Plan vs elevation vs section: the three core views explained

The plan: looking straight down

A plan is the view you get by floating above the building, slicing it horizontally and looking down on the cut. A floor plan, the most common kind, is cut at roughly window-sill height — usually about 1.2 m above the floor — so that doors, windows, walls and the layout of rooms all appear. Anything below the cut (floor finishes, furniture, fittings) reads as seen-from-above; anything above the cut line is either omitted or drawn dashed.

Plans are where space planning happens. Because you are looking straight down, distances across the floor are true to scale, so you can measure room sizes, check circulation and array furniture confidently. This is why the great majority of CAD blocks used for layout — chairs, beds, sanitaryware, vehicles, trees seen as canopies — are drawn in plan.

The elevation: looking at a face

An elevation is a flat, head-on view of one face of the building or object, drawn as if you stood far enough back that there is no perspective — parallel lines stay parallel. Nothing is cut away; you are simply recording what the face looks like. A building has a front (or north), rear, and side elevations; a single object like a sofa or a door has its own elevation too.

Elevations carry the information that plans cannot: heights, proportions, materials, window and door appearance, rooflines. When you draw a kitchen elevation you see the cabinet fronts, the worktop line and the height a range hood hangs at. Elevation CAD blocks — a tree seen from the side, a person standing, a window face-on — are what you reach for when the drawing shows a face rather than a layout.

The section: looking at a vertical cut

A section is the view you get by slicing vertically through the building and looking at the cut face. It is the only one of the three that reveals what is inside the construction — floor build-ups, wall thicknesses, the relationship between storeys, ceiling and floor levels, staircases climbing between floors. Where the cut passes through solid material (a wall, a slab), that material is shown poché or hatched; what lies beyond the cut is drawn as an elevation behind it.

Sections are how you communicate vertical assembly and how floors stack. They are essential for showing headroom, the rise of a stair, the depth of a foundation, or how a roof meets a wall. A few CAD blocks are drawn specifically in section — a bath cut through to show the tub, a window jamb detail — for exactly these moments.

How the three views relate

The clean way to picture the difference is by the cut. A plan is a horizontal cut viewed from above. A section is a vertical cut viewed from the side. An elevation has no cut at all — it is the outside face viewed from the side. Plan and section both involve slicing through the building; elevation does not.

The views are also linked by projection. The width of a window measured in plan equals its width in elevation; the floor-to-floor height in a section equals the height between the same floor lines drawn on an elevation. Good drawing sets are coordinated so a feature lines up across all three. When you place a scaled CAD block in plan and the matching elevation block, you are mirroring exactly this discipline — same object, two views, consistent dimensions.

When to use each view

Use a plan when the question is about layout: where things go, how big rooms are, how people circulate, whether a door swing clashes with a cabinet. Plans answer 'what is the arrangement?'

Use an elevation when the question is about appearance and height: what the front of the building looks like, how tall the windows are, what the cabinet run reads like to a client. Elevations answer 'what does this face look like?'

Use a section when the question is about vertical construction: how thick the floor is, whether there is enough headroom under the stair, how the roof connects to the wall. Sections answer 'what is going on inside, top to bottom?' A complete set needs all three because no single view answers every question.

A worked example: a single room

Take a small bathroom to see the three views cooperate. In plan you see the WC, basin and bath positioned against the walls, the door swing, and the clear floor in front of each fixture — everything you need to confirm the layout fits. But the plan tells you nothing about heights.

Switch to an elevation of the wall behind the basin and now you see the basin rim height, the mirror, the tiling line and the window above. Switch again to a section cut across the room and you see the bath in cross-section, the floor build-up beneath it, the ceiling height and how the soil pipe drops below the floor. Three views, one room, three different questions answered — which is precisely why drawing sets are organised around plan, elevation and section rather than trying to force one drawing to do everything.