales including 1:1250, 1:500, 1:100 and 1:50, with a scale bar and north arrow. It can choose a scale when you have not specified one. Figure-ground plans, height labels and hatches support clearer design reviews.

Try “Ground-floor plan”, “Section through the stair”, “Four elevations” or “Make a figure-ground at 1:2500.” Review the sheet, its boundary and the relevant submission requirements before issuing it.

Exports include PDF, DWG, DXF, FBX, OBJ, SAT, STL and 3DM. Each export asks for confirmation and goes only to a folder you choose.

A consultant DWG often needs attention before design work can begin. Ask “This DWG is a mess—what’s wrong with it?” Atlasly diagnoses wrong units, duplicates, tiny gaps, empty layers and geometry far from the origin without changing the file. Ask it to fix the issues when you are ready; it preserves the source and your tolerance setting.

For Revit or IFC preparation, it checks open polysurfaces, meshes, invalid geometry and inconsistent layer names, then fixes what it can. “Is this ready for Revit?” gives you a review of geometry readiness, rather than a promise that a complete BIM hand-off needs no further work.

Visualisers can set eye-level and aerial named views, assign materials by layer and fix flipped surfaces. Model makers can slice terrain into sheet-thickness layers, unroll and number facades, and check thin features at a chosen scale.

Computational designers can build, explain and repair Grasshopper definitions, set sliders and bake results. Everyday operations cover moving, arrays, alignment, extrusion, booleans, fillets, offsets, blocks, layers and selection by property—including individual faces and edges.

Selection gives the request its subject. “These” means the selected objects. With nothing selected, “them” refers to what the previous request made.

Rhino performs and measures the geometry. Atlasly interprets the request, uses Rhino operations and re-measures after changes. It reports failures plainly and states the basis of area figures, including GIA or GEA, wall thickness and floor-to-floor assumptions.

One request, one Undo. A request that creates hundreds of objects is grouped so you can take the whole change back together.

Consequential changes ask first. Large edits, deletion, unlocking locked objects, scripts that change objects and every export require a preview or confirmation. Ambiguous requests trigger a question: “trim the roads at the boundary” needs inside or outside clarified; “move these 2 m up” does not.

Map downloads, sun calculations and drawing generation run in the background so Rhino stays responsive.

Internal alpha checks cover geometry measurements, Undo, exports, indicative environmental calculations and requests that should ask for clarification. They use prepared files and inspect the resulting geometry rather than treating a convincing reply as a successful result.

These are internal checks, not independent certification or a guarantee for every project. Results depend on the tested build, settings, task and source geometry. Changes to the available setup need their own validation; an earlier test result does not establish current performance.

The available runtime checks were carried out in Rhino 8.35 on macOS. Windows, Rhino 8.21 itself and Rhino 9 runtime compatibility remain unverified in the available checks. Confirm support for your setup when invited. Request complexity, project size, network conditions and service availability can change response times.

The package targets Rhino 8.21 or later, with builds prepared for macOS and Windows. Prepared builds are not evidence of runtime compatibility: the available runtime checks cover Rhino 8.35 on macOS. A separate Rhino 9 build is prepared but has not been checked in Rhino 9. Distribution uses Rhino’s Package Manager; confirm availability and compatibility with your build when invited.

Early access uses your own API key for a supported service. Setup details explain the available options and credential storage for your operating system. Usage is billed separately by the selected service; joining the waitlist does not include usage credits or promise a final product price.

Site import uses public map data, including OpenStreetMap and Copernicus terrain. It also works with OS data your practice already holds.

Join the early-access waitlist to receive availability and setup details.