SHCanada2

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.

so million dollar question, where is your total for all floors coming from (it's own one line schedule?)

rebuild the framing? probably need to post the plan

I have my template layout linked to my template plan and the four elevations are already on the layout as well as the kitchen layout and a cross section and details linked to the plan. I have a 3d camera linked but it never seems to line up from house to house so it's kind of useless. We're you able to get a 3d camera to work from plan to plan without having to resend to layout?

This is the only way I do it although I use update on demand. I refuse to create images and constantly send them to layout. The downside to this method is the print to pdf takes a lot longer for page sizes larger than tabloid. And it gets worse if you have more than one on layout. I posted some statistics a couple years ago with different dpis and page sizes. ...and every once in awhile the house just moves from the center of the layout box. I haven't figured out the reason

There is a window we'll in the CA library I believe. Just place it next to the window and widen it to suite. It's even corrugated metal to look like the real thing. I do it on every plan as we have to show them on site plans. It even cuts a hole in the terrain

probably a better forum is the off topic. This forum is for the use of the softare. As well you probably need to provide more information, like are there posts underneath a beam, mid span, and is that at the same elevation as the walls

what does an interior camera view of that room look like for those walls?

I will typically check each room and closet to ensure they are actually using the defaults, when this happens

post the plan

did you try rebuilding all framing?

I use it all the time, seems to always work if resizing from the corners. I resize using the X, and then crop by pulling in the top, bottom, left or right part of the layout box

use the x key.hold it down while resizing

make the house symbols and then put them on a plan with just the roads. I've done one with 14 units and it is fine to render, if that is what they are asking for the render. or are they asking for street view of just one unit or 5. if so that would be even easier. One I sent to rene for a better rendering and he put in nice realistic terrain, but I had setup everything on the plot plan and the house symbols before I sent it to him I agree with Eric, importing the plot plan is simple. I find the roads with the curves more challenging and time consuming if they only are providing non CAD

then why not just create a "scene" which incorporates the 2 palettes(room and furniture) and the backdrop? I'd rather click thru different "snowy" backdrops(with a preview) in the library (by searching for snowy) and watch the scene change, as opposed to sitting there and copy and paste different backdrop names from a script (you would then need to search thru the scripts looking for the one you want, and have to know them by name because you could not actually see what they looked like) Where I think CA could be better is the search and result set, and the requirement to go into the background dialog box to specify it. It would be nice to click on the background in the 3d view, search for snowy (because it knows I clicked on the backdrop so it filters the results for backdrops) and pick the one I want to try, then click the next one. The attributes on the library could use some improvement. For instance I cannot search for a square dining room table which is about 5ft wide.

I dunno, It seems like a lot of typing and knowing what to type. It looks like style palettes for furniture. it uses the keyword "view" to change the backdrop (what if you want a different snowy backdrop, do you type, view: next snowy (reminds me of autocad in the 90s)?). I think I'd rather have a non modal floating window with the different palettes (CA's room, a new one for furniture) where I can see the preview of the different palettes and pick the one I want. I find these types of things, unless they are very very polished, are slower than what could be accomplished with more functionality and more control in the UI.

I think though that you are also dynamically showing the totals with global variables? to for instance only show floor 1 if there is no second floor, but to show both if there is The problem I see with what I showed is one needs to start moving schedules around to make it show nicely between bungalows, single storey and 2 storey where the macro and global variables can take care of that (or at least that is what I do in my living area macro. I never have to move anything around for different number of floors)

One way to do it in the room OIP (object information panel) is to create a new field, format as a number. and then write a macro which decides to include the room or not based on the include option that @ValleyGuy shows in his video. the problem is (as Rene indicated in his suggestion awhile ago) there is no default OIP for rooms. This means you have to select all the rooms using the marquee select similar and then set the macro. The new OIP field has to be set as a number when you create it so it shows in the room totals: create a macro called stdAreaInclude set to be evaluated and object owner which has: stdArea=standard_area include=include_in_living_area if include == true stdArea.to_f else 0 end then create a schedule which includes all floors, and the OIP stdArea as you can see utility is 0 because I excluded it in the room properties and the macro formula sets it to zero Now you have "living Area" totals for all floors. You can then create a schedule for each floor and then place them on top of each other, and only show the totals from this one. but because the rows are dynamic depending on which rooms, you would be constantly moving it around to only show the last row on layout

Shayne, A couple of us have requested CA allow the total of a schedule be sent to a macro variable. This then would allow easy totaling. It may be helpful for you to also make the request if you intend on doing this manner going forward