Some floor plans don't need AI wall detection - they need a human eye. Ritn3D's tracing workflow lets you drop a photo, a PDF, an MLS listing screenshot, or a phone snap of a hand-drawn sketch into the editor as a semi-transparent underlay, then trace walls, doors, and windows over it with a click. The traced plan is exact - you controlled every wall - and one click converts it into an interactive 3D model. Ideal for digitising paper plans your grandparents kept in a drawer, cleaning up a low-quality MLS floor plan for a listing, or turning a napkin sketch into a real record. Free to trace, free to export a clean PNG or PDF, three free 3D conversions per month if you want to walk through the traced plan.
Upload an underlay, trace over it, convert to 3D
Drop a JPG, PNG, or PDF into the tracing editor — a photo of a paper plan, a PDF you've been sent, a real estate listing screenshot, or a phone snap of a hand-drawn sketch on a napkin. The image loads as a semi-transparent underlay behind the drawing canvas.
Rotate the underlay to straighten it, scale it so the room proportions are right, and lock it in place. If the underlay has a scale bar or a known dimension, use it as a reference — otherwise eyeball it. You can always adjust after tracing.
Click along the wall lines in the underlay to lay down straight walls, drop in doors and windows on top, and label rooms. The tracing snaps to the underlay's guide lines where the contrast is high enough, and you take manual control where it isn't.
Once traced, hide the underlay to see a clean floor plan. Export a high-resolution PNG or PDF for immediate use, or click 'convert to 3D' to generate an interactive 3D model with the AI (three free 3D conversions per month on the free tier).
Hand-drawn sketches, faded paper plans, low-res listings
Supports JPG, PNG, and PDF underlays. Phone photos of paper plans, scanned architectural drawings, real estate listing screenshots, MLS floor plan images, hand-drawn sketches, and even PDFs from a competitor's tool all work as tracing bases. If you can view the file, you can trace over it.
The underlay renders at adjustable opacity — 30 % to 70 % is typical — so you can see both the source and your traced walls clearly. Bump opacity up to 100 % to inspect a detail, or down to 10 % to check whether your traced walls stand alone visually.
Rotate the underlay to fix a skewed photo, scale it to match a known dimension, and lock it in place so accidental drags don't move it while you're tracing. Every transform is non-destructive — you can adjust the underlay at any point without affecting your traced walls.
Where the underlay has high-contrast wall lines, the tracer snaps to them so your traced walls fall exactly on the source geometry. Where contrast is low (faded scans, low-resolution photos), snapping backs off and you draw manually — the tracer never guesses where a wall is on a wall you can't see clearly.
The tracing workflow is a mode of the standard floor plan editor, not a separate tool. All the drawing features — doors, windows, arc walls, auto-room detection, undo/redo, auto-save — work the same way while tracing. When you're done tracing, hide the underlay and you have a clean drawn plan.
Traced plans convert to 3D exactly like any other plan in Ritn3D — the AI doesn't care whether the walls were drawn from scratch, detected from an image, or traced over an underlay. Once traced, click convert to 3D and get an interactive 3D model in about two minutes.
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The AI wall detection works best on clean digital floor plans, architectural PDFs from CAD software, and legible scans of printed plans. It struggles with three input types: faded old paper plans, hand-drawn sketches, and low-resolution MLS listing images with marketing overlays. For those, tracing is often faster and always more accurate — you know what's a wall and what's a stain on the paper; the AI has to guess. If your source is clean, use AI detection; if it's messy, trace.
JPG, PNG, and PDF. For PDFs the tracer uses the first page by default; you can switch pages if the PDF has multiple. Underlays can be any resolution — the tracer displays them at fit-to-screen and lets you pinch/zoom to trace details. Very large PDFs (multi-page architectural drawings) are supported as long as your device has the memory to handle them; on phones, we recommend converting to JPG or PNG first for smoother performance.
Yes — this is one of the main tracing use cases. Snap a phone photo of your hand-drawn sketch, drop it in as an underlay, and trace over it. The AI wall detection doesn't handle freeform hand sketches well because it's trained on architectural conventions, but tracing bypasses that entirely — you decide where every wall goes based on what you actually drew. This is the fastest way to convert a napkin sketch or a whiteboard-in-a-meeting plan into a usable 3D model.
For a 3D model that just needs to look right (client presentations, listings, renovation visualisation), no — approximate scaling is fine because the AI 3D conversion preserves the traced proportions and generates a normalised model. For dimensional accuracy (contractor bids, 3D printing at a specific scale), scale the underlay using a known dimension in the source — the width of a standard door (usually 32-36 inches or 80-90 cm) works well as a reference. The editor shows real-time dimensions on any wall you draw so you can verify as you go.
Yes. The tracing workflow is part of the free floor plan editor - no cap on plans traced, no watermark on PNG or PDF exports of traced plans, no forced upgrade. The only tier-limited part is the optional AI 3D conversion at the end (3/month on free, 20/month on Pro at $9.99, 40/month on Pro+ at $19.99). If you only want a clean digital PNG or PDF version of your paper or hand-drawn plan, tracing plus export is free forever.
Yes, provided the listing image is legible. Screenshot the MLS or portal floor plan, drop it in as an underlay, and trace over the walls. This is a common workflow for buyers evaluating a listing before an in-person tour, and for agents cleaning up a low-quality MLS floor plan for their own marketing. Note that MLS floor plans are typically copyrighted by the listing agent or brokerage — tracing for personal evaluation is fine, but consult the source's terms before using a traced version commercially.
Right now they're separate workflows — you pick one at the start of a new project. In practice, we recommend AI detection first if your source is a clean digital plan or a CAD PDF (it's faster and usually just works), and tracing if your source is faded, hand-drawn, low-resolution, or has marketing overlays. A hybrid mode (run AI detection, then trace to fix low-confidence walls) is on the roadmap but not shipped yet.
Yes. Just like AI-detected plans, traced plans go through the same review step before 3D generation — you can adjust walls, doors, windows, and room labels before generating the 3D model. Once the 3D model is generated, you can re-open the 2D floor plan at any time, edit the traced walls or the underlay, and re-generate the 3D model. Each re-generation counts as one render against your monthly quota.
Upload a photo, PDF, or hand-drawn sketch as a tracing underlay, then draw over it and convert to an interactive 3D model.
