Every architecture student learns it. Every firm requires it. Every client expects it.

Before you talk about form, you show the site.

Transport links. Road hierarchy. Street views. Sun path. Wind patterns. Surrounding context. These diagrams are not optional. They are part of nearly every concept presentation and often required for formal submissions to planning authorities.

And yet, across firms worldwide, site analysis is still largely manual.

Teams import maps. Screenshot satellite views. Trace over roads. Add north arrows. Build legends. Capture street views separately. Recreate sun path diagrams in different tools. Copy everything into presentation sheets. Then repeat the process as you start learning more about the site.

It is foundational work. But it is also repetitive work.

More importantly, it slows iteration.

When site diagrams take effort to assemble, teams are less likely to refresh them as assumptions evolve. Context becomes static, even though design decisions are dynamic.

The hidden friction in early presentations

Site analysis typically sits at the end of the first or second presentation cycle. By then, teams are racing toward clarity. They need to communicate site intelligence quickly and confidently.

But that clarity often depends on assembling multiple components from multiple sources:

• Road hierarchy and transit networks
• Street-level context images
• Solar orientation diagrams
• Wind data
• North symbols and legends
• Scaled key plans

Each of these elements may come from a different workflow.

The result is time spent stitching information together rather than thinking about what that information means.

As we open Snaptrude to more global teams, including students and firms outside North America, this friction becomes even more visible. In many regions, parcel data is not readily available. Architects must approximate site boundaries or work around missing geographic information.

If the site boundary is wrong, every downstream calculation is less dependable. FAR. Setbacks. Solar analysis. Context diagrams. AI outputs.

Site accuracy is foundational.

Giving architects control over the boundary

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For users in the US and Canada, Snaptrude allows direct selection of official property parcels. That makes defining the site straightforward and dependable.

But architecture is global.

For projects outside the US and Canada, you can now draw your own site boundary directly in the Topography view. Click to place vertices, pan and zoom as needed, and close the shape to complete the polygon. Edit it later if required. Snaptrude automatically calculates the site area, even when multiple parcels are selected.

Once defined, that boundary becomes the source of truth.

It informs FAR calculations, setbacks, datum setup, AI Stack outputs, and site analysis diagrams. Instead of approximating context, you define it precisely.

This removes a blocker for global teams and ensures that analysis is grounded in the exact footprint you intend to design on.

Automatically generating what teams build manually

Defining the site is the first step. Understanding it visually is the next.

Snaptrude now automatically generates site analysis diagrams based on the location of your site on the toposolid.

When a site parcel is selected or a boundary is drawn, Snaptrude creates three presentation-ready sheets:

• Roads & Transit Connectivity Map
• Street View Diagram
• Sun & Wind Analysis Diagram

If a toposolid exists but no parcel is selected, Snaptrude generates transport and sun & wind diagrams. Street views depend on parcel selection in this version.

These diagrams are built from live data sources:

• Road hierarchy and public transport data from Mapbox
• Street views from Google Maps at points closest to the site
• Sun path generated using the same sun calculation library used in the design canvas
• Wind analysis generated from EPW climate files

They appear automatically in Present Mode and include north symbols. They respond to the map style selected during topo import, whether satellite or map view.

Most importantly, they are not static images. Users can move, copy, crop, or delete diagram elements. If a site is reimported, new sheets are generated. If sheets are deleted, they can be recreated from the auto-diagram dropdown.

By automatically generating site context sheets, Snaptrude reduces the time between importing a site and presenting a clear understanding of it. Instead of assembling diagrams manually, teams can focus on interpreting them.

This strengthens Snaptrude’s broader AI-assisted design promise: turning inputs into actionable, presentation-ready outputs with minimal friction.

What this enables

For architects worldwide:

• Less time reconstructing context drawings
• More reliable site boundaries, even without parcel data
• Faster iteration when sites change
• Immediate access to solar and wind intelligence
• Presentation-ready diagrams without switching tools

For students and global teams, this is especially impactful. Sun path and wind diagrams are standard components of early submissions. Connectivity maps are often required by city authorities. Street views are expected in concept presentations.

By automating these diagrams and grounding them in accurate site boundaries, we’re addressing a problem that exists far beyond Snaptrude.

Architecture always begins with the site.

Now, it begins with clarity.