New:

AI drafting for life safety plans

AI Life Safety Plan and Code Plan Drafting

A life safety plan is the sheet the plans examiner reads first, and every number on it is arithmetic someone has to redo when a room changes use or a door moves. Nomic drafts the code plan in CAD with occupant loads, egress paths, travel distances, exit capacities, and rated assemblies, then checks each value against the IBC or NFPA 101 edition you name so the architect of record reviews a sheet that already adds up.

Start for freeAll drafting work
Last reviewed: November 2026

You send

  • Floor plans as DWG, with the furniture layout where it affects travel paths
  • The occupancy classification, construction type, and sprinkler status
  • The IBC or NFPA 101 edition and local amendments the jurisdiction adopted
  • Your life safety legend, hatch patterns, and title block

Nomic hands back

  • Life safety plans as DWG files with egress paths, distances, and ratings
  • Occupant load and exit capacity tables in Excel and on the sheet
  • Plotted PDFs with changes clouded for the permit set
  • Open code questions for the architect of record
1234567ABCOPEN LAB301LAB302LAB303LAB304LAB305LAB306LAB307LAB SUPPORT308LAB SUPP309LAB SUPPORT310LAB SUPPORT311LAB SUPPORT312LAB SUPP313LAB SUPP314STAIRS2TRAVEL 148'-0" < 250'-0"OL 24OL 12OL 6OL 6OL 6OL 6OL 12EXITFEC1-HOUR FIRE BARRIEREXIT ACCESS TRAVEL PATH27'-3"27'-0"27'-3"27'-3"27'-0"27'-3"94'-8"1ALIFE SAFETY PLANSCALE: 1/8" = 1'-0"N1234CONSULTING ENGINEERSREVISIONS1ISSUED FOR REVIEWPROJECTWESTFIELD LABSSCALE1/8" = 1'-0"DATE05/08/2026KEY PLANSHEET TITLELIFE SAFETY PLANSHEET NUMBERG-101

On the sheet

Life Safety Plan, annotated

A life safety plan with rated walls, occupant loads, and the exit access path checked against the travel limit.

  1. 1Rated corridor walls
  2. 2Exit access path with travel distance
  3. 3Exit sign at the stair
  4. 4Occupant load per room

The problem

The code plan is recalculated every time the floor plan moves

Building a life safety plan means tagging every room with its function of space and area, dividing by the right load factor, summing occupants to each exit, drawing the longest travel path from the most remote point, and showing which walls are rated and for how long. When a conference room grows or a storage room becomes an office, the occupant load, the exit capacity at the door, and sometimes the number of required exits all change, and the legend table has to be rebuilt by hand.

Plan check comments on code plans tend to be the same handful: a travel distance measured in a straight line instead of along the path around furniture and walls, a common path of travel that runs long in a corner suite, two exits closer together than the separation rule allows, an occupant load that uses net area where the code table says gross, or a rated corridor drawn on the code plan that the floor plan tags as a plain partition.

01 / Occupant load

Occupant loads computed room by room

Nomic reads the floor plan, assigns each space the function of space you confirm, and computes the occupant load from the IBC table using gross or net area as the table requires. The loads roll up to each exit and each stair, and the table lands on the sheet and in Excel.

  • Function of space and load factor per room, gross or net as the table says
  • Occupants summed to each exit, stair, and the floor
  • Fixed seating and posted occupant loads taken from your design criteria
02 / Egress

Egress paths, distances, and ratings drawn

Nomic draws the exit access path from the most remote point along the actual route around walls and furniture, dimensions travel distance and common path, and labels each exit with its required and provided capacity. Rated walls get the hatch and line weight your legend uses, and extinguisher cabinets and exit signs are placed and tagged.

