SHCanada2

you can zip the plan, that might help. I'm guessing (given that it looks like you have a basement) that your main house floor top is at 0" absolute elevation, and the floor is at least 12" thick(height), but your front porch is only a slab at 6" thick, so you will have a difference of 6" or so. If you go into your porch room and lower the top elevation of the structure to eual the math of the difference between the main floor thickness and the slab thickness, then the heights should be the same (perhaps less the mudsill). but I would ask, is that actually what you want? typical main floor of a 9' ceiling house:

search this forum for device removed. I believe there is actually a CA technote or something set to search for all search terms:

I have a fairly complicated macro in a the window label, plus a macro in the polyline which does it all. the polyline sits in my template file on the elevation If CA could publish schedule totals to a macro it would greatly simply the macro...pretty please CA

one thing to be careful of, the wall thermal_envelope_area does not work for walls which are partially below grade (i.e. basements). It is easier to draw a polyline on the elevation, and use its area. As well, if I remember correctly wall thermal_envelope_area does not include rim joists, and excludes some other things. i.e. a 109.125 plate height times a 20' wall with no openings does not give 109.125 * 20

Interpolating what?

hmmm, I think there are too many weird things going on, including the hockey stick looking wall in the "room", closet in the hallway, closet walls on the left being thicker than the bedroom walls ..... there looks to be 5 different thicknesses of walls on that plan, and thats not including the bathroom plumbing walls. It hten begs the quesrtion, how does one draw it in CA? would one change the closets to 2x4 walls, and then move the closets on the left all down, or simply increase the closets. I assume the latter, but then does one adjust the closet widths to the nearest inch, and leave one shorter if they are believed to be all the same. I would also assume that is what people do. But maybe not ...

I'm curious. Did you actually draw 3 or 4 different wall widths for the plan like the pdf? or do you guess at any support walls, and draw the others as 2x4

I think the bigger needed functionality is for walls to retain an "as measured" value, but it would also need to know what side of the wall was measured. The measure on app is quite smart. for instance, when you measure a window to a wall you tell it which side you are measuring from. For CA to do the same thing, it would need some sort of special temp dimensions. Or when editing the temp dimension, you have to key in a special character so it would know it was an actual measured dimension

and the dimension question: Are you saying the dimension number itself is in the PDF, but not the dimension line? Why not just put the PDF on its own layer and turn off the layer, or are you looking to show both, but dont like that the B&W layout shows through? If so, why not sent to layout in colour? If you are trying to mask some things in the PDF but not others, the other way to do it would be to put white boxes in your elevation to mask out what you do not want. What I do in cases where I want to use the PDF as an elevation plus some parts of an elevation I have built in CA, I will use the masking boxes plus I will convert the elevation to CAD detail, and then remove anything I do not want from the CAD detail and then copy it back onto the a CAD detail where I have the PDF sitting. And then I align it. But before deleting lines from the CAD detail, I typically double check the scale matches the house on the PDF. For instance I do this when I just want to add a window or Door to a house and I have the existing plans, if the existing plans(rooflines, details) are complex. I did it also once to convert a balcony to a closed in balcony with windows. I find it is a tradeoff in hoping it is less time than redrawing the house. For instance to add a new door, I will draw a house in CA with the correct outside dimensions and add the door. I will import the PDF into a CAD detail. Size the PDF to scale. I will then create a white box where the door will go and put on the PDF in my CAD detail. This will blank out any siding lines. I then Create a CAD detail from view of the elevation. And then copy it over including the exterior line that is the width of the house (usually one below the door). I will then align to that line. Then delete that line, leaving only the door and its trim. In your case, you may be able to just add the white boxes with the correct drawing group to mask what you do not want to see. The advantage of doing a CAD detail from view, is all the lines will be on one layer

I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying the dimension number itself is in the PDF, but not the dimension line? It looks to me that perhaps a possibility is the color elevation is masking the two elements (roof, dimension), rather than the PDF only showing on the layout.. You could check by going to the elevation view in plan and trying to print, with the "Print in color" unchecked

maybe I'm not good at the spot the difference game, but the only difference I see is colour vs black and white

I put some general notes on layout, but not unlinked callouts. With one exception for unlinked callouts, I have one type of plan that has only one callout, and that sits in layout. For instance I have a layout page with Building Code advisories. It rarely changes so it just sits there on a layout page

I've moved to doing this, where I used to use the Bosch measureon app. The only downside is you have to be there longer with CA. The upside to the measureon app is no typos as it takes the reading via bluetooth from the laser measurer. The upside to CA is you see any issues with the measurements. Downside is you have to either type in measurements in a text box, or a piece of paper. Unless you are confident enough that you will not change a wall dimension when you draw the walls. I certainly am not

@robdyck @KristjanM So I had an energy evaluation done on my home. And it claims some interesting things: 1. Nominal R of walls is R18.9(I assume this was inputted by the selection of the wall assembly), which is fine, but it claims effective R of the "walls" are 18.7. This is of course not possible for a no wrapped 2x6 wall using the defined values in the NBC. I even tried using 11% framing (no windows in the wall) and could not achieve this. 2. The effective R value of a floor over a garage is greater than the nominal. Not sure how that can be so I downloaded hot2000 myself and tried it for a box house. I noticed that the wall assembly effective R is different than the actual walls it models. This shows 2.73 but the summary shows 2.95 so once again the effective R of the walls is higher than the assembly Any idea what it is doing? Adjusting Rvalue for temperature or something? Because if one can get these kind of numbers using the "model", they blow the prescriptive method out of the water Thanks

it is the same here, architects are required over xx amount of square feet, and depends on type of building. 95% of residential house design does not require an architect here. Engineer on the other hand...that is a different storey (sic)

if I am reading this correctly, the text you have above the line is "Floor Plan - Main Level", and this a unique SPV? If so, the only downside with this is you need different SPVs for each level (basement, main, second, third) and type (electrical for instance). so you would potentially need 8 SPVs, where, you likely only need 2 unique ones (other than the floor differences). The other way to do it, is to have set layout boxes on layout template with named floors, and then link the layout box with the SPV and specific floor. if you do not need the floor you delete the layout page and/or layout box(which is the tradeoff) Not to say one is "better" than the other, they both have tradeoffs In my case, I'm lazy and normally only have one floor plan or elevation per sheet, so the top text is just the layout page title. I also do this one per page thing to try and fill the page so if they decide to print on smaller paper, they can still see everything this yields

out of curiosity, are you actually pricing dimensional lumber by the foot. An 8' 2x6 here is $7, and a 10' is $11, or 88c/ft and $1.10/ft respectively

I ran a little test and it appears this may work by using the user library in a specific sequence.. If you have no schedule on your plan, place a note from the user library on the plan, then place a schedule for the note on the plan. it shows up with 1, then add another library note to the plan, it shows up as 2, .... The above doesnt work if you place the schedule after the dropping all the notes on. If you do that, the numbered order appears to be based on the original numbered order when I saved to the user library. i.e. I created 3 notes: text1,text2,text3 and added them to my library. On a new plan, If I put say text3 on the plan then text2, and then a schedule, text2 will be "1", and text3 will be "2". But if I put text3 down, then a schedule, text3 will show as 1, and then if I put text2 down, it shows as 2, and then I put text1 down, it shows as 3 edit: also works if you put an empty schedule down first, then add the notes

Couldnt you just add your notes to the user library, and then drag them onto your plan as needed? only ones actually on the plan would then only show in the schedule

Not that I know of. I will select the rooms in the second structure and set their heights. Roofs, if I remember correctly needed to be adjusted as well for height off plate..

I demonstrated this last year in a post. CA will, without telling you, change the material on an exterior wall under certain conditions. It occured for me when there was an exterior indent in a wall (like 2' in by 3' wide), and the if you go to changes this indent to something else, it flips the material on one of the walls It was repeatable. And I logged it @glennw suggested "But if Chief is reversing your walls, you may want to look at the Auto Reverse Wall Layers setting." From what I can tell that setting does not always work correctly. It may be worth a try to turn it off.

yes, I've just not had the motivation yet to move to that

I found the problem, or perhaps, weird behaviour. If the camera is actually open when I print the layout to pdf, it prints correctly. If the camera is not open, it gets the washed out look it does happen if I reduce the sun as well, just much less obvious, I reduced the sun from 2500 to 500, much better

yes