For Design & Drafting

Porches

• You now have the ability (by popular demand!) to draft multiple adjacent porch areas without necessarily merging their settings. This allows you to model porch areas with distinct header and column designs while still preventing columns and headers from appearing between the adjacent areas. To use this, in Porch Settings, choose Exclude from Porch Merge.
• Bug fix: Gable walls now have an appropriate clipping behavior with second-floor porches.

Ease of use

• The Move tool (shortcut M) can now directly move windows, doors, casework, and props in the elevation preview. Previously this could only be accomplished with dimensions and settings.

Sheets

• Now you can use roof plans as backgrounds for custom sheets in addition to floor plans. This allows you to create roof framing plans with annotations.

• Facade elevation drawings now better handle cases with split faces (shown on the left) without creating unwanted linework (seams don't interrupt the brick hatch on the right).

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For Design & Drafting

Area measurements and calculations

• Area calculations are automated in Higharc, with default settings that should meet most common circumstances. When your needs differ, now you can override how area measurements are made, per room, per measurement type, and per condition.
• Default area measurement behavior remains the same. For example, for any given room, in room properties, you may still choose whether the enclosure is conditioned, whether it is considered a garage, etc.
• Without any override using the new tool, total home conditioned area is measured to the outside of the stud for exterior walls. You may want to change this measurement if you want to include, for example, brick thickness (as shown below).

• To change how a measurement is made, in the room properties panel, choose to create a New Area Measurement. This tool allows you to override the default area measurement for that room with a polyline enclosure that you draw. Assign any polyline override to a measurement type and whether you are adding or subtracting from the measured area. All of these overrides can be associated with options.
• There are six measurement types that you can override with this new tool: Conditioned Area, Unconditioned Area, Garage Area, Front Porch Area, Covered Patio Area, Uncovered Patio Area.

• You may now rename and disable measurements reported to be on the construction documents cover sheet in Plan Settings. If no reports are enabled, the entire Building Area calculation is omitted from the cover sheet.

• The building area report on the cover sheet has also now been updated to break down measured areas per floor and per area type.

• Bug fix: Diagrams on the schedule page for conditioned rooms is now shaded correctly in the case of multiple disconnected conditioned areas.

Roof materials

• You now have more control over roof material assignments that were previously assigned to the same material slot.
• You can now individually control materials for: soffit, rake fascia, eave fascia, and fascia top trim.

Structural plans

• You man now turn on indications for automatically generated floor framing in structural plans. Access this in plan settings.
• You can now add labels for generated floor framing members to structural plans. Access this in plan settings.

DXF export

• DXF exports for wall sheathing and wall framing are now separated.
• DXF exports now consistently include Floor Plans, Foundation Plans, Utility Plans, Structural Plans, Plumbing Plans, and Electrical Plans.
• Limitations, to be addressed soon, include: some SVGs are not showing up, and some characters, e.g. ⅛, aren't rendering properly.

Ease of use

• To help you connect measurement and annotation elements with their host rooms while drafting, host rooms and their edge IDs now highlight in blue when any of these are selected.
• Options created via edge modifiers and annotation templates can now be shown as hotspots in Showroom. The previous limitation is gone.

Annotation

• Annotation tools now include a new centerline line style

Doors

• Doors have new settings for offsets vertically and laterally (away from the plane of the wall). Find vertical and lateral offsets in the properties for any door.
• Bug fix: Left and right-swing door swings now render with identical offsets and angles for symmetry.

Bug Fixes

• Bug fix: Masterplans can now be printed without necessarily including a floor plan. For example, you may now choose to print only roof plans.
• Bug fix: The stem-wall top datum for hybrid basement/crawlspace foundation systems is now consistent.

For Sales

Home plan and lot discounts

• When pricing is turned on for your community in Showroom, you may now add discounts to home plans and to lots, to be surfaced to the home buyer.
• To apply a discount to a home plan, from the Edit Home Plan screen, type in a discount amount (including the negative sign) and a description.
• To apply a discount to a lot, open in the lot list, from the three-dot menu per lot, choose "View Lot Details," and enter the discount amount and description for that lot.
• When discounts apply to a lot or home plan, that will be shown in Showroom to buyers in the price tabulation section at the bottom left corner of the screen.

