SH_Canada

see attached below, which is what is framed by CA. I then copied and pasted the parallel line to cut through the joist.

The joist is 16". but because the stair width is 42" and it could framed in such a manner that the joist there(At your head) is 42", a 16" deep joist is not actually required

so if one could either put ripped LVL there, or something else, you would no longer have the headroom problem. it only applies if you frame the stair opening per below WITH adjustments(see red and greem). For this particular one, you could move FB3-2 to the right say 16", extended the connected beam(red), and then "fill in" with a smaller joist, ripped LVL, or on angle framing member (green)

did you try narrowing your stairs? it looks like your railing on your stairs go beneath the floor above

i was testing global variables in the plan and it looks like they can overwrite each other if there are two plans open. If I may ask, how are you moving data from a text box on the plan to, for instance the CAD detail, to send to layout?

yes, I might be abandoning the global variables in layout. I'm trying something a little different at the moment.

so doing some more testing, it looks like the plan file name can be LESS than the one which created the layout to begin with. This is good news. What it means is I can create the template file like you did, except do it with a very long path name for the plan location. then as long as your pathname is less, everything would work.

This will be much simpler

13 hours ago, stevenyhof said:

Very interesting. I would not be interested in the same number of characters. For now it is working for me as I have laid out and seems to be straight forward for me. Download loom and do a video of your process. I am also interested in greater automation, but it sounds like I would be restricted to name length and having to copy an existing plan to a new plan. I am always updating my .plan and .layout templates tweak by tweak. 

You would not have to copy an existing plan to a new plan. Effectively what it would do is instead of having your default plan in the CA directory you would put it in your own named directory and configure chief to get the templates from there

I was thinking about the naming and I'm not sure I'd be too worried about the name as it is only for the plan, layout could be whatever. And if the scripting was built correctly it would pad the characters for you. AS we print from layout, that would seem to be the important filename as it also defaults the PDF name

Let me play around with it and see, then yes I'll post a video. 

On 5/9/2021 at 12:18 PM, Katy_DDR said:

What do you use for collecting the measurements? Do you pen/paper it, use an app, or draw in CA as you go?

 

We need to get way more efficient at creating as-builds so I’m researching options & we already have a 50c that’s been paired with pen/paper, but in this day-age there’s *got* to be a better way.

I use the bosch  (GLM50C with bluetooth) laser measuring device (no special target needed) and i bought a $300 tablet that runs the bosh software. software is free

You draw the walls in quick sketch and then convert to detailed walls to add measurements, windows, doors. It's pretty good, you have to put in a few manual measurements, for the rest, you just tap on the wall, and then press the button on the laser, and it shows up on the plan.  It takes me about an hour to do a floor, or two hours to do the whole house including outside soffit height and pitch. the bosch is nice because it does have pitch angle, so you can rest on a gable fascia to get the pitch. i looked at the Leica, but it is more money for a little snap out thing I thought I would never use. The key thing about the bosch software is it auto scales, but then changes the number style when it comes from the laser, or you input manually. It makes it easy to figure out what you have left to measure and it also lets you sanity check the measurement vs the scaled distance. And this is important as you roam around a house, as after awhile you ask yourself, did I get that measurement? one thing I use the "manual" dimension for in the bosch software is for the keeping track of a measurement from a reference wall, to make sure the overall dimensions are correct. and of course I keep a tape measure in hand, and then add in notes in the bosch software as I need to detail HW, furnace, electrical panel

best thing about the software is I dont have to read my handwriting

oh and I do take pictures of some critical measurements where the tape measure is in the picture. for instance if there is a post. the problem with measurements is you have to know the reference point. Do you remember if you took a measurement from the east side of the post the west side or the middle.

After multiple times forgetting, I either add a note to the bosch software or take a picture.

and I take a bunch of general pictures

For renos, I've learned it is a game of inches. a post dimension out 3 inches is the difference between a 33" hallway or a 36" hallway

then once I get back, I redraw in CA

one other thing, here most people have a surveyor's site plan as it is required to purchase a property. I will use the building footprint as the "truth" for outside wall dimension, which means I do not need to measure outside walls. I might fudge the numbers an inch or two to match the interior dims, but that is about it. This means the only thing I measure on the outside is soffit height, pitch, main floor elevation. I tell people that the hieght in my plans are not guaranteed, but also that if the customer is not changing the height, the City people will not care

Life would be simpler f we could just reference by plan and named object like you can with excel macros. ie..

myarea = plan("jason.plan").plan.floor[1].standard_area

then CA would look at any plan in the layout until it found jason.plan

and then get the attribute

and then on layout load, you could hit a refresh and it repopulates, or it would autorefresh

1 hour ago, DRAWZILLA said:

hitting the f5 key twice also executes macro's

thanks, also good to know.

Life would be simpler f we could just reference by plan and named object like you can with excel macros. ie..

myarea = plan("jason.plan").plan.floor[1].standard_area

then CA would look at any plan in the layout until it found jason.plan

and then get the attribute

and then on layout load, you could hit a refresh and it repopulates, or it would autorefresh

interesting. my sheet is 24x36 and then I send to layout at different scales.. But you would avoid that by doing what you do.,

Today my sheet has no real bearing unless I send at 1/4 as that matches my drawing sheet scale. I think what one is supposed to do if one wants to only use 24x36, is to adjust the scale on the drawing size so that the drawing sheet is the scale one would be sending to layout. then one is always drawing to fit, so to speak

Is that the reason you do with different sized templates, to maintain a fixed scale, or are there other advantages? I can see fixed scale being a large advantage when doing text, dimensions

5 hours ago, Alaskan_Son said:

Also, just FYI, as a general rule, there needs to be a screen redraw/refresh of some sort  in order for macros to update.  This could be panning/zooming

this was exactly it. Panning and zooming updates it. Thanks! good to know the behaviour. Unfortunate that his does not appear in the manual. 

I'm not  huge fan of global variables when you can have, and I do, have multiple files open. If the plan name was available as a method, one could create a global array, and populate the first element as the plan name, and then use this as a key to check. Unfortunately it is not.

I've read a lot of the other posts on getting the area with macros, polylines, global variables, but I did not see one that could do it with macros only. I have managed to get the floor areas to a text file by macro only, so I could read them back in with a macro, do the total area and populate a text box (as I am doing with a macro in layout), but do it in the plan, and then send to layout as you suggest. The advantage is I would not have to connect the goofy leader line to the layout box on my first page. It's like CA is "this close" to be able move data between the two and within the plan, ...but not quite..

I've been trying to get the layout to read a file and populate a rich text box..

The contents of the file(floor area) are written to when the plan file changes. This is all good.

In the layout, I have a macro which reads the contents of the file and puts it into a global variable. this macro is in the label of the plan object(layout box) in layout.  All is good. label updates whenever the file updates..

but if I put a macro which just spits out the global variable ( I cannot use the macro above because it references the file which is only available for layout boxes) in a rich text box on the layout page, it seems to only update when I open and close the text box. But  if I create the same macro to read the file and set it to a referenced object and attach a leader line text box to the layout box and put the new reference macro in it, it updates whenever the value changes.

The observed behavior is essentially I can see the update in the plan layout box's label or connected box, but not in the rich text box. The first two I believe are actaully showing the output of the macro as opposed to the actual global variable.

So it seems like when a global variable updates it does not fire an update to all things that reference it?

Is this expected behaviour?

macro I'm testing is pretty simple

filepath=owner.referenced_full_filename

logfile=File.dirname(filepath)+"/log.txt"

File.write(logfile,"123..",mode:"w")

filedir=File.dirname(filepath)+"/firstfloorarea.txt"

$firstfloorarealayout=File.read(filedir)

the textbox then calls a macro named %firstfloorarea% and all it does is:

$firstfloorarealayout

is there a way to call the global variable directly from a text box? Maybe that is the reason it is not updating. Maybe it is that simple, but I have not yet found it.

The obvious workaround is to connect a text box to the layout box (which I may do as it eliminates the global variable). But the whole thing just gets more and more clugy. After spending quite a bit of time perusing the Q&A it seems like to achieve floor area on layout is clugy whatever way you go. From drawing polylines, to plan global variables, to global variables overwriting other global variables when multiple plan or layouts are open

thanks

JAson

thanks, I see it is smart enough to start from 1 when you switch letters

On 4/10/2020 at 3:31 PM, robdyck said:

I read that and Rene definitely made a great point. For me, that type of planning happens on a case-by-case basis, however I use a different layer set for the design development phases versus the con docs. So, for me the final con docs are always showing the dims to the center of openings...except for concrete buck outs. I give the foundation crew dims to the sides of the cutouts! 

On 4/10/2020 at 3:31 PM, robdyck said:

I read that and Rene definitely made a great point. For me, that type of planning happens on a case-by-case basis, however I use a different layer set for the design development phases versus the con docs. So, for me the final con docs are always showing the dims to the center of openings...except for concrete buck outs. I give the foundation crew dims to the sides of the cutouts! 

I decided to create a floor plan for the owner and a floor plan for the framer. Owner SPV are to the window sides. Framer  SPV are to the center of opening(as it is the convention here). owner plan also has furniture. Framer plan has nothing but walls, doors.. My foundation plan has opening to the RO so the cribber doesn't have to think. I've just finished adding RO from floor to schedule. so in theory the only thing the framer has to do is take that number and subtract 1.5" for the bottom plate to make his cut. And the cribber has to add 3" from the footing to account for the basement floor

Next step is to figure out how to auto increment numbers on layout with different prefixes without going to two layouts. i.e. sheets 1-10 are the "plans starting with A-1" and page 11-29 are for construction with "C-1" forward, and still use the schedule on page 1, and be able to add layout pages for more structural detail. And it all just auto numbers away and maintains the proper total pages below my A-x, C-x, etc i.e maybe for the next job which has two stories its now A-1 to A-14

but back to the topic at hand, why not just move the label to the inside side of the window, then your dimension would not go through the callout or the label (which is why I ended up at this thread, looking to see how people are doing that)

On 5/8/2016 at 6:10 AM, English said:

Thanks Eric.  I found out that %automatic_label% %schedule_number% gives me exactly what I need.

thanks

I did something similar

[ %schedule_number%] %automatic_label%

for a different purpose. If a client wants to check window sizes, he can go around the plan view and check. But when he goes to order windows he needs a schedule

On 11/7/2019 at 1:46 PM, BrownTiger said:

Not sure what are you asking...

Here is a macro: 

 

I created OIP "HeaderHightASF", assigned this macro. Whent to the scheduler, double clicked added this OIP "HeaderHightASF" and it showed up just fine.

 

Revised per Kbird1 suggestion below:

Proper: headerHeight2.json   = header_elevation

attached is for inches - fractions as that is what my schedule has

Thanks to BrownTiger for doing the hard work

instructions. import this json file below by going to CAD->Text->Text macro Management

Then click on a window and put %headerHeight% in "Code" text box under "Object Information"

close the window

goto your windows schedule

Add code from the available fields to your schedule.

Change the name from code to "RO Height from Floor"

The above is the lazy way. proper way would be to add a custom field in the window as shoheight of RO.jsonwn above

Ultimately I was looking for height in inches off the subfloor that the RO (not header) is at. As here, they put a 2x6 below the header. I believe this macro will do that

On 11/11/2019 at 9:07 AM, para-CAD said:

Back in the late 80s in Texas, we cut 11 ¼” off of a precut stud so that a 2x12 header could fit over an opening. Not all headers were 2x12, but it standardized everything for when such load bearing support was needed.  This worked well but doors and windows always seemed to not exactly match at the top and needed custom trim ripping to get right.  The space over the door was always bigger than over the windows.

 

they do that here, except for 2x10

some things never change. A framer did that for a 16" window of mine. I told him I'd rather have the insulation, thank you

On 5/2/2021 at 5:46 PM, GeneDavis said:

So for window height to align to door height, your doors are not a standard 6/8, or 8/0?

Yes doors are 96", walls are 109. I actually checked a couple houses being built and the framers do not frame 109-1/8, they frame 109. They only sell 92-5/8 precut here.

But even if it was 109.125 it does not work, 96+1/2+9.25+3+1.5=110.5. 1.25" too tall.

For this window  I put a note for the framer to put a filler for drywall backing on front face of header

But for the other windows which are at 2x8 header, it does not work  in chief but does work in the physical world.. i.e chief is trying to do this math for a boxed header: : 96+1/2+1.5+ 7.25+1.5 +3=109.75. too tall, where if it framed what I want it would do this math: 96+1/2+1.5+ 7.25+3=108.25, which fits. hopefully in X13

my thoughts were, are you using the boxed option and then adding in the lower 2x6 for every window which has a 2x8 header(for 9' ceilings 8'door scenario)?  ...assuming you actual print out the wall detail.

I'm now researching a macro that others have done which calculate the height +RO/2 to put in the window schedule. So the only walls I should have to plot the wall detail are tall walls as they sometimes have different details.

I'm trying to eliminate the thinking for the framer.

of course the problem with all this is it assumes a consistent finished floor height, as most people do not want 1" of gap below some doors and 1/4" below others. Which is another pet peeve of mine, mostly for renovations. A lot are too lazy to put down more subfloor (3/16 to 1/2) to ensure all floors match. 

I was doing similar to what joey shows, but when the stairwell is in the middle, It's more messy

so i tried the box thing. not sold on it

@Michael_Gia, 

your rimboard looks like it is within the stairwell with nothing supporting the corner? are you designing declining spindles into the floor above?

I'm trying to visualize it, but failing miserably.

clever!

5 hours ago, Renerabbitt said:

Strongly suggest redundant info unless you are using a macro. Very easy to change that info in one spot and forget the other. Just use a "per detail, or per plan" note or use a macro.

I hard coded it in the detail, and dimensioned it in the plan. I assume the dimension will change in the plan if I moved the eave in and out, so the only place  I need to worry about is the detail. if I had it in a macro, I would have the same problem, i.e. I'd be guaranteed everywhere the macro was would be correct, but then if I moved the roof plane in or out in plan view, the macro would no longer be correct? The only way I see it could be correct in both places is to do what Joey does which is the detail is the live view. Unless of course you could create a macro from the actual roof plane pitch which resides in plan view...is that what you do? It would be great if you could, assuming all eaves are the same. But still, for when they are the same it would be the perfect way to do it. I think the only way to do that is to connect a leader line to it and reference the object. So if I did not want the leader line to show, I guess I could put it on another layer. A little cumbersome, but a good solution I think

9 hours ago, Renerabbitt said:

Use a detail, spec a dimension in that detail or put per plan, simple enough. You can snap dimension lines to roof planes

thanks, thats exactly what I have done (in detail, plus in roof plan)

I did a joist plan view, but it is quite cluttered with the joists. And to show the distance from outside wall to side of stairs plus all other turns of the stairs, gets a bit ugly. I looked around and found someone that shows the stair opening as a closed polyline on the foundation plan. I can see the advantage of this as the foundation plan has all the posts, and bearing walls. It would be a no brainer for the floor guy to use it. In fact I got a copy of a floor joist program and this is really all it needs, outside walls, bearing wall location, posts, stair/other openings, joist direction.

 But the only way I can think to do this is to draw a polyline or box in the joist framing view, then set it to a different layer and show it on the foundation plan(where the joists don't actually show). And then put dimensions to it. Are people doing this, or something else, maybe not showing all the joists and just labelling joist direction...but that still doesn't get the opening as the opening comes from the main floor while the joists come from the foundation floor. I can't figure out how to get them both in the same plan...easily. I did see the whole reference plan thing, but it seems like it would take a lot to get just the stair opening to show. I suppose the other way is to make the floor guy read it off of the floor plan view, but this has other complications, such as are your dimensions to the drywall or the joist? and if your stairs are surrounded by railing, its not crystal clear that your dimension is to the framed opening. It would leave the floor guy guessing. in fact that is how I found this problem, the dimension between my two joists on either side of the stairs in floor framing view was not the width of the stairs (when i opened the stair dbx)

But I'm also a little torn that the foundation plan shouldn't really show the floor framing for the next level, it should show that which is required for the cribbers. I suppose I could add yet another plan. "plan for floor guy" to use with the joist framing plan (which shows joists and their directions). I suppose if you chose to not show all joists, then one would have to show different regions and joist directions in those regions...sounds like a lot of manual work

looking for the best presentation with least amount of thinking for floor guys/cribbers/framers. 

thanks, 

for additions here, people are always trying to squeeze more building, so the authority will give relaxations on the wall to PL rule (typ 4'), but they want to keep the eave at bylaw. This means addtions near the PL will have a shorter eave, than say the eave on the main house or even the front eave (where there is no such restriction). So a side eave maybe 1 ft, but the gable front eave will be 1'6. regular joes dont notice, but if youdrive through older neighborhoods you will see this squeeze happening, especially if is at the back or side of the house

that was going to be my next question. where does one see it, Is the roof plan the only place you have it as a single "typical dimension" + note?  I would like to show on a site plan so the plan reviewer can see if it meets bylaw(i.e. I would dimension from PL to wall and PL to eave). There is a rule here for setbacks to walls but also setback to eaves(cannot be less than 2' from PL). Plus the truss guy want to know, and he wants to know if that 2' includes smart board or if it is just 2x6 clad with aluminimum, so he can deduct those widths from the (house dim+eave width). I put it on the detail, but it kind of seems out of the way. I was looking to improve readability.