What is a Section Plan?

A section plan is a vertical slice drawings showing the internal features of your property. It is similar to an elevation plan. However, it shows the internal features of the property. It is common to have the section plan drawn in the middle of the property’s staircase. The section plan is to help the architect to get an idea of the height of the internal floors of the property and the features on the wall.

The section plan is usually combined with other plans on a measured building survey. This can include floor plans, elevations, topographical plans, roof plans. They are usually requested by your architect, and can also be produced from floor plans and elevations but it may take an architect or someone who has not visited the house a lot longer to produce.

Definition

A section plan is a 2D drawing of your house, showing it from all angles vertically. It’s a bird’s eye view of your home, from the side (well..through the house). It also shows the interior and exterior walls.

You can use section plans to communicate with builders or renovators so they can see what you want done in the right way. The plan is usually drawn on one sheet of paper but sometimes it will span two or three sheets if there are many rooms or views that need to be shown on it.

Some Examples

  • A section plan is a graphic representation of a building or object, usually in cross-section.
  • A section plan can be used to show the arrangement of different rooms, spaces and/or levels within an interior environment.
  • You can use a section plan for your own home or for any other building or vehicle you might want to see in details

Here are some examples of a section plan:

It is important to note (to avoid confusion):

The difference between an elevation and a section is that the elevation shows the external vertical plan of the building and the section shows the internal. It is quite common that we get enquiries asking for external sections, which does not exists… So if you are looking for external plan you’d need an elevation plan.

Sample Section plan in PDF:

How to Draw a Section Plan

There are a few different ways to create a section plan. One common method is by hand, but it’s also possible to use software such as AutoCAD or SketchUp. To start, you’ll need to draw a 2D line drawing of your house.

  • You would want to start to draw up all your floor plans first so that you can get the layout and vertical dimensions (room height, door height and windows).
  • Once you’re done you have to draw your section line and which direction you need to draw.
  • then you would want to start aligning the floors against your section so that you can draw your internal of your house, then your height of each floor.
  • Then the hardest part is what you see from the section line. Check out the examples above to give you an idea of what features to pick

Then you can add labels and dimension lines on the house plans to indicate height, depth, and width as well as material types and construction details. Labels are useful for showing the location of rooms and other features on your building as well as giving an overview of any special structural elements that might be present in your home (such as trusses).

Interior design

How to read or draw a section plan.

A section plan is a drawing that shows the cross-section of a building. It can be drawn to show all of the floors, or it can show just one floor.

A section plan is different from an elevation, which shows an outside view of your house. A section plan shows how your house looks from inside or underneath it.

A section plan can give you good information about your house

A section plan is a drawing of a house in cross-section, which means it shows how the house is built from the inside down to its foundation. A section plan can show you:

  • The layout of each room in your house
  • How materials like wood, stone and metal are used within each room
  • How different parts of the house connect together (like walls with floors)

Still confused?

Take a look at this article on elevations.

What is a floor plan?

A floor plan is a drawing which indicate the features of a floor for your property. In the context of a measured building survey, a floor plan consists of indicating all fixed features, as well as height information of the room, windows, doors and any beams on the ceiling.

It differs greatly from your estate agent floor plan. The floor plan produced by your estate agent is not accurate enough for planning permission and construction drawings. They do not include room, window, door height or even show indications of beams. But they are good enough when you are trying to sell your property.

Here is an example from http://virtual360.net/floor-plans-plus

In addition the floor plans produced from a measured building survey is accurate as it measures the angle of the room. To undertake a proper measured building survey plan, you will need specialist equipment which ranges from £250-1000 a week to hire. This is why a measured building survey’s floor plan is slightly more expensive and take a lot longer to produce than the estate agent’s floor plan. To better explain what a floor plan is we have included a screenshot of a floor plan below:

The above floor plan uses an equipment called FARO 3D scanner, this is fairly expensive but very accurate. There are other equipments such as a total station that can be used to create the same output. But this can result in the survey taking a lot longer to complete (roughly 2-3 hours per floor). Whereas, the use of a FARO 3D scanner we can survey a floor in roughly 1 – 1.5 hours depending on the area and the number of rooms on that floor.

What is a Plan, is this a drawing?

A plan is a drawing; in the context of measured building survey and topographical surveys it represents the features on your property on a PDF or DWG drawing. These are used for your planning application and for your architect to produce your construction (proposed) drawings. There are several types of plans. They are:

  • Floor Plans
  • Section Plans
  • Roof Plans
  • Loft Plans
  • Elevation Plans (there are also internal and external plans, most of the requests are just external plans. The only time you need an internal plan is when you have detail artwork or ornate walls that needs to be represented on your measured building survey)
  • Topographical Plans (or also called Land Survey Plans)
  • Ceiling Plans

You should not confuse it with a site plan. A site plan is a drawing/illustration that shows your property in context to other properties. It is based on an Ordnance map and can be purchased online (for roughly £8-10; depending on the scale https://www.buyaplan.co.uk/ ). You need one for all planning application.

A site plan looks like this:

Example of a site plan

Here are some examples of the plans mentioned above:

Floor Plans

 

Floor Plan Example 1

 

Floor Plan Example 2

 

Floor Plan Example 3

 

Section

Section Plan Example 1

 

Section Plan Example 2

 

Topographical Plan Example

 

Topographical planLoft Plan

Loft Plan Example

Elevation

Elevation Plan Example

What is an Elevation Plan?

An elevation is a plan that shows the front, side, and rear facade (or lead of the building). This includes :

  • window/door positions,
  • different surfaces; and,
  • height of the building.

When is an elevation plan required?

Elevations are usually required whenever your planning proposal requires external alterations of the property.

Elevations can form part of a street scene drawing. A street scene is a collection of several properties’ elevations as viewed from the street. This needs to detail the:

  • different materials,
  • window position,
  • heights and
  • any other features…

that can demonstrate the style and look of other buildings on your property. This is necessary for planning applications where you are planning on changing the outlook of your property.

Examples

Here are some examples of elevations:

Example of an Elevation plan
Point cloud of an elevation
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