Doug_N

Ok, so based on the experience of other CA users that I have seen discussing computers, here is what I ordered today. MS1 MEG Z590 Unify Motherboard (wifi and bluetooth built in) Intel Core i7 11700K CPU 32 Gig DDR4 memory 2 Corsair Force 2T SSD PCIe SSD MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Ti GPU MS Windows 10 Pro Plus Tower, DVD drive, 850W Power Supply etc. I have to wait for some of these items to arrive at the store, so if any of you think that I should swap anything for something else, please let me know.

Ben, can you imagine doing that 40 times? One for each page? What I am hoping to find is a path to automating this process. Because each page is handled in an identical way, this is something that should lend itself to the wizards of bits and bytes to concoct a solution. Keeping my fingers crossed Doug

Yes that is what I am looking for. For an entire custom house plan typically, there are around 30 - 40 sheets. Printing the pages one at a time and renaming them all is very time consuming, and prone to errors in naming. For example, here is what would be an acceptable filename. A-5 Gound Floor Plan View.pdf

My projects are increasingly moving into the digital submission world. In digital format, various municipalities are setting up criteria for acceptable submission standards that are divergent. That is to say, each municipality is reinventing the wheel. So far as I can tell, no two municipalities have adopted the same submission standards, and so submission has become a major task up from a simple formality. The Province of Ontaria adopted a standard method for submission of paper documents. 1) Fill out the mandated building permit form (mandated by the Ontario Building Code Act) that all municipalities had to accept. 2) Provide at least 2 copies of the drawings in whatever scale is shown on the drawing. 3) Pay the fee by cash or cheque Simple and pretty much the same everywhere. Electronic Submission Nightmare Easiest. 1) Same as 1 above in PDF 2) Same as 2 above except one PDF file (PDF must not exceed 5meg. Limit for most email servers) 3) Same as 3 above but email Interac transfer 4) Reply to comments from the plan examiner sent by email. Send revised pages to the examiner in PDF Hardest: 1) Create an on-line account with the municipality 2) Fill out an on- line application form 3) Register all parties (Owner and Agent at a minimum) and these people also have to participate in the on-line experience. 4) Create individual PDF files for each drawing page to be submitted a) Each page to have proscribed blank area (2" x 5") for municipal stamps and comments, b) Each page to have a name that corresponds to the title block name c) Each PDF to be in vector format. Raster format is not acceptable. (CA does not support vector PDF) I suspect the vector PDF would be much smaller than a raster PDF) e) Each page has to be a flattened file, no layers d) Each page must not have any security features that would prevent editing or commenting (try to convince an Engineer who has stamped the drawing to do this!) f) PDF file size must not exceed (put in some arbitrary limit here.) 5) Pay the fees as required, usually on line, 6) Try to understand the matrix of comments that contain examiner's comments. 7) Upload revised drawing. 8) Comment on the examiner's matrix table. As a result of all of this I have been experimenting with PDF print drivers, and Winzip PDF Compressor. My hat is off to the programmers at CA! The PDF print driver included with CA out performs all of the other print drivers that I have installed on my computer for file size. Now if only I could automatically print, as a batch, all drawing files with an automatic link to the layout page title and page number or label. That would be amazing. I wonder if some of that might be achieved in Ruby? If CA made a printing template that allowed for individual pages as a batch print?

I agree with Chopsaw here. Viewing the file in autocad, it seems that the NG labels refer to Natural Grade. As an experiment try importing the layer for those points only and see how that works.

Ahh I see that I have made an ambiguous post! What I meant to say is that, like the gable line tool, changing the roof pitch in the wall DBX does not turn off the auto rebuild roofs. That is a subtle difference between changing the pitch directly on the roof plane and doing it by other methods that relate to the roof.

