introduction

Ever see a house while driving by and think, "wow! that is such a beautiful house, I bet it took a lot of effort to build it." Well, truth is, it does take a lot of effort to build an eye catching structure, perhaps even more than we realize. Think about all the things that go into a nice house; such as the wiring, plumbing, windows, cabinets, flooring, roofing...and the list goes on.

Now take a step back. Before any materials are brought into the equation; the builder needed to know just exactly what kind of materials to bring in, and then how to assemble those materials into a particular arrangement to produce that specific structure. And that takes one thing, design. And as with any design, you need more that just a good idea. You need a way to translate your specific thought to the others. This is called an architectural plan set.

What's so important about an architectural plan set is that it breaks up a vast amount of information into easy to understand bits, by organizing that information over several pages. In other words, each page in the plan set covers a specific detail that can be found within the structure. For example, one page may cover details on "foundation", another may cover the floor plan, while another the electrical or plumbing and so on. This continues over several pages until all aspects of the house are covered in complete detail. You could say the plan set is the answer to all the questions within the building process.

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