Panel drawings in timber or light-gauge steel

Open the panels

Choose Panel drawings in the Build menu (or type PANELS). The list holds every drawn wall, every floor and every roof of the model, each with a tick. Walls come with their doors and windows as openings. A floor is framed as the rectangle round its outline, with the joists running the short way. A roof is framed as a gable over the outline of its walls, with the pitch of the roof; the list says so, because a hip or a complex roof is not a gable.

Material, size and spacing

Choose Material: Timber or Light-gauge steel. Steel pieces are C-studs named by their depth and thickness (for example C92-1.2), with a track for the plates. Member size picks one size for every ticked panel, or leave it on Default to take the defaults of each kind of panel. Spacing is the distance between studs, joists or rafters. These are starting values for you to set. They are not a code check: whether a stud at that spacing carries that wall, and a header that span, is for the code tables (the Building regulations add-on has the IRC's) and your engineer.

What you get

The first ticked panel is drawn to scale in the dialog, with the dimensions. Cut list (CSV) saves every panel's pieces by mark, size and length, and the stock lengths to buy for them. Shop drawings (PDF) saves one A3 page for each panel, with every piece marked and its cut list. Drawing (SVG) saves the first panel as a drawing. Whatever the framing code finds that cannot be framed (an opening too close to the end of a wall, a header that does not fit under the plates, a piece longer than the longest stock) is listed in Problems as well as in the dialog.

What it does not do

The panels are drawings made from the model whenever you ask: nothing is written into the model, so they always match it. To put the framing into the model as members, use Framing for timber walls, floors and roofs.