The Design Studio
The building drawn with the customer on the phone — the shell, the roof, the doors, the lean-tos and porches, the whole barndominium floor plan inside it, furnished, plumbed, wired and checked against the code, and a drawing set for the permit office — in a designer that only knows post-frame.
The operating system built exclusively for post-frame and barndominium builders.
Instead of: Notes on the truck seat, a sketch on the back of a quote, a porch remembered after the price went out, a permit nobody checked, and the permit drawings done again in another program.
What should barndominium design and estimating software do?
It should draw the post-frame shell and the house inside it with the customer on the call, and catch problems before the number goes out. Good barndominium design and estimating software frames in bays, trusses, girts and purlins, prices lean-tos and porches the moment they're drawn, flags headroom, snow drift and IRC fixes as you draw, prints permit sheets, and answers the site's permit questions first.
- Additions are cheapest on the first drawing. An engineer has to check the existing columns, footings and trusses for a later lean-to's loads, including drifting snow, and the Pole Barn Guru's rule of thumb (his expert opinion, not data) is that adding one later costs about double in design and materials. Customers say yes to extras they can see while the design is still open. Hansen Pole Buildings, 2018 ↗
- A post-frame barndominium's structure falls under IBC requirements and has to be designed for its own site's snow, wind and soil; a wall under 5 ft from the lot line needs a 1-hour rating and the garage must be separated from the dwelling, an engineer writes in NFBA's Frame Builder. Checking early avoids costly delays. NFBA, 2025 ↗
- The rules change at the county line. Three Minnesota towns gave three answers on the same barndominium: one banned metal siding, one capped garage size and required residential materials, and one called it agricultural and required 40 acres. That is why the permit check belongs before the price, not after. Hansen Pole Buildings, 2026 ↗
Start from the size they asked for
Width, length and eave height first. Then the framing in the order it goes up — bay spacing, trusses, girts, purlins — then what's below grade: post embedment and frost depth. It's the operating system built exclusively for post-frame and barndominium builders, so these are the numbers it starts with, not an afterthought. The panel names the measuring standard, so a 40×60 means the same building to you, your yard and your inspector. Change a number and the building redraws while the customer watches.
Two builders quote the same 40×60 and mean different buildings, because one measured to the girts and the other to the posts.
Every post-frame roof shape, framed the way it's built
Pick the roof type — gable, gambrel, hipped, mansard, monitor — and it tells you how that shape frames: a gable gets common trusses at your spacing, with gable trusses at each end. Then the roofing system, each with its minimum pitch — ribbed steel at 3/12, standing seam, asphalt shingle at 4/12 — and the panels your yard carries. The customer sees the roof he pictured, and nobody quotes steel on a roof too flat for it.
A roof drawn as a triangle on a quote sheet tells nobody what it takes to frame it.
Doors and windows where they actually go
Every opening is placed by wall, bay and distance from the post: Garage Door 1, a 14-by-12 overhead on the front endwall, bay 2, three feet off the post; a walk door on the left sidewall. Overhead, walk, sliding and window each add from one button. When the customer can see the door where it'll be, he stops second-guessing it — and the crew frames it in the right bay.
“Two overheads on the end” written on a quote is how a door ends up framed in the wrong bay.
A lean-to or a porch is one panel, not a redraw
Add a lean-to, a porch, an enclosed wing or a wrap, then set it the way you'd describe it to a crew — Lean-to 1 on the right sidewall, 36 feet along the wall, 12 out, a 3/12 pitch, posts every 10 feet. A gable porch can carry timber trusses and a concrete slab. It's on the building and on the material list the moment it's drawn. Customers say yes to extras they can see.
The porch remembered after the price went out is the porch you build for free.
Right-click the wall you're talking about
On a call, nobody wants to hunt through panels. Right-click the wall the customer just mentioned and everything that wall can take is right there, each with its price beside it: insulate it for $1,745.80, change the floor, add a frost footer, put a door or a window in it. The call keeps moving, and the customer feels he's working with someone who knows the building cold.
Every minute spent hunting for a setting is a minute the customer spends wondering if this will take all afternoon.
It says no before the customer sees a price
The checks run while you draw. A lean-to on the right wall that drops to 6.2 feet at its outer edge is flagged under the 6′6″ headroom line, with what to change. A lower roof against a taller one is flagged for snow drift. A ledger hung on the main building is flagged as load on its columns. You find out on the call, not on the site — and your rep never has to walk back a promise.
A building that can't be framed as quoted is found out by the crew, and the cost lands on you.
