How it is drawn

A visual encyclopedia should make the hidden parts of buildings legible. Axonometric views, cut-away walls and exploded assemblies let you see how parts fit together. Interactive models let you turn them, take them apart, change a condition and follow what happens.

Every figure builds the real thing, not a diagram of it: a beam on a test bench with weights on it, a corner of a house framed stud by stud, a footing in a block of soil. If you can name the object at a glance you are halfway to understanding it, and every part on it has a job.

The view is a parallel projection, the axonometric of architectural drawing. Lines that are parallel in the building stay parallel on the screen and nothing shrinks with distance, so you can compare sizes anywhere in the drawing. You can turn the model; it drifts back toward its best view when left alone.

Every part is a solid, filled and drawn with a fine line where its faces meet, so what is in front hides what is behind. The light is fixed to your eye, as in a drawing: tops are whitest, the side toward the light pale, the far side a few shades darker. Materials use familiar architectural drawing conventions, with stipple for concrete, hatching for earth, grain for timber and courses for siding.

There are no labels in the drawing. Hover a part to light it and read its name in the margin, or use the numbered legend under the figure. One part at a time is lit; everything else steps back.

The chosen part stays solid while its surroundings become a faint, see-through drawing. Its place in the assembly remains visible. Choose Solid to restore normal occlusion, or press Escape to clear focus. Selecting a part of the house keeps the current view; a separate close-up includes a locator of the whole house.

Many of the interactive studies share one building: a two-storey wood-frame house, 36 by 24 ft (11.0 × 7.3 m), on a full basement, on a suburban lot that falls toward the street, over stiff clay, with frost 42 in deep and water and sewer in the street. The house figure draws it whole, and each part of it links to the figure that draws that part on its own. The other figures take their sizes from it, so a stud, a joist, a contour or a soil layer is the same wherever it appears, and every figure about a part of the house links back to where that part sits.

A house is built in an order that is not arbitrary: each stage waits for what it bears on, what braces it, or what keeps the weather off it. The collection follows that order, nineteen stages from the survey to the last of the topsoil, and every figure is a close look at one or more of them. Building a house steps through them on the lot, with who does each stage, how long it takes and what is inspected before the next can start.

Almost every part of a house could be built another way: a slab instead of a basement, I-joists instead of sawn joists, rafters instead of trusses, a heat pump instead of a furnace. None is right everywhere. Where a figure has real alternatives it shows them, says when each is the right one and what it costs, and marks the choice the reference house makes and why. The decisions are gathered, in building order, under Why this, not that.

A part is easier to understand among its neighbours: a truss on its wall, a footing under its wall, a window in its flashing. So the figures keep the surrounding construction in the drawing, quieter than the subject, and list it under Show in the margin. Hide a system to see what it covers; point at its name to find it in the drawing.

Most of what makes a building work, or fail, happens where one system meets another: a sill on a foundation wall, a truss heel on a top plate, a window in a wall. The figures draw these junctions as details, with every bolt, plate and lapped sheet at true size, and say for each one what bears on what, what is fastened to what, and what laps over what to shed water.

Clicking a part keeps it lit, and the address bar follows, so a link opens the figure with that part already lit and any hidden systems still hidden. Parts drawn in more detail elsewhere carry an arrow in the legend and a link in the margin that opens the other figure at the same part.

Sizes are real: 2×10 joists at 16 inches on centre, a 600 mm footing, a 7 inch riser. Where a figure moves because of a load, the motion comes from the same equations as its readout, so the drawing and the numbers cannot disagree. Deflections are drawn larger than life so you can see them, and the readout always says by how much.

The reference-house studies show US units first, millimetres in brackets, and nominal lumber sizes as the trade names them.

Pascal Architecture is a visual reference by Pascal Group Inc.. Its scope grows across building types, materials, climates and ways of working. Each catalog entry keeps its applicability, references and technical-review status visible. A drawing explains a particular model; a completed technical review is recorded separately.