The Analog Refactor Diorama: Build a 3D Paper Landscape of Your Codebase Before You Touch a Line

Software teams routinely attempt major refactors with little more than diagrams on whiteboards and a shared sense of dread. Meanwhile, architects and urban planners would never redesign a city block without some form of 3D model—physical or digital—to explore massing, conflicts, and sightlines before concrete is poured.

What if we borrowed their habits?

This post introduces the idea of an analog refactor diorama: a low-fidelity, physical 3D paper landscape of your codebase that you build before you touch a line of code. It’s a strangely powerful tool for making complexity visible, encouraging thoughtful design discussions, and derisking large refactors.

Why Model Code in 3D at All?

In architecture, physical models are everywhere because:

They reveal spatial relationships at a glance.
They surface conflicts early (e.g., two systems occupying the same space).
They give stakeholders a shared, tactile object to point at, question, and improve.

Your codebase has similar properties—just harder to see.

A large system consists of:

Modules and services: like buildings in a city.
Interfaces and APIs: like roads and bridges.
Data flows and dependencies: like utilities and infrastructure.

Trying to refactor this entirely in your head or with flat diagrams is like designing a city from spreadsheets. A physical model forces you to confront the shape of your system: what’s tall and risky, what’s dense and tangled, and what’s relatively flat and safe.

That’s where the analog refactor diorama comes in.

Mapping AEC Workflows to Software Refactoring

In Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC), 3D modeling workflows are not just about pretty visuals. They serve concrete purposes that map surprisingly well to software work.

1. Massing Studies → High-Level Architecture

Architects begin with massing studies—simple blocks representing building volume and placement. No fine details, just the big shapes.

In software, your equivalent is the high-level system view:

Services, domains, or bounded contexts become large blocks.
Their relationships (calls, data flows) become simple connectors.

This is your first pass of the diorama: big paper boxes labeled with the names of services or subsystems, arranged on a board.

2. Clash Detection → Dependency & Conflict Detection

AEC teams use 3D models for clash detection—finding where pipes, ducts, and beams literally intersect in impossible ways.

In your codebase, clashes are:

Circular dependencies.
Services that both depend on and orchestrate each other.
Shared mutable state or tight coupling across teams.

Visualizing these as overlapping or crossing connections in your diorama makes problematic relationships painfully obvious.

3. Visualization → Impact Analysis & Risk Mapping

3D visualization helps architects and stakeholders understand how a design feels before it’s built.

In software, you can use the diorama to visualize:

Impact radius of changes in a module.
Risky terrain—places where many dependencies converge.
Migration paths—stepwise changes across your landscape.

Instead of an abstract dependency graph, you get a physical landscape you can literally walk your refactor through.

Level of Detail (LOD): Zooming In and Out of the Code Landscape

AEC models use Level of Detail (LOD) standards:

Low LOD – Simple shapes, rough massing.
Medium LOD – Rooms, major components, core systems.
High LOD – Detailed components, fixtures, exact construction details.

You can apply the same concept to your code diorama.

LOD 1: Systems and Domains

At the coarsest level, represent:

Major services (e.g., Billing Service, User Service, Search Service).
Key data stores (e.g., CustomerDB, Event Log).
Primary communication paths (e.g., REST, message bus, direct DB access).

Use large blocks of paper or cardboard for each component. Keep it simple.

LOD 2: Modules and Subsystems

Once the topography is there, zoom in on a critical area, such as Billing:

Break it into modules (Invoice Generation, Payment Gateway, Tax Calculation).
Add smaller blocks stacked on or inside the parent block.

This gives you vertical hierarchy and shows how complexity is structured.

LOD 3: Components and Hotspots

For areas you plan to refactor deeply, go further:

Model key classes, adapters, or functional components.
Represent shared libraries, cross-cutting concerns, or tricky orchestrations.

You don’t need this detail everywhere—only where you’ll be making significant change. The LOD principle keeps the diorama manageable.

Turning Metrics into Physical Shapes

To make the diorama more than a pretty toy, tie it directly to real code metrics.

