About

Site context, without hunting for it.

Substrata gives you a sourced, dated base map of any parcel it covers, ready to draw on in the tools you already use.

Why it exists

Most site models start the same way: days of work that happen before any design work can start. Substrata removes that step.

• No more chasing the data. Parcels, zoning, terrain, and environmental layers are already assembled for every town covered.
• No more format wrangling. Exports come out as a layered DXF for CAD, a Rhino .3dm site model, or GeoJSON.
• No more translating layers by hand. What you see on screen is the drawing you take with you, already scaled and labelled.
• No more guessing where a number came from. Every layer carries its source and its date.

The underlying GIS data has been curated over a long stretch for a larger tool aimed at developers and municipalities. What was missing was a version built for the moment a student or a practising designer actually needs it: here's my site, show me everything about it, let me take a curated piece of it with me. Substrata is that version.

Synthetic Schematics

Substrata is one tool from Synthetic Schematics. The plan is a small suite of tools that share one account, one login, and one place to manage billing, rather than a separate signup for every new thing we ship. If you use more than one of them, it should feel like one company, not a pile of unrelated logins.

What Substrata is not

Not a general-purpose GIS platform, and not trying to be. Every layer is sourced and dated, and nothing is modelled, weighted, or scored on your behalf. If a number shows up on your screen, it was counted, and you can say where it came from. Narrow and verifiable beats broad and opaque.

Get in touch

Missing town, a bug, an idea for what this should do next: see the Contact page.