mfmclelland

I saw that after I posted. I updated my signature but it doesn't update previous posts. I am aware of what an update costs.

I used CA to design and do the working drawings for my home. Now that it is completed and we are moved in, I don't need to retain my license any longer. I am offering it for sale for $1650.00 with the buyer paying the 100.00 transfer fee (total $1750.00). I have spoken with customer service and they are sending me the transfer forms. If you are interested you can contact me here, PM me, or email me at mark@elsproductions.com. Thanks!

I have x9 and I bought it to design my own home. We are built and moved in and I am interested in selling my X9 License. I just called customer service to see how this works and they were all tied up and are getting back to me. Contact me if you are still interested and once I have the info from them I'll post it for sale.

I am looking to find a structural engineer in Utah that uses CAP. I am on CAP X9 and have finished one project with engineering here in Utah but the engineer used autocad and it was a bit of a frustrating experience (not bad but it would have been easier if he had been using CAP). Any engineer who has a Utah License/Stamp using CA let me know. Thanks!

Thanks for the comments. I met with the engineer last night and we came up with a solution that hopefully won't cause too much extra work. Fingers crossed.

Thanks for the response. OK, that part makes sense to me and I actually downloaded the free autocad viewer and played around a bit to see what he would see with my exports. I see that he would have access to any of the layers I exported etc to turn off or on. so that put me at ease a bit. I guess my last question would be this. Once he does the engineering and adds his info to the plans, I assume he would then send me back a DWG file with his additions etc. that I can then import into CAP. Once that file is imported, do I replace the existing plan with his new modified plan or import it as a new plan or...? I imported the DWG file I created back into CAP and a lot of the functionality is gone (3D, walls moving etc.). Obviously I will want his info on all plans I print for the builder. Can you explain the steps once I get his DWG file back? Thanks again!

OK, I'm new to CAP but with some help from you good folks and some work, I have my working drawings completed. For some background, I have designed 100's of homes in the past. I have a degree in Architectural Drafting and designed homes in Utah using pencil and vellum for years. I got out of the business about 18 years ago and did other ventures. We are getting ready to build a new house and I bought my wife The Home Designer program to play around with. She played with various ideas and it molded into the plan we liked. I started using that software to see if it could take me to finish drawings. While it got me close, I felt it was a bit limiting on the working drawing side so I made the jump to CAP. I now have everything completed except engineering. The city we are building in requires two sets of engineered plans with a wet stamp. I contacted an engineer in the area and his pricing is reasonable. He wants me to deliver CAD drawings. From those he will do the engineering and print and wet stamp two sets. That si a long story but I am worried about the work flow. I read on one of the threads here that to export for CAD, I need to open each sheet in the layout plan and then open and export each individual view as a DWG file. I'm not quite sure how that works since a lot of my notes etc. are on the layout file and not the working view. Then the next problem to me seems to be that once he does his thing in CAD, how will that reintegrate back into CAP? It seems at this point that my plans will be in two versions and if I decide to make changes or re-sell the plan etc. there will be a disconnect. Is someone willing to baby step me through the best way to handle this? I am going to get back into drawing houses here in Utah but I see this is a hurdle down the road as every city wants engineering as I have described above. Is not using AutoCAD a disadvantage in the long run? I love CAP, it is intuitive and I have never had so much fun drawing, but I am worried that by not using the "industry standard", I may be handicapping myself. I would love some thoughts from those of you who have figured out how to work around this or maybe have experience in both programs. Thanks!

Thanks for the video. You were actually doing the opposite of what I am trying to do but I got your point. The top of foundation were showing correctly everywhere but where the triangles are. You were actually lowering the areas that were fine and raising the area that needed to be stepped down. I tried to do what you were doing in the video before I posted here but that affected area just wouldn't show correct. But I think the point was the program isn't perfect and I need to quit obsessing over things that ultimately don't matter to the actual plans. Back in the old days when I drew plans on paper, we couldn't begin to show things we can in this program. I think we are always expecting software to do what we want without realizing the extensive math in doing so and the endless possibilities that one user may throw at it. Thanks for taking the time! Mark

OK, I designed a plan using Home Designer Pro. I then decided to bite the bullet and get the full CAP program so that I would have more options available. We opened the plan in CAP and most things seemed to be OK. Our lot slopes towards the front so we needed to step the foundation at the garage to lower it and get the house up so there would be less cutting of grade. I tried several ways of stepping the foundation but it always gave me weird problems. So I decided to start over fresh in CAP and see if the issues were coming from the Home Designer Pro Version. Now as I have started I have tried to do things in sequence and not get ahead of myself. The problem occurs where I am trying to step the foundation. It looks fine on the front elevation but when I take a camera shot from inside the garage I get these weird triangle things happening. I am including a set of the plans since right now they are small since I am just starting over. If you take some shots from the interior of the garage from the back to the front corner by the porch,you'll see what I mean. I have also included an export of that shot. I want to step the foundation where the garage and the storage under the porch intersect. Everything I try gives me issues. Can anyone point me in the right direction? Thanks in advance if you can. Mark Olympic Lane Final.plan

Wow, ask and you shall receive. Thanks to both of you for the quick responses. I knew there had to be a place to do it. That helps a lot. Thanks!!!

I have been using Home Designer Pro for a little over a year and just last week made the plunge into CAP. I am working on my own house plans with an eye to getting back into home design business. I designed homes for years the old fashioned way with pencil and vellum and this has been a learning curve to say the least. But I am enjoying it and I am quite good with computers so it seems to be a good match. I have set elevation points around the perimeter of my lot for my terrain and created a sloping terrain to represent the actual lot. I know I'll need to cut and fill areas (and I have seen there are videos for that process), but I also want to raise the entire house up relative to the terrain so that I am not hauling off the entire lot. Is there a place I can set the top of the foundation relative to the terrain to raise up the entire house out of the ground. It seems like there should be but I can't find it. I am also having issues stepping the garage foundation down so that I can raise the basement up, relative to the garage. I was able to change the stem wall in the garage to drop the floor and garage doors down but I am thinking there has to be a more elegant way to do it. Can someone point me to a video that explains top of foundations etc.? I'm sure I'll be back with more questions as I go but I appreciate the forum, I have found answers to some of my questions here without having to ask them but I haven't found anything showing what I need for this. Thanks in advance! Mark