Doug_N

Merry Christmas to all my wonderful colleagues out there, and of course to their families. All the best in the new year to you all!!!

Has anyone used a pen tablet or pen display?

Wow Richard, you make a very good point! Yup, minimum room sizes, joist and beam spans, door and hall sizes, stair data, and windows parameters. There is more but the list gets smaller.

Here is the best business advice I can give you. 1) Find out what qualifications are required to design houses for other people in the jurisdictions that you are planning to be working in. In my area a person must be qualified by writing building code exams and passing with an acceptable mark in each exam. If there are qualification requirements, you will need to meet those before practicing on your own. 2) If possible while learning the BC ropes, work for someone now in the design process. 3) If possible, get a plans examiner to mentor you in the beginning. 4) Find out what the requirements are for Errors and Omissions insurance, and General Liability Insurance. Design something that fails, and you will be up to your neck in lawsuits. 5) Get a good lawyer to design a Scope of Work Agreement that outlines what your service covers, what constitutes an extra, how to exit the agreement, who owns the intellectual property that you create, progress payments, and what is entirely outside of the scope of your work. 6) Do not ever work for free, or on speculation. That is a rabbit hole that is never ending and creates bitter experiences. 7) Never believe a person that suggests that you should work for less on this project and they have others to follow that will be worth more. If you work for less now, you are setting a benchmark that will be hard to change later. Also, that is a good chance that there never will be a later, at least for that client. 8) Not and hard and fast rule but don't negotiate price. Know what you are worth, what the market is paying, and stick to your guns. If the client wants a lower price, then take something of value off the table as well. Lower price equals less work in other words. Sometimes if times are lean you will have to cave on this, but certainly not if work is ongoing. 9) Once you have a client, treat the client as respectfully as you can. Return calls promptly. A satisfied client is your best sales tool. 10) Talk to lots of real estate sales reps. People moving into a new house often want renovations, or they may have clients that want to do renovations to improve the curb appeal to sell. 11) Lean on this forum for ongoing advice, there are lots of people here who really know their stuff. Ask questions and consider the answers that you get. You may not follow the advice but at least you have a perspective that may help you in ways that you least expect. Good luck, it is always tough to go out on your own, but it can be very rewarding both financially and in personal satisfaction because you have created designs.

Larry, Zoning and the bylaws that are enacted to create them is a totally different aspect to designing buildings. Because a building complies with building code doesn't mean that it is going to be allowed for a specific lot location. Here we have a quasi legal Committee of Adjustment, where you can appeal for relief from a bylaw with what is called a minor variance. The committee looks at your appeal, determines if the minor relief (say 32% lot coverage instead of the 30% allowed in the bylaw) and decides to grant relief or not. Is there a similar process in California? Here zoning is, as I assume it is in California, determined by each municipality.

Chopsaw wrote: All except for the people in California most likely did not consider that it would be a good idea to write the entire code in metric for an industry that does not use metric. Conversion from the metric notation in the OBC is easy, just divide millimeters by 25.4 to get inches, or 3.2808 to get feet from metres. piece of cake. And who can't visualize an 38mm x 140mm to see that it is just a 2 x 6?

The best way to learn code is to see if you can shadow a plans examiner for a few days. Here in the province of Ontario, there are courses that can be taken to learn enough code to pass the challenge exam. When you do your first few design projects you will quickly discover that you didn't learn nearly enough. I have no idea about California Building Code, but it was written by the same type of people who wrote the code here, well then you will understand how to solve Rubic's Cube. What I am saying is there are probably sentences in the code that are modified by other sentences in the code under certain conditions. These are what I call "gotcha" rules. Sort of like trying to drive by looking in the rear-view mirror in a fog only harder. I hope everyone can overlook my tongue in cheek irreverent rant, but what the heck.