  • Travel distance and common path measured along the walking route
  • Exit width, capacity factor, and occupants served shown at each exit
  • Rated assemblies shown by rating, with extinguisher and exit sign locations
03 / Check

Checked against the edition the jurisdiction adopted

Nomic checks the plan against the IBC or NFPA 101 edition you name and against the floor plan it was drawn from, then lists each value with the section it came from. Interpretations, such as how to classify a mixed-use suite, go to the architect of record as open questions.

  • Travel distance, common path, and exit separation checked per occupancy
  • Required exits and exit capacity compared with the occupant load
  • Rated walls on the code plan compared with the wall tags on the floor plan

Checked against

The code and documents behind every sheet

Name the editions the project is designed to and Nomic checks its own drawing against them before handing it back. Your engineer or architect of record makes the final call and stamps the set.

  • IBC Chapter 10 means of egress
  • IBC Chapter 7 fire and smoke protection features
  • NFPA 101 Life Safety Code, where the jurisdiction or occupancy requires it
  • NFPA 10 portable fire extinguishers
  • Local amendments to the adopted code

How it works

From a sentence to a stamped set

  1. Step 1

    Ask for the drawing

    Say what the sheet needs to show and attach the backgrounds, markups, cutsheets, or photos. A sentence is enough to start.

  2. Step 2

    Nomic drafts it in CAD

    Nomic works in CAD on its own computer, on your layers and blocks, following how your firm drew the same thing before. It saves real DWG files to the project.

  3. Step 3

    Nomic checks its own work

    The drawing is checked against the code editions you name and the source documents. Everything Nomic drew is clouded, and open questions are listed.

  4. Step 4

    Your team reviews and stamps

    Your engineers and architects review the clouded changes, make the final call, and issue the set under their own stamp.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Yes. Nomic works in CAD on its own computer and saves the life safety plan as a DWG with occupant loads, egress paths, travel distances, exit capacities, rated assemblies, and extinguisher locations. Every value is checked against the code edition you name before the architect reviews it.

Nomic assigns each room the function of space you confirm and divides the area by the load factor in IBC Table 1004.5, using gross or net area as the table specifies. Rooms with no clear function are flagged instead of guessed, and the totals are summed to each exit.

Nomic measures exit access travel distance along the walking path around walls, doors, and fixed furniture, from the most remote point to the exit, rather than as a straight line. The path is drawn on the sheet so the plans examiner can follow it.

The architect of record does. Nomic drafts from the occupancy, construction type, and sprinkler status you give it and checks the numbers, but classification, code interpretation, and any alternate means requests stay with the architect and the code official.

Yes. Name the code the project is designed to, such as NFPA 101 for a healthcare project reviewed under CMS rules, and Nomic checks egress, separation, and rated construction against that edition instead of or alongside the IBC.

No. Nomic saves DWG files you open in AutoCAD or any DWG editor. On Revit projects it hands back DWGs and a change list your team links into the model.

Keep reading

Related drafting work

AI Floor Plan Drafting for Construction Documents

CD floor plans with wall types, door tags, room numbers, and dimensions tied to the column grid.

AI Door and Hardware Schedule Drafting

Door, frame, rating, and hardware set schedules built from plan tags, in Excel and on the sheet.

AI Fire Alarm Plan Drafting

Detector, pull station, and notification appliance layouts drafted per NFPA 72 and checked against the RCP.

AI Drafting for Plan Check Corrections

Revises sheets for each correction comment, clouds them with a delta, and drafts the response letter.

AI Drafting for Healthcare Projects

Patient room typicals, essential power branches, and med gas drafted to code and owner standards.

What is a life safety plan?

The code plan that shows egress, occupant loads, and ratings.

What is means of egress?

Exit access, exit, and exit discharge in plain terms.

What is occupant load?

How occupant load is computed and why it sets exit width.

Code compliance of drawings

Drawings cross-referenced against the code edition you name.

AI for architecture

Drafting and checks for architects on live projects.

AI Life Safety Plan Drafting: Egress and Code Plans | Nomic