Then the inside: the whole barndominium floor plan
For a barndominium, the building is half the job. Switch the design to Barndominium and draw the house on the real shell, from a template or from scratch — rooms, walls, doors, the kitchen run and the baths. The Ostrander 40×60 shouse: three bedrooms, two baths, 1,432 square feet of living and a 727-square-foot shop. The code check runs as you draw, against the IRC edition you build to — here four fixes, like a shop-to-house door that has to be fire-rated and a second bedroom with no smoke alarm. Then see it in 3D, run the takeoff or print the plan sheets. It's a design aid that catches the obvious early, not a stamped plan. A family that can walk through their kitchen before it exists starts picturing their life in it — and that's when they sign.
A floor plan drawn in another program is a second drawing that has to be kept in step with the first by hand.
Press Stage it, and they walk through a home
One click furnishes the whole plan in the style they like — Modern farmhouse, Rustic lodge or Contemporary: the dining table for eight beside the kitchen, the sofa and chairs facing the TV wall, beds made up in every bedroom, a truck in the shop. Every room keeps its walking paths, and staging is never priced. The walls are finished in the drywall the code asks for, each room has its floor and its colour, and every interior door opens with E. A family that stands in their own great room stops imagining and starts deciding.
An empty floor plan asks the customer to imagine the house; most can't, so they wait.
The kitchen, fitted to the room
Select the kitchen and pick from the layouts the room fits — here a U with an island, one wall, or U-shaped — each scored on NKBA's work triangle, counter and aisle, the sink under the window and never a cabinet over it. Then the door style, the pulls and the colour, seen in 3D while they're excited about it. The baths get the same care: real toilets, vanities, showers and tubs, with the shower door checked against the toilet. Looks never move the price.
A kitchen laid out one cabinet at a time, on the call, is the one with the upper over the window.
A loft over the great room, with a stair that fits
Add a second floor, pick a straight, L, U, winder or spiral stair, and the builder finds it a spot clear of the walls, laid out to the IRC's risers, treads and headroom. Open a room to below and it gets a guarded balcony and a framed opening. The floor stops at a shop whose overhead doors won't fit under it. A two-storey plan set from their designer imports every storey at once.
A stair drawn as a rectangle lands in a bedroom wall, and the balcony's guard shows up as a change order.
The plumbing, wiring and ducts, before the slab
Switch the 3D view to Plumbing, Electrical or Mechanical. Here the plumbing: 15 fixtures, 21 drainage fixture units, a 3-inch building drain, a 1-inch water service and 3 vents through the roof, every drain under the slab at a quarter inch per foot — and what a plumber would mark up, flagged. Every circuit runs from the panel; the ducts have a place in the attic. P1, P2 and M2 print in the plan set to hand your trades.
The plumbing nobody drew is the plumbing that gets located from memory the morning of the pour.
Every placement checked against the code
Behind the floor plan sits one index of 244 rules from the residential, electrical, plumbing, mechanical, fire and energy codes and the post-frame standards. Drop a range across a bedroom wall and the Code check says Fix, with what to do; hang a wall cabinet across a window's trim and it says Check. Every finding names its section, in plain words the builder can say on the call. It's a design check that catches the obvious early — the building department keeps the final word.
A mistake found at the inspection costs a wall; found on the drawing, it costs a click.
The floor plan prints as a permit drawing set
Press Plan set and the design becomes a set of 11×17 sheets, each with a title block: a cover and sheet index, a site plan drawn to the lot and setbacks you type in, the slab with every plumbing drain located off the post grid, the roof plan, and the exterior and interior elevations. A distance that breaks a setback turns red. Add a dimension or a note and it's saved with the design. It's a set drawn for the permit office to check — not an engineered or stamped plan. The plumber knows where the drains go before the concrete, and the family sees their house drawn like a real one.
Permit drawings done again in another program are a third drawing to keep in step with the building you sold.
Which office governs that address, and what it asks for
Type the site address and the permit check answers the questions that change the price: is a permit required, does an ag exemption apply, when are stamped plans needed, what's the fee and who do you call. Here: the Millbrook Building & Zoning Division, a fee estimate of $980 to $1,240. Known before the number goes out, so the rep quotes with confidence and nobody eats a surprise. Once the job is sold, the permit and its inspections are tracked on the job itself.
A permit nobody checked is a cost somebody eats — the customer, the business, or the rep's commission.
Draw one of your buildings
with us on the call.
The building drawn with the customer on the phone — the shell, the roof, the doors, the lean-tos and porches, the whole barndominium floor plan inside it, furnished, plumbed, wired and checked against the code, and a drawing set for the permit office — in a designer that only knows post-frame. Thirty minutes with Keith, on one of your real structures — and the link we build is yours to keep whether or not you go any further.