No ;-) lol

What I am suggesting here in this thread, is that one of the key design components is the space created by walls. What the engineer decides about structure is to certify the structural integrity of the building, but the designer's responsibility is for the function of the space. Not specifying where the dimensions terminate can result in a misplaced wall, and if there is an error in reading the termination of walls, that error can pretty quickly stack up to a significant error in the placement of a wall. My posts where about how to be clear about what the dimensions are communicating, and why there should be dimensions to exterior surfaces (set back rules), to framing and for finished surfaces. There is not just one rule! The designer has to indicate what the dimensions are saying so there isn't ambiguity. In the case of an engineer changing a wall location for structural reasons, the engineer should have a discussion with the designer who should review the reasons for the change and make design accommodations. It isn't (or shouldn't be) up to the structural engineer to design the functional spaces. I might be wrong, but it seems that the focus of this thread has gone off the tracks about what the focus of the original post was about. That question was where should dimensions terminate?

No, not me.

I have experienced this same phenomenon several times. All of a sudden I can't click on anything. The cursor focus function stops working for a bit. Usually this comes back if I refresh the page or go to a different window and come back to CA again. This does not happen with other windows programs, so my assumption is that CA is processing something and that uses so many resources that it can't process the click buffer. This does not seem to affect the keyboard buffer for windows though because I can alt-tab to a different program. I have not had to shut down CA and restart it though.

I disagree with your closing assertion. dimensioning to framing is a way of ensuring that the designer's intent is carried out. A house framer is more than likely not the contractor that will be doing drywall, or masonry. Where the framing goes is integral to executing the design as required by the architect/designer. Sure you can rely on the trades to figure out what those dimensions should be, but as a careful designer I usually include a framing plan and a finished room size plan. It significantly reduces the finger pointing at a later date when reviewing as built conditions during the construction process. Anyhow, that is my opinion on the matter. I am sure that many of you as design colleagues have different opinions, and that is one of the things that makes this forum worth while.

Dimensioning from the brick is common in as built drawings, but rare in new design drawings. A site plan may have dimensioning from the brick layer to illustrate set back from lot lines though. So, it all depends on what you are trying to illustrate, and who the audience is. Just my opinion.

Thanks Eric for this great search tip.

Rob, My point is that this feature should work automatically. It is in that group, and if it is not intended to work automatically the program should grey out or uncheck the auto height button if tread is selected.

I sometimes would prefer to have the top tread flush with the upper floor level. This is especially helpful when connecting to a 2 x 6 floor joist without fancy drop blocking to connect to the stringers. Examiners are now requiring framing details for how the stair stringers are connected.

It's not sticky and doesn't work at all if Automatic Height is selected

From the help text for this DBX here is how the height reference is supposed to work. The Top Height Reference values control what point on the staircase the Top Height value, below, describes. Select Floor/Landing for the Top Height value to describe the height of the top tread plus the stated Riser Height. Select Top Riser for the Top Height value to describe the height of the top riser. (I have copied this text and pasted it in the graphic as well.) Except that doesn't work if Automatic Heights is checked. In fact, once OK is clicked the default goes back to Floor/Landing. Why is this? Is this just my installation or is this true for everyone?

That is what I was thinking. If it were hard coded then how would you exceed the limits if that was not the code of your area?

Here a link to my suggestion for additional parameters to the stair DBX. If you agree, please click on the link and vote to support it. Thanks

I am going to suggest in the suggestions forum the following: In the setup dialog: Min Tread Depth Max Tread Depth Min Rise Max Rise This would make the stair generator create a code compliant stair system at the get go, (assuming that is what you input), instead of tweaking the number of treads, tread depth and rise. Any thoughts on this?

Does anyone know if it is possible to change the default run (tread depth) to something other than 11? If I change it in the settings dbx, it goes back to 11 once I close the dialog box. Same thing for the default rise.

Nice video and explanation ChiefJeet!

Mick, Changed the included plan file. Thanks for pointing that out. Doug

Mark, Great suggestion!