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For Design and Drafting

The Studio interface continues to be upgraded and reorganized. The left column has two panels, each with tabs:‍

• Explorer — Aspects of the model like levels, roofs, stairs, facades, etc.
• ‍Views — Plan, 3D and elevation views‍
• Engine — Groups of settings that broadly control the model and that can be referenced into other models (was: Setting Sets)‍
• Plans — Sheets in construction documents‍
• Materials — Material palettes‍
• Active Options — Conditioned options that are currently visible in the canvas‍
• Elevations — Setting sets that describe elevations (was: Elevation Options)‍
• Option Presets — Saved views of custom option combinations‍
• Templates — Templates for options (was: Option Templates)

Windows

• Window grids now have a new minimum grid thickness (1/4") and a maximum division count (25).
• Windows can be manipulated directly in an elevation view Move and Copy commands.
• Bug fix: gable windows now behave properly when the home is mirrored.

Stairs

• Dashed lines represent riser locations on plan drawings.

Foundations

• Piers are now represented with dashed lines, including under slabs.

For Sales

• You can now choose whether option descriptions are shown on the automated Sales Brochure. Access this in Account Settings/Brochure.

• You can now choose whether to show if an option in a home plan was overridden for a particular community. Find this setting in Account Settings/Sales. Indications that an option template override was used can be found in Showroom, the plan set PDF, and the Sales Brochure.

For Design & Drafting

• Doors, windows, and props can be copied with the Copy tool. The name of the new instance is the name of the original plus a number that increments increasingly,
  e.g. Door → Door 2.
• Railing posts are now visible in construction documents.

• Bug fix: stair supports can be conditioned
• Bug fix: frieze boards appear on dormers

For Sales

• Electrical options can now be shown in the 2D view with an on/off toggle, similar to the control for whether hot spots are visible.

For Design

Now in Studio, you can save views and manage them all in one place in the Views tab, next to the Explorer tab. Saved views are named, filtered views of the model that can be included in construction documents as sheets or referenced as working views. Now to switch between views, you don't have to remember which layers were on or off, it's just once click.

• In the new arrangement on the left side of the screen in Studio, the View and Explorer panels share the same space, and you can use the tabs to switch between them.
• Access and edit the view's properties in the properties pane with the → tool, which appears next to each view on hover
• View settings can be controlled with the Layer Visibility tool at the lower right corner of the view as before. Those same settings now appear in the view properties when those are inspected.
• Any saved plan views you had in your studio file previously are shown as "Migrated Plan View" under the corresponding level

Annotate views with all the right context.

• Now when you annotate a view, you can do it in that view, right on the canvas. You no longer need to create the annotation then assign it to a reference frame.

Create your own custom views and sheets, such as a framing view.

• Add additional views and adjust their settings for any special purposes you have with the + tool within each view section.
• Views that are automatically generated for you, such as foundation plans, elevations, and a default 3D view, are displayed along with those you create yourself.

Control the active option and view settings without juggling tabs.

• The Active tab is now called Active Options, and it is displayed together with the Option Preset tab on the left side of the screen.
• Use the tabs to toggle between them.

For Sales & Marketing

• Community maps can be downloaded as an SVG file.
• Community maps can be disabled for the account.
• Showroom can now be configured as a viewer only, without the option choices panel.

For Design & Drafting

• You have always been able to move objects via properties. Now you can direclty manipulate locations with the Move tool on nearly all edge-hosted entities.

• Option conditions can now be applied to facade trims.
• Multiple sections in the roof properties inspector can now be open and edited at once.
• Deck stairs have a new setting to control stringer top extensions.

For Sales & Marketing

• Community maps can now be shared as a standalone page or as an iFrame on your website. To generate the link, from the community map page, select "Copy Sales Map Link."

For Design & Drafting

• Edge-hosted exterior stairs react to foundation changes
• Railings and stairs can be grouped to better manage the building model
• Apply casing to openings
• Change the material of exterior props (e.g. corbel, A/C unit) by catalog or individually
• New ability to add columns to rooms and edges

• Master plan presets allow sheets to be added or removed individually
• Improved render resolution for high-DPI displays

For Design & Drafting

Decks & Stairs

• Porch and deck stairs can be hosted to top level and grade datums
• Footings and piers can be controlled independently from columns
• More controls for placement of mid-span posts in railings

Materials

• Control window frame material settings independently

Selection & navigation

• New selection controls: shift+select adds and alt+select subtracts
• Middle mouse button pans
• More controls for how option labels should appear