You can now color your whole model by any tag category you have set up, not just department. Tag a space by phase, building, wing, tenant, fire zone, or facade type, then save that colored view and switch back to it whenever a meeting calls for it.

A single architectural model has to answer a different question in every meeting. The contractor wants to see the construction sequence. The fire consultant wants compartment boundaries. The client wants the tenant split. The facade team wants the cladding breakdown. It is one building, but each person needs a different read of it.

For years, the way you produced those reads was to redraw them. A colored phasing diagram here, a department plan there, a fire zone overlay in a third file. The geometry was identical every time. Only the coloring changed. That is the work this feature removes.

You can now color your model by any tag category in one click, and save each version as a view you return to. This post covers how the tagging works, what saving a colored view actually does, and which reviews it speeds up.

Why do architects redraw the same plan so many times?

Here is what we kept seeing. A space in a building is never just one thing. A room is part of a department, sits in a construction phase, belongs to a tenant, falls inside a fire compartment, and sits behind a particular facade type. All of that is true at once.

But most tools let a space carry one classification at a time, usually whatever the floor plan was set up around. So when a review needs a different lens, you export the plan and recolor it by hand. Or you keep parallel files, one per diagram, and pray they stay in sync when the design changes.

They do not stay in sync. The model moves, a wall shifts, a room gets reassigned, and now your phasing diagram is showing last week's layout. The redraw tax is not just the hours. It is the risk that the diagram in the meeting no longer matches the model on the screen.

When a space can hold many tags at once, you describe the building once and read it many ways, instead of redrawing it for every audience.

How do you tag a space in more than one way?

You select a space and assign it tags across as many categories as you need. The categories are yours to define. A few that come up constantly:

A single conference room might be tagged "commercial" for program, "phase 2" for sequence, "Tenant B" for occupancy, "fire zone 1" for compartmentation, and "curtain wall" for facade. Five tags, one space, no conflict. Each tag belongs to a different category, so they coexist.

This matters most on the projects where the lenses multiply. A hospital floor plate has departments, phasing, fire compartments, and MEP zones all layered on the same rooms. A mixed-use tower has tenants stacked against facade types against program. The more complex the building, the more reads it has to support, and the more redrawing you were doing before.

Tags live on the space, not on a drawing, so one well-tagged model carries every diagram you will be asked for.

What does saving a colored view actually do?

Once your spaces are tagged, you pick a tag category and the model recolors by it. Choose "phase" and the whole model colors by construction sequence. Choose "fire compartment" and it recolors by zone. The switch happens in one click from the right-click menu, with no setup in between.

Then you save that colored read as a view. The phasing view, the tenant view, the fire-zone view: each one is saved and waiting. When the construction meeting starts, you open the phasing view. When the fire consultant joins, you switch to the compartment view. You are not rebuilding the coloring each time. You are flipping between saved reads of the same model.

Because every view points at the same underlying model, they all update together. Reassign a room from Tenant A to Tenant B, and the tenant view reflects it the next time you open it. Move a phase boundary, and the phasing diagram follows. There is no reconciliation step, because there is nothing separate to reconcile.

This is the part that compounds. Setting up tags is a one-time cost per project. After that, every review that used to need its own diagram is already prepared. You can explore how this fits into the wider design workflow on the Snaptrude AI page, and see related capabilities in the product releases log.

A saved colored view is a question your model can already answer, so the next review is set up before it starts.

Does coloring by tags change your model?

No. This is worth stating plainly, because it is the difference between a presentation trick and a workflow you can trust.

Coloring by tags changes how the model is displayed, nothing else. No geometry changes. No duplicate objects. No extra files. You are not creating a second copy of the building to color it differently. You are applying a display lens to the model you already have.

That means the colored views carry zero downstream cost. They do not bloat your file. They do not fork your geometry into versions that drift apart. They do not need to be re-exported when the design moves. The coloring is a read, and the model stays the single source of truth underneath every read.

For a firm, that is the thing that makes this safe to standardize on. You can tell a team to tag spaces consistently and rely on colored views in client meetings, knowing the views can never disagree with the model. They are the model.

Coloring is a display lens, so you get every diagram you need without ever forking the geometry that produces them.

Which reviews does this speed up?

The payoff shows up anywhere the same model gets read through a different lens. A few that come up most:

• Phasing reviews with contractors. Color by phase, walk the sequence, and answer "what is built when" without prepping a separate phasing set.
• Tenant and occupancy walkthroughs. Color by tenant to show the split, then switch to program to show how each tenant's space breaks down.
• Fire and life-safety coordination. Color by fire compartment so the consultant reviews boundaries against the live plan, not a snapshot.
• MEP early coordination. Color by AHU zone to align services with the spatial layout before anything is locked.
• Facade and envelope discussions. Color by facade type to see curtain wall, punched window, and solid distributions across the building at a glance.

Each of these used to be a diagram you produced for a meeting and then maintained. Now each is a saved view. The setup work moves to the front of the project, once, and the reviews themselves get faster to prepare for the rest of the project's life.

This is the same principle that runs through how we think about design tools: the model should do more of the describing, so you spend your time on decisions instead of redrawing. You can read more on that approach across the Snaptrude blog.

Every recurring review that needed its own diagram becomes a saved view, so the prep work happens once instead of every meeting.

FAQ

Can a single space have tags from more than one category?
Yes. Tags belong to categories, and a space can carry one tag from each category at the same time. A room can be "phase 2," "Tenant B," and "fire zone 1" all at once, with no conflict.

Do I need to set up the tag categories myself?
You define the categories that fit your project. Department, phase, tenant, MEP zone, fire compartment, and facade type are common, but the categories are yours to create based on what your reviews need.

Does coloring by a tag category change the geometry?
No. Coloring is a display lens only. There are no geometry changes, no duplicate objects, and no extra files created when you switch or save a colored view.

What happens to my saved views when the model changes?
They update with the model. Because every view points at the same underlying model, reassigning a room or moving a phase boundary is reflected the next time you open the relevant view. There is no separate file to keep in sync.

Where do I switch between colored views?
You pick a tag category and the model recolors in one click from the right-click menu. Saved views let you switch between reads without rebuilding the coloring each time.

If you are spending meetings explaining a model through diagrams you redrew by hand, tag your spaces once and save the views your reviews actually need. Open your current project, tag a few spaces across two categories, and save your first colored view to see how much of the prep work disappears.