User manual

How to build, check and report a building model in PerCode AEC. The model is one building; the modes are the trades that work on it — each offers its own tool box and commands on the same model, and switching mode changes what you can do, not what the model is. What a mode computes is explained in that mode's analysis manual (HELP menu).

This manual is being written. Its chapters, as they are planned:

1. Getting started — the desktop app, the start screen, files, templates and the project.
2. The screen — the 3-D view where the model is edited, the sheets, the windows, the modes and the views.
3. Architectural mode — grid and levels, walls, floors, roofs, openings, rooms, fixtures and furniture, underlays.
4. Structural mode — foundations, framing (Framing and Assembly views), columns and beams, truss lines, loads, CHECK MODEL, analysis, COMPUTE DCR and design, results.
5. Electrical mode — devices and circuits, panels, the load calculation, the one-line diagram, schedules.
6. Plumbing and HVAC — when those modes are added.
7. Editing — the commands every mode shares: copy, move, extend, trim, fillet, align, boundaries, groups, hide and lock.
8. Output — sections and dimensions, the drawing set, the report builder, schedules, shared 3-D links.
9. Command reference — every command, where it is and what it does.