131 — Autosite¶

Autosite builds a site drawing from the panel drawings alone. Each panel already records, in its Main Panel, the gridlines it spans and the wall line it stands on. Autosite reads those markers from every panel in the folder and, in one click, draws the grid and the wall lines, attaches the panels, draws the slab, the footings and the wall clearance line, lays the panels out cast-in on the slab, places the crane for the first pick, and checks the cast.

It stops there. Tilt-Up Panels stands the panels up afterwards — one more click.

Autosite places a crane on the drawing, so read this first:

Warning

Crane stations and the slab edge — read this before copying any station shown here.

A crane station must sit entirely outside the wall-clearance standoff, on prepared subgrade, or entirely inboard of the closure strip, on the poured slab. Never between the two, and never spanning the boundary. The test is the machine’s bearing footprint — its tracks or outriggers — not the centre of a drawn circle. One track on poured slab and one on unpoured subgrade gives differential support under the mat; the slab edge spalls or the subgrade settles, and the machine goes out of level under load.

TCA Safety Guideline v13.1 (June 2013) §2 item 6, p.8: “Install entrance and exit ramps for the crane to position itself onto the floor slab. Do not allow the crane to exert its weight on the extreme edge of any portion of the slab.” See also OSHA 29 CFR 1926.1402 — ground conditions; the operator must be notified of bearing capacity, and the controlling entity is responsible for adequate site preparation.

Station placement in this release is a known open defect (CV-2714). The perpendicular standoff is a fixed value that every catalogued machine’s bearing footprint exceeds, so a generated station can straddle the boundary. Do not copy a station position from this lesson, or from its video, onto a real site. Have the setup reviewed against the machine’s bearing footprint and the site’s own closure-strip and brace-line dimensions.

And on this release the drawn frame can be mirrored, which makes an inside/outside verdict untrustworthy whenever it happens. It was measured in coordinates on a saved post-draw drawing rather than inferred: after Site Drawing Options is entered twice, wall-line ends land at the exact Y-mirror of their shipped positions – same X to the hundredth, Y negated – 622 feet apart at the widest, while a point at the origin separates by zero, which is what distinguishes a mirror from a constant shift. Two points were left unmoved, so this is a partial redraw and not a blanket transform of every coordinate. The no-flip control has since been run, and the frame flip IS the cause. An otherwise identical take with no Site Drawing Options entries drew ZERO mirrored points, with all four shipped points unchanged, while the flipped take mirrored two of them. The control was not a null run – it drew ten points against the shipped four, and left fourteen wall-line ends open against the shipped two – so the zero means something. The mirror is therefore not present on an untouched drawing – but the action that brings it on is smaller than it sounds: opening Site Drawing Options twice and then drawing is enough. Measured on the dialog itself, BOTH openings were closed with Esc – no OK, no edit, nothing typed. Backing out of the dialog still sets it. That is still ordinary use and still a defect, but it is narrower than the previous wording implied. The discriminator is clean and the sample is small – four shipped points, on staged copies rather than customer files. An earlier version of this note said the draw refused and therefore nothing reached the sheet; part of it drew, and what drew is mirrored.) So a station reported as clear of the closure strip may not be. Treat every crane position here as illustrative of the workflow only, never as a sited answer.

Where it is¶

Toolbar: ConstructiVision Site & Tools → Autosite. Tooltip: “Build the site from its panels alone: grid, wall lines, attach and tilt-up. Run it in a new drawing saved beside the panels (CV-2904)”.
Typed command: CV-AUTOSITE.
Drawing: a new, empty drawing saved in the same folder as the panel drawings. Autosite reads every panel drawing in that folder.
Each panel needs its grid markers — the gridline labels and wall line set in Main Panel. Without them Autosite refuses (see When Autosite refuses, below).
Autosite does not open Main Panel, so it spends no panel token.

Try it on the PDX248 project¶

The PDX248 project folder (PDX248SHLP01) holds 83 panel drawings and the project file PDX248SHLP01.cvp. Its building has a stepped face and two spur walls, which makes it a good test of whether panels land on their own gridlines.

Start a new, empty drawing and save it in the PDX248SHLP01 folder, beside the panels. The test run named it PDX248autosite.dwg.
Click Autosite. No dialog opens. Everything is reported on the command line.

It reads the panels and says how it will walk them:

[AUTOSITE] read 83 PDX panels from ...\PDX248SHLP01\
[AUTOSITE] 83 panels carry left/right grid labels; walking by labels.

It names every panel it will not place, and every panel whose labels disagree with the others:

[AUTOSITE] NOT placed (not on the wall ring, or no grid markers): PDX078 PDX079 PDX080 PDX081 PDX082 PDX083 PDX24012
[AUTOSITE] PