TALAMANA · THE AI LITERACY MAP FOR ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN · The Brief · AGE 17—19 · POSITIONAL · METHOD
Millimetres, north, datum, grid
Write the anchors first, because each one removes a choice the model would otherwise make.
When to use
Any brief where the output must line up with real drawings: a plan study, a section, a massing that has to sit on a surveyed plot, a request to read or redraw a drawing. Not for a mood image.
The method
Before the design content, write the anchors, one per line. Units: "all dimensions in millimetres" — the convention on an Indian working drawing, where a wall is 230, not 0.23. Orientation: "north is up on the attached survey", or "north is to the top-left, as marked". Datum and floor level: "±0.000 is the finished floor level of the ground floor; the road is at −0.450". Scale, where it applies: "the attached plan is at 1:100". Coordinate origin: "the origin is the south-west corner of the plot". Dimensional anchors: "preserve the 7.2 m structural grid"; "the plot is 12 m by 18 m". Each anchor is one line. Each one removes a choice the model would otherwise make for you. After the run, check each anchor against the output, one by one. The spatial-check card gives that method.
Watch for this
Writing "12 by 18" and letting the model decide whether that is metres or feet. Many Indian sites are still described in feet on the ground and in millimetres on the drawing. Put the unit on every number, and say once which system the whole brief uses. Watch also for an orientation with no reference: "north is up" means nothing unless you say up on what.
The Lab's note
Putting the anchors first is the Lab's method. The conventions themselves are not ours: millimetres, a north point, a ±0.000 datum and a structural grid are how Indian working drawings have been read for decades, and the National Building Code of India sits behind that practice. What we add is the order, anchors before content, and the insistence that each anchor is checked after the run. Other teachers put precision in the constraints layer and leave it there. We think it belongs at the top, in the drawing's own language.
Try it
Take a plan study you have briefed before. Run it as written. Then add six anchor lines at the top: units, north, datum, scale, origin, grid. Run it again. Measure the second output against the anchors: is the grid 7.2 m, is north where you said, is the ground floor at ±0.000. Record which anchors held and which the model quietly dropped.
Prove it
Show one brief with its anchors written before the design content, and the check you ran on each anchor after the run.
How it works
A model has no ruler and no compass. It has text and pixels. An anchor line turns a fact about the drawing into text the model can follow, and into a test you can run afterwards. A raster image can hold the look of a grid and still not hold a 7.2 m dimension. That is why these anchors work best with reasoning models and grounded generators, and why a plan that must be accurate is drawn in CAD or BIM from what the model returns, never exported from its image. The conventions come from practice: millimetres are the usual unit on Indian working drawings, a north point is marked on plans, and levels are given from a stated datum, usually the finished floor of the ground floor as ±0.000. The National Building Code of India 2016, published by the Bureau of Indian Standards, is the code those drawings answer to.
What this idea builds on
What this idea opens up
Sources
Open this idea on the map · The complete map · Logika · RBDS AI Lab, India · revised every edition.