What Dermot said! Plus using the Q&A part of the forum will lead to a plethora of very helpful colleagues who are sitting on the edge of their seat to help each other with interesting problems and challenges. I know that I am. One of the best reasons to use CA for doing professional residential designs is the wealth of the user support group. That and CA is among the best of category for custom house design. Unless you are doing a subdivision, it is the leader in doing individual house design. Like any complex tool, you need to get over the wall of being fluent in the use of the features and subtle adjustments that can be accomplished using CA. The tutorials go a very long way to getting you to that point. For example, there is a tutorial on using a gable wall modifying line that lets you maintain the automatic rebuild of roofs, while having different pitches. If you try to change the pitch of a roof directly, that will turn off automatic roof rebuilds. Same thing for changing the roof pitch by clicking on a wall and editing the pitch on the roof dialogue in the wall DBX. Here is the roof gable line tutorial that I am referring to:

This is a good idea, and should be in the suggestion forum.

The floors for this building are cantilevered. The framing illustrated will definitely not work. The joists should run into the main building for at leas 6x the cantilever. This is a project for a structural engineer to specify and provide structural drawings. At least in my opinion.

And property boundaries would all be in even metre increments? It would be useful to know the need though.

1000 mm grid snaps would make your cursor jump 39.37 inches at a time. How would this be useful? It takes more than playing a Canadian to be a Canadian. You have to have maple syrup for blood.

A snap grid of 1m is way too big. I can't imagine that being used for anything practical in designing houses.

One metre increments are very big steps. Do you mean that you want to design in metric then using a metric template is a good place to start. This is available when you first launch CA. Click on the "New From Template" and you will be given a choice of which template to start your drawing from. Hope this helps

Since the limiting distance in 9.10.15.4 for allowing any windows is 1.2m, any setback less than that prohibits any windows at all. So, for zero lot line setback up to 1.2m there is no need to do calculations because for the Canadian building code. The code also says: (2) Where the limits on the area of glazed openings are determined for individual portions of the exterior wall, as described in Subclause 9.10.15.2.(1)(b)(iii), the maximum aggregate area of glazed openings for any portion shall not exceed the values in the row of Table 9.10.15.4. for the total area of the entire exposing building face based on the limiting distance of the individual portion. So this restriction is not based upon the WINDOW size but the GLAZED area. CA does not automatically calculate that.

Do you mean the opening in the wall or the actual glass area of the window? The window area (including frame and all other components for mounting the glass) are baked in calculations that CA does automatically and can show on the schedule. The area of the glass not including mounting components is not tracked by CA but can be calculated using a custom ruby macro.

I am experiencing the same problem with X-13 and Windows 10 64b pro. The number of crashes has been reduced, but I lay the responsibility for this pretty squarely at the feet of NVidea. The only thing that I think that CA could do is somehow program a trap that still allows work up to that point to be saved. For some reason auto save seems to stop working sometime prior to the fatal crash and abend.

One more question, does this only happen with NVidia? Any of your experiencing this with AMD or any other cards?

Have any of you notice something strange with the auto-save feature before one of the dreaded device removed crash. It seems to me that auto-save stops working at some point prior to the crash. It may be that there are a few things going wrong with the program's functioning before the device removed crash occurs. The most frustrating thing is that this crash, that seems to be related to camera views, completely abends (makes the internal processes) stop entirely, except for the ability of the program to display the crash notice. There is no way to do a save. The exit is fatal to anything that you did from the last time that you opened the plan and layout file. Thoughts and observations anyone?

Rob is so right! Demot, I have owned CA for a while now and can download older versions if I need to use them for any reason (I haven't found one yet, but I can imagine doing work for someone else that has an older version and wants it maintained in that version). If you buy a new license, will CA let you download and use an older version that predates your first use of the product?

Here is an old video on "California Room Addition". Great job by the author.

It can be done, but it is really awkward to do in CA. Most times I just cover this off with a note pointing at the valley. This note reads "Board 1 x 10 Flat on Existing Sheathing".

Here is an illustration of how the plank is laid flat on the roof. Note the sheathing is removed for clarity, normally the sheathing outside of the new roof is left in place, while the sheathing under the new roof is partially removed for air circulation. .

Yes just like that. So far as I can tell it is pretty much the same everywhere in North America where shingle roofs are used.

The valley rafters are normally on the flat over the other roof structure, not on edge as CA generates then though.

Do you have truss selected in the roof DBX?