SHCanada2

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.

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?