Here are some practical mappings:

Height: Cyclomatic Complexity

Use the height of a block to represent cyclomatic complexity or another complexity metric.
A taller building = a function, class, or module with more branching logic or decision paths.

Result:

Hotspots become skyscrapers in your landscape.
You immediately see where careful refactoring or extra tests are needed.

Footprint: Size or Scope

The base area of each block can represent lines of code (LOC), number of functions, or number of endpoints.
Wide, low buildings = broad but simple modules.

Result:

Gently sloping terrain vs. massive, sprawling “megablocks” becomes obvious.

Color or Texture: Risk and Ownership

Use color, patterns, or textures to encode:

Risk level: red = brittle or poorly tested; green = well tested; yellow = uncertain.
Ownership: patterns for different teams or business domains.
Tech stacks: different materials or colors for languages, frameworks, or runtimes.

When you step back, you see at a glance:

Which team “owns” the tallest risk towers.
Where cross-team dependencies cluster.

How to Build an Analog Refactor Diorama (Step by Step)

You don’t need a design degree or fancy tools. A basic kit looks like this:

Cardstock or heavy paper (various colors).
Scissors or a craft knife.
Tape or glue.
Markers or sticky labels.
A large backing board or foam board.

Step 1: Pick a Scope and Goal

Choose a specific refactor: e.g., “Decouple Billing from User Service” or “Extract Search into its own bounded context.”
Limit the model to the parts of the system that will be touched or impacted.

Step 2: Gather Data from the Codebase

Collect metrics and structure from tools you already use:

Dependency graphs.
Cyclomatic complexity reports.
Test coverage reports.
Module/service boundaries from your architecture docs.

You’re turning this quantitative data into qualitative shapes.

Step 3: Lay Out the High-Level Landscape

Place major services and data stores as large blocks.
Arrange them to reflect real-world relationships (e.g., core domain in the center, supporting services around it).
Use string or thin strips of paper to represent communication paths.

Step 4: Add Levels of Detail Where It Matters

Zoom in on the areas involved in your refactor.
Stack smaller blocks on top of parent blocks for modules and components.
Vary height according to complexity; adjust footprint for size.

Step 5: Encode Risk, Ownership, and Constraints

Color-code risky components or those with poor test coverage.
Mark team ownership and tech stack boundaries.
Add “no-go zones” (e.g., 3rd-party systems you can’t change) around the edges.

Step 6: Walk Through the Refactor in 3D

Now gather the team around the table.

Talk through the current state using the model.
Propose a target state—you can move blocks, reduce heights, or separate fused structures.
Plan migration steps: how to get from today’s terrain to the new landscape in safe increments.

You can even build small intermediate states to visualize stepwise migrations.

Why Analog Beats Yet Another Diagram

You might ask: why not just use a digital 3D tool or a more advanced diagramming app?

Analog has surprising advantages:

Tactility changes the conversation. People physically move blocks, negotiate space, and experiment. It becomes a collaborative design session, not a monologue by the person at the keyboard.
Friction keeps it focused. Because cutting and assembling takes effort, you only model what matters. That constraint increases clarity.
No tooling barriers. Scissors and paper work for everyone—PMs, designers, engineers.
Shared mental model. A constant physical artifact in the workspace keeps the refactor “visible” and grounded, instead of disappearing into a forgotten Confluence page.

The goal is not precision; it’s shared understanding and better decisions.

Conclusion: See the Terrain Before You Start Digging

Refactoring a large codebase without a clear mental model is like tunneling under a city without updated blueprints. You might survive, but you’re also likely to hit something critical.

By borrowing ideas from architecture—physical models, level of detail, clash detection—and combining them with software metrics, the analog refactor diorama gives you:

A 3D landscape where complexity literally stands out.
A collaborative tool for planning and communicating refactors.
A safer way to explore options before you touch a line of code.

Next time your team faces a scary refactor, resist the urge to jump straight into branch creation and IDEs. Grab cardstock, print some metrics, and build your codebase as a landscape first.

You may find that once you can see the terrain, the path to a clean refactor almost maps itself.