SHCanada2

ceiling planes is pretty straight forward. I think CA has a video on them

when you ask "accurately upload into Chief", are you referring to the companies which output a Chief .plan file, or software that just produces a floor plan that you can bring into Chief as a dxf or some other type? I tried out cubicasa a couple months ago. It worked pretty good. $10 per plan, and you can just trace over the walls. or $35 and they provide dxf. It uses photogrametery technology so any phone will work One of the companies I work for use magicplan, but so far it has not provided sufficient detail to draw up a plan in CA without me having to ask some questions like "whats that". And "is that where the stairs start or the landing starts?". Anything that is not a wall, these programs have a hard time with, so I also ensure a video is taken, and then I try and piece it together. I tried to get polycam to work because it will spit out a floor plan immediately, but I could not get it to work on an android. All other apps I researched required you to wait until the next day or x number of hours to get a floor plan. None of them are that accurate that I researched. Most claim this "1 or 2%"., which in my view is nonsense. Accuracy should be delineated in +- x number of inches. So 1% of a 40 wide house is an error of 5". In my view, I'll pay $10 for inaccuracy, rather than $50 or $100 for some of the other apps for the same inaccuracy. Matterport might be an exception for accuracy, it has its own hardware. For me my plan going forward is to use cubicasa for where I do not care about acccuracy (floors of a house which are not being modified), and then use my bosch laser 50C for where it is critical, and inches matter

If you want only the terrain below grade to have a pattern, you could do something as shown in this

cut pattern? what are you looking for.. a picture might help

they are also in the dimension defaults if you want to change them permanently going forward

I randomly found the CA "chefseries dishwasher" a few years ago because I liked the handle, that goes into the cabinet. It does not have the proud cabinet frame that you show. just doesn't colour the toe klick to match, although yo can paint it:

in alberta, for residential, the floor plans are imperial feet inches, the site plan is in metric (metres to 2 or 3 decimals), or can be both storey poles can be either or both, although geodetic elevations are always metres ASL. for multifamily mid rise (4 storeys or more) it is typically it square feet and sq metres. rooms are typically both Actual surveys are always metric in metres 6 storey midrise: storey pole

bar counter top is not a solid material? maybe put a camera under there and look up

I use the pan all the time for kitchen elevations. Never thought if it was even available for 3D views. Thanks

so if I understand, you want to draw a pline along a wall in plan view to the length of the wall, and set its "height" somewhere and have CA calculate Height times length? plines do not have length, per se, as they are not guranteed to have 2 sides the same length. They have perimeter. so you could use a pline stored in your library, which is a rectangle, and then stretch it to the length of the wall, and then make it the width you want, and then use the area of the pline in its label and I'm guessing you do not want to use the wall length or wall OIP?

not sure what you are looking for, dimension to the outside of the foundation wall, or to the outside of the footing, or both? A diagram or marked up plan might help

I draw a polyline on the elevations to get the wall surface area as the grade(terrain) may be different. The area of the pline then feeds a global variable for use in calculations (which i use for limiting distance calculations)

Looks like even simpler for those of us who do not put the basement on floor 1 and only ever put it on the same floor (0) as one can then hardcode floor 0 into the logic. add OIP for "Above Grade Floor" and OIP for "Above Grade Area" for floor 0 set "Above Grade Floor" to 1 (instead of zero) and for "Above Grade Area" set it to std area, except if it is floor 0 then set the area to 0. The sum similar will then group the basement with floor 1, but it does not matter as the above grade area has been set to 0 for the basement It does get a little tricky on the foundation, where an attached garage would have stem walls but no actual real life room but has a CA room. This would not be part of the GFA, so one would need to set it to a specific room type and exclude it in the macro. It is typically denoted as "unexcavated" here, so I suppose one could key off a specific room name rather than type. But I will say, it does look like a very clean approach for "typical" area calculations around here Building footprints for the purposes of parcel coverage get a little complicated as height of cantilevers off the ground determine if they count or not. I suppose then cantilevers could be made into their own rooms and marked as included or excluded. But then the adjacent room label dimensions would be incorrect. Maybe a small price to pay for a relatively straight forward dynamic system

that reminds me of one of my favorite quotes. "analogies are like statistics, I can always find out that goes my way" my two cents, everything is being branded "AI", where 90% of it is just normal software. In my view, unless the software is looking up and scraping information from large databases of disparate historical information, and bringing that into context, it ain't AI. but this thread did give me a good suggestion for CA: I should be able to search for backgrounds with lakes, and the software cycle through them on my RTRT view with a backwards and a forwards buttons, allowing me to then pick the one I want. Vs today where I go in try and find all the ones with lakes, then go into the dbx and select each, close the dbx, rinse repeat.. And then CA can do a side by side video of that functionality compared to archicad above where I have to sit there typing it. This all reminds me a bit of the difference between calling into to a system that says press 1 for x, press 2 for y, vs the system that says, tell me a bit about what you would like to do, and then the software keys off of keywords to then ask you another question, and another. I've sworn at those systems more times than I can count (plus once you swear they just send you to an agent). Well that wasn't considered AI back then (15 years ago), but I'm sure whomever is selling that system today has rebranded it AI. sexy sells

or spend 5 minutes on it just to say you have it, as sexy sells. or have someone do a side by side video with a timer to see if the AI above is faster than just using the UI. I can't imagine sitting there typing. background:next sowny, and then looking at that one and not liking it and then typing background: next snowy I'd go crazy Now if it did each snowy one for 5 seconds giving me enough time to tag my favorites and go back and forth like a music player, that might be useful. But that is not AI, that is just regular software

