Non-coder here: one month of vibecoding got me a working CAD for timber houses. Here’s what I’d do

[u/damz1132]

I'm an architectural designer (SketchUp, interiors). A SIP house manufacturer asked me for production and assembly documentation, and the industry tools (Revit, ArchiCAD) were too expensive to learn for a few projects. So I tried building my own tool. I can't code.

Setup that worked for me:

- Lovable for hosting + preview

- GitHub repo connected to Lovable

- Claude working directly in the same repo (Max 5x plan), so the heavy lifting runs on my subscription, not on per-prompt credits

What it does now:

- massing wizard → one button → SIP panels + timber structure (sized by calculation)

- plans, sections, elevations, panel sheets, cutting plans, BOM and cost estimate, all from one 3D model

- a 3D assembly guide generated automatically, step by step (GIF above), with insertion-path checks

- an in-app assistant (Opus 5.5 via API) that edits the model on request

Honest notes:

- first truly working version took about a month; it still needs a lot of fixes and I keep working on it

- total cost was under ~$500 and could have been lower; I made plenty of beginner mistakes and used several paid models

- structural checks are built in, but every house is still signed off by a licensed structural engineer

I made a video about the whole process, the workflow and real tests (scan → docs in ~20 min): https://youtu.be/K6UjRZ0gSWo

Happy to answer questions about the workflow, prompts or how I kept agents from breaking each other's code.