3D renders flattened to PNG. Floor plans frozen in PDF. Section toggles lost in screen recording. The HTML preview shape that keeps the interactivity alive for client review.
The firm ships the schematic design package Friday afternoon. Twelve PNG renders, an 18-page PDF with the floor plans, a Loom walkthrough explaining the section relationships. Monday's review opens with the client asking what the back of the building looks like (the firm shipped four front-view renders), what the second floor looks like above the kitchen (the floor plan is on page 4; the section is on page 11), and whether the warm-wood option from the materials palette would change the feel (the materials were on page 16, none rendered).
The firm has the answers in the SketchUp model. The client doesn't have access to the model. Every question is a back-and-forth that the model would have answered if it had reached the client interactively.
Rendered images (PNG / JPG). Designed for a specific framing — front view at sunset, hero shot from the entry. Each render is the right shape for one moment of the design. The client only sees the moments the firm chose; the rotate-around, the close-up of the joinery, the alternate-material view are gone unless the firm shipped them as additional renders.
PDF compilation. Designed for archive and print. Plans, sections, elevations, and renders all sit on pages; pagination breaks the relationship between (say) a section and its corresponding floor plan that requires two simultaneous views to read. Mobile shrinks everything; the floor plan that's legible on the architect's monitor is illegible on the client's phone.
Screen recording / Loom walkthrough. Designed for showing the firm's intended reading of the design. The architect rotates the model, points at the kitchen, walks through the section. The client watches; they don't ask the model their own questions. Right shape as a supplementary "here's how to think about this" video; lossy as the primary delivery for an interactive design.
Sketchfab embed. Designed for sharing 3D models broadly. Strong for the model itself; the URL is sketchfab.com/... and the page UI carries Sketchfab's branding (logo, share buttons, "explore more models" sidebar). Right shape for portfolio publishing; less right for a private client review where the framing should read as the firm's surface.
SketchUp Web Viewer / Revit Viewer. Designed for project collaboration within the design tool ecosystem. Strong on model fidelity; the URL reads as the design-tool platform; requires a viewer load that's heavier than a simple HTML page.
Self-contained HTML preview at a private link. Designed for delivering an interactive design experience to a specific audience. Wraps a 3D viewer, floor-plan interaction, materials palette, and sections in one page; the URL is the firm's; the framing reads as the firm's delivery rather than as a tool's.
Five interactive moves that a static delivery loses:
The client drags to rotate; they see the back of the building, the side elevation from the neighbor's perspective, the volume from above. The architect doesn't have to anticipate which view the client wants — the client just looks.
The web tools that support this: Google's <model-viewer> web component (handles GLB / glTF models out of the box), Three.js (more control, more code), Sketchfab embed (works but with platform branding).
The client clicks "show section through kitchen" and the model peels back to show the relationship between rooms. Click again to switch to a section through the main living space; another click for the section at the entry.
For a multi-story design, section toggles make the vertical relationship legible in a way that flat plans on different pages can't.
The client clicks a swatch (oak vs walnut vs concrete) and the rendered surfaces update. Five seconds to see the warm-wood option; another five for the cool-stone version. No "the firm sent a fourth render with the alternate material" back-and-forth.
The client toggles the lighting from "afternoon sun" to "evening" to "overcast" — sees how the design reads across the day. For a residential project where natural light matters, this shifts the conversation from theoretical to direct.
The flat floor plan is the spine; hovering over a room shows the dimensions, the proposed use, the connecting circulation. The client doesn't have to flip between the plan and an annotation key on a different page.
For interactive dashboards in consulting, the same property — hover for context — does the same work in a different domain.
The path from design tool to portable HTML preview:
<model-viewer>.<model-viewer> wrapper.For the floor plans and materials palette: SVG export from the design tool (legible at any zoom level, supports interactivity) plus a small amount of JavaScript for the hover behavior. The whole preview lands as a single HTML page in the 2-10MB range — small enough to send anywhere, big enough to hold the interactive content.
For AI-generated pages specifically, the trim techniques apply — but the 3D model itself is usually the biggest single asset and has to stay either inline or hosted on a stable URL.
Test the HTML preview shape with a sample design package — drop the file, see the URL the client would receive, walk through the experience on mobile and desktop. Free, no card, 7-day self-destruct, useful for sanity-checking the format change before sending to a real client.
The URL the client opens is part of how the firm reads. A few patterns to compare:
firm.sketchfab.com/... — reads as a Sketchfab project. Fine for portfolio publishing; less fine for a private client review.firm.sharepoint.com/sites/.../client.pdf — reads as a SharePoint file. Functional; the framing is "here's a file we shared from our work environment."previews.firm.com/<unguessable-slug> — reads as the firm's own delivery surface. The URL bar shows the firm's domain; the page loads directly to the preview; no platform UI competes.For agency client previews more generally and for designer Figma handoffs, the same URL-as-framing logic applies — the small URL detail is part of how the work reads.
For architecture and interior design firms specifically, the framing matters more because the engagement is typically longer (months to years), the project involves multiple decision-makers (one client + their partner + sometimes contractors), and the firm's brand is part of what the client paid for.
Studio plan ($14.99/mo) puts the preview URL on the firm's own subdomain (previews.firm.com) and supports white-label expiry pages for retired projects that still carry the firm's brand on the way out. Password protection — for engagements with confidentiality terms — costs nothing extra on any tier.
The HTML preview shape isn't a substitute for:
The right framing: the HTML preview matches the design review phase of an architecture or interior design engagement — when the model is built, the client needs to engage with it, and the engagement should happen at the firm's own URL rather than on a tool's platform. For the phases before and after that, different shapes fit.
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