I will give some tidbits, keep your top of first floor subfloor at 0, per default. Create your terrain and set at 12" below the first floor. Create a terrain region at the curb with -12. Then create a story pole and use a grade reference(-24") to show the curb at 0

yeah the more I was playing with the schedules last night and got the parcel coverage going with the one global variable for the pline parcel (which like you I had already as my current macro uses/needs it), I was coming to the realization you could do it all with the schedules and OIPs. And then I was thinking today you could OIP the basement to flag it off from being included in the top two floors sq ft schedule. or like you said have a specific room type. I like your "non livable" moniker. We call it "unfinished" up here Looks like yours would cover the vast majority of cases (although I had a new one the other day doing up a house for my brother, the basement is included in the FAR if 60% of the volume is above grade. I cant imagine trying to calculate that for a walkout with different side slopes...maybe solid subtraction/intersection etc. my guess is the DA just looks at the elevations and tries to do some basic math with straight lines or just believes whatever I put down. But no one is doing this automagically with plines or schedules I dont think) I haven't looked back at your other thread yet wrt to the schedule updating. So I need to, as that only leaves the, when I update the pline, the schedule does not update unless I go into the room DBX issue, presumably because CA has no idea the global variable is in the mix. The only other downside is I am guessing there is no auto vertical adjustment. In your snippet, I assume if one had three floors, one would have to move the lower schedules down. or one could just have the whole think duplicated, one for bungalows, one for 2 storey and one for three storeys and just move them around on layout for whichever is needed. But overall I think you've got the solution for the vast majority of the cases, or at least the ones I have seen.

in western Canada (excluding BC), yes

on what they want to see here? 99% of houses in the west have basements. New house plans will typically show the above grade floors and the basement. The basement plan usually shows an outline of a "future" bathroom so that this gets rough in in the concrete floor. So new house plans will always show each floor sq ft, and the sum of above grade on the first page of the plans (or in the title block). The basement below grade is reported as "finished area" if it is actually being finished (which is rare unless it is a walkout basement). Finished area excludes furnace room. sq ft for above grade is just the area to the outside walls (includes stairwells, atriums, etc) although I have seen plans submitted to the city that the Architect excludes open to below, my guess to try and reduce the sq ft for property tax assessment purposes. But by bylaw here, sq footage is to outside wall for above grade. And it is rare to see total sq footage to include basement, even if they are finishing it, as the tax department has two seperate fields (above and below grade sq footage). And the tax guy told me they only assign a value of ~10k. so like ten dollars a sq foot, so no one wants that area to be included in the actual above grade area. multi family apartment:

well you sort of gave it away at least for the rudimentary totals which have been on all plans since the beginning of time using the macro I suggested above (which I assume you have similar but maybe not ), and using schedules to group similar without the room name one can get the rudimentary floor and living area totals: I suppose one could then add in any number of additional flags in the OIP for garages, porches, above grade, parcel coverage etc. and thinking about how SP assigns "areas" for their sq ft totals, I suppose just putting the flag in the room is a similar concept, just not quite as pretty. I am curious how your snippet above could be done without a rich text box...and if that also includes without shifting if, say a new floor is added. I will have to play around. I suppose they could just all be text boxes or text boxes and schedules, but then if a floor was added they would need to be moved around. That is the advantage of doing it all in a rich text box with a couple macros...they auto adjust vertical size. You are making me rethink mine which is currently a rich text box and is fully dynamic with: AREA SUMMARY %allarearef_2% %allarearef_2_basement% PARCEL COVERAGE %parcelCoverage% which yields on layout: the only downside I see so far is the schedules don't always update with the macro changing the underlying global variable ...I think I saw you post about that a little while ago. I'll have to go back ...and the only other issue I see for using schedules is up here, the city wants to know total above grade and finished area below grade (as that is what the assessment works off of as finished basements only contribute ~10k to the house value), and the schedule tool only allows one to pick one floor or all. I suppose one could put in an OIP or two to add a couple flags, but that seems like a total work around and subject to error

no argument that it is not doable, as I already do it as well without polylines (except for the lot),...but it is not implementable in a simple manner. I just think it should be available OOTB, or described by CA as to how to configure it OOTB. ...in other words a standard(live - non polyline) solution by CA

well i just looked around and cannot even find user doc for SP or archicad. SP looks like it has a concept of an area object, just cant tell if it is live or not

that's the "keep all of the items which contribute to the global variables and the resulting calculations, on the same view" method. That works well, you just cant move the resultant calculations off that view. I'm guessing with CA doing more and more on work on schedules lately, there will be a schedule solution to this soon

There is only one way I know to avoid that, and that is to use the filename as a key/check on the variable. Did you find another way?

too bad, I was hoping for a non polyline solution. just be careful if those macros are using global variables. If those are on different sheets than the actual floor, and if you have two open floor plans, you may get results from the other floor plan.