SHCanada2

8 hours ago, REOWENJR said:

insert it into the framing plan

plan view or elevation view?

..and probably need to look at the terrain videos

18 hours ago, para-CAD said:

So back in 1989 through 1995 I exclusively framed houses within 150 miles of Houston Texas. Every single set of plans had a small text box on the very first page, cover sheet that had heated space first floor heated space second floor those two numbers added together and then all the unheated space listed as garage, covered porch and the like.

here it is even simpler for the past 25 years. main floor, second floor, foundation optional

if there is a reno in the basement, then "finished area" which is usually total less utility room. So i have for my template 2 different ones to pick from plus parcel coverage if needed

but that is not the only way. you could change the room type for any room you do not want to include, and not use that as the actual room name, and then exclude it from the schedule, or in the room specification ->include in schedule you could set the rooms you dont want to include to a different category, and then not include in the schedule. for instance go into the room and change the include in schedule from rooms to 3D solid. The schedule I just created will then exclude that room, or just exclude from the schedule altogether. or create a new category called "unconditioned" and create a new schedule with only rooms that have that category. Lots of different options

The only other thing you need to do if you want multiple totals is create individual schedules and then stack them on top of each other

here is a simple example:

...but the trick is what to do when you want to exclude certain rooms. If you have two rooms of the same type of room, but you only want to exclude one, that is where it gets tricky. CA has a field on each room as to whether or not it is include or excluded in the living area. You can use this flag in a macro and set this property in a custom field in the object information panel, and then use this in the schedule, but there is some work to it. my macro has:

stdArea=standard_area

include=include_in_living_area

if (include == true)

      stdArea.to_f

else

         0

end

this effectively creates a new field to be used in the schedule instead of the std area i show in the video

@Doug_N Did you try polycam?

5 hours ago, Doug_N said:

The iMapper is a lidar system that is accurate to 2mm over 30m.  I will let you all know how this works out my asbuilt work.

did you book a free demo?

I looked on their website and there are images of the 2d point cloud, but they all look wavy. I would expect if there was 2mm accuracy, the walls would be straighter.. It will be interesting to see how you make out. $99US per month is a bit pricey. I prefer per scan pricing. It would be also interesting to see how good their room "Stitching is". This is where I can always tell the accuracy of these things. If all the walls are a bunch of different thicknesses, then it is probably not correct.

bit of a weird website. if you click user guides, there looks to be a bunch of bitmaps under "Academy" I could not find an actual user guide

you could check the CA log file. I think you can see where it is located under preferences.

It almost sounds like you are being starved for resources if it works for awhile. Other far out possibilities:virus scanning constantly running against the CA data directory where CA is constantly writing files, but that is a way out there guess.

You could also disable the Nvidea card to see if that is related

but better question is when did it start to do this and what happened just before that

I also evaluated iguide as they can generale elevations and could generate door and window sizes (with a grain of salt).  They had a pretty good price package and the camera price was reasonable(~2k) when on sale. 

The only issue is in order to get an elevation one needs to be perpendicular to the building face. Here, where the houses are 4ft to the PL or less most of the time, it would not work for side elevations. If I have to build the CA model to get side elevations, I might as well build it to get front and rear elevations.

But it was very tempting.

you can use schedules to sum up the room areas and it is dynamic

If you want to exclude certain types of rooms, then you need to add a new item in the object information panel, and add in a macro to include or exclude the room. (...edit: if you want to use the built in CA radio button of include or exclude in living area in the room properties)

There is at least one post on the topic from last year or maybe the year before

AlaskanSon and Renerabbit both have it predone and sell it, I beleive, if you wanted to contact one of them to purchase

one way...create symbols out of two of the houses, and then place them on the third plan file. Or create a plan file with no house and put all three symbols in it

rene's first one is one I tend to see from some of the bigger outfits:

i see more and more where it is on the right, but it is readable without having to tilt your head (shift Joey's text 90 degrees). Its more readbale, but the text also tends to be wrapped more which ironically makes it less readable

are you referring to changing their location in layout, or just renumbering/naming?

It was for in house work (and I still do them but I do them for concepts not for actual UROWs, roads, curb cuts, grades, drainage, etc), and the others were for appeals against developments (community service, gratis).

I would suggest you try for 2 houses and use that as your estimate ...and put in all the caveat about what you are not going to do? Trees?

There ae lots of posts on how to export the symbol (it gets saved to your library)...might even be a video. I never remember the exact steps, and then I go back to searching here

If you already have the houses, then I would convert them to symbols and plot them. I have done this a few times, its not a lot of work if the land is flat. If the land is not flat, it is a headache. And if you want to show roads, curbs, curb cuts etc, it then becomes a lot of work

You test it out on one house first to make sure you get what you want for the render, as you have to choose what to export.

The tricky part I have found is trying to show only what you want for the symbol 2d...but that is probably a limitation of my knowledge

You can also plot them in google earth if you are looking for a high shot, but there are some limitations and how good they are, as you cannot for instance remove trees in google earth

Might need a little more information. It looks like you already have the subdivision plan. Is your scope to just put the footprints of every house on the existing subdivision plan.

It it was me and I had to do them all, I would ask whomever created that plan, for the dxf or dwg file to ensure absolute accuracy

they also may be available from the development authority

did you call support?

1 hour ago, Renerabbitt said:

I would think typically people use the automatic stair opening tool in the edit toolbar

there you go, learn something new every day. I will try that, merci. For some reason I thought it was automatic, but may that is only if it is a railing

13 hours ago, Renerabbitt said:

because the most common reason for such a change is that you want your interior wall type to create a structure and surface at the exterior of whatever discrepancy there is between rooms...i.e. drywall over framing when a floor is sunken.

would that mean everyone has to do this at the top of stairs?

I'm thinking there is something odd here, maybe because it is against an outside wall with a basement foundation that is wider ....or something

On 12/23/2025 at 1:40 PM, Renerabbitt said:

For those that are curious, it changes to a double line when you have a difference in setting from the rooms on either side of the wall

any setting? I am seeing this at top of stairs for a room to below room

My room elevations are the same for the rooms

I notice when I specify a room divider as the walltype, CA changes it to Interior 4 if I go back into the dbx.

This is causing the pony wall to extend beyond the stairs.  

I did what JLU did and it works, but my question is, why do I have to? 

if your main floor is using the default elevations, you could change the default.

If not, I will normally select all rooms using the marquee select and then adjust elevations/room heights if I need

one other tidbit. the highest amount of accuracy is achieved by doing the measurements on the longest straight line in the PDF that has a measurement printed

I believe CA actually has a video. 

The simplest way to scale is: if there is a dimensions between two points on the pdf, you do a point to point measurement in CA (after you have imported the pdf), and then do a ratio of that measurement with the one on the PDF.. And then use the transform replicate to resize using that calculated ratio. in the simplest example: if there is a measurement on the pdf which says it is a 100m long parcel between tow parcel corners, but when you actually measure it in CA, CA shows it to be 50M, then you need to resize by a factor of 2

I also believe CA has a point to point resize tool that does the math for you. I seem to recall seeing it in their video, I just never remember where it is. It is probably in the help

you cam import pdfs and put them on their own layer. You can then scale and trace if you would like. it works best if there is a known dimension on the pdf