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AI drafting for warehouses

AI Drafting for Warehouse and Distribution Projects

A distribution center is a few hundred identical structural bays, a dock wall with 60 doors, and an office build-out tucked into one corner, and the drawings follow the same rhythm. Nomic drafts the ESFR sprinkler layout, high-bay lighting, dock equipment, and rack plans in CAD across every bay, then checks the set against NFPA 13 and the rack layout before your engineers review and stamp.

Start for freeAll drafting work
Last reviewed: November 2026

You send

  • Structural grid, roof framing, and architectural shell DWGs
  • Fire protection design criteria and the tenant commodity class
  • Tenant rack layout with storage heights
  • Dock equipment and lighting cutsheets
  • Your CAD standards file and title block

Nomic hands back

  • ESFR sprinkler layouts with branch lines and heads as DWG files
  • High-bay lighting and power plans coordinated with the racks
  • Dock equipment schedule and dock power plans
  • Office build-out plans and a list of open questions for the engineer
1234567ABCTENANT101SALES FLOOR102TENANT103TENANT104TENANT105TENANT106TENANT107SALES FLOOR108TENANT109TENANT110STAIRS24" CROSS MAIN12'-0" MAXR27'-3"27'-0"27'-3"27'-3"27'-0"27'-3"94'-8"1AFIRE SPRINKLER PLANSCALE: 1/8" = 1'-0"N1234CONSULTING ENGINEERSREVISIONS1ISSUED FOR REVIEWPROJECTUNION MARKETSCALE1/8" = 1'-0"DATE03/07/2026KEY PLANSHEET TITLEFIRE SPRINKLERPLANSHEET NUMBERFP-101

On the sheet

Fire Sprinkler Plan, annotated

A fire sprinkler plan with the main, branch lines, and heads spaced to the hazard classification.

  1. 1Sprinkler head at listed spacing
  2. 2Branch line feeding the heads
  3. 3Cross main in the corridor
  4. 4Riser to the floor control valve

The problem

Two hundred bays, and the racks move last

Shell drawings for a spec warehouse are repetitive in the most tedious way: 2,000 ESFR heads on a 10 foot grid, high-bay fixtures in every aisle, unit heaters along the walls, and a dock schedule where each door gets a leveler, restraint, dock light, and seal. The mistakes come from repetition, because by the 140th bay a dropped head or a fixture drawn over a rack is easy to overlook on the check print.

Then the tenant signs and the rack layout arrives. Aisles shift, a high-bay fixture now hangs over a rack instead of the aisle, a unit heater sits under two sprinkler heads as an obstruction, and the clearance between deflector and the top of storage has to be confirmed again. The office build-out inside the shell gets its own set of partitions, ceilings, and MEP on a schedule that rarely waits for the shell drawings to settle.

01 / Shell layouts

Every bay drawn the same way

Give Nomic the structural grid, the roof framing, and the design criteria from your fire protection engineer. Nomic lays out branch lines and heads across the whole roof, places high-bay fixtures over the aisles, and keeps the two coordinated with the joists, unit heaters, and roof drains.

  • ESFR heads at the spacing and deflector distance your criteria set
  • High-bay fixtures held over aisles and clear of sprinkler deflectors
  • Unit heaters, roof drains, and smoke vents coordinated bay by bay
02 / Check

Checked against the rack plan and NFPA 13

When the tenant rack layout arrives, Nomic overlays it on the sprinkler, lighting, and mechanical sheets and checks its own layout against the NFPA 13 edition you name. Obstructions, flue spaces, and storage height problems are listed with the bay and rack row they sit in.

  • Clearance from deflector to top of storage at the tenant storage height
  • Obstructions from fixtures, unit heaters, and ducts flagged by bay
  • Rack flue spaces and aisle widths checked against the rack plan
03 / Docks and office

Dock equipment and the office inside the shell

Each dock position needs the same five or six pieces of equipment with power and controls, and the office build-out needs partitions, ceilings, and its own MEP. Nomic builds the dock schedule from the equipment cutsheets, draws the dock power and controls, and drafts the office as an accessory space inside the S-1 shell.

  • Leveler, restraint, dock light, and door operator power at every door
  • Dock schedule in Excel and on the sheet, read from the cutsheets
  • Office build-out plans with egress tied back to the warehouse exits

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.

  • NFPA 13
  • International Fire Code, Chapter 32 high-piled storage
  • International Building Code, Group S-1 and accessory occupancies
  • NEC (NFPA 70)
  • ASHRAE 90.1 or the IECC, including warehouse lighting controls

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 lays out ESFR heads and branch lines across the roof from your fire protection engineer criteria, then checks spacing, deflector distance, and obstructions against NFPA 13. The hydraulic calculation and the final design sign-off stay with the engineer of record.

Send the new rack plan and Nomic overlays it on the sprinkler, lighting, and mechanical sheets. It moves fixtures back over the aisles, flags new obstructions and storage height problems by bay, and clouds everything it changed.

Yes. Nomic drafts the office partitions, ceilings, power, lighting, and plumbing inside the shell and checks the egress path back to the warehouse exits. Your architect decides how the office is classified and separated, and Nomic draws to that decision.

No. Nomic is a new source of drafting capacity. Your fire protection engineer sets the commodity class, design criteria, and sprinkler selection, reviews the layout, and makes the final call before the set is stamped.

No. Nomic works in CAD on its own computer and saves DWG files that open in AutoCAD or any DWG editor. Teams modeling the shell in Revit get DWGs and change lists that a modeler links into the model.

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AI Drafting for Warehouses and Distribution Centers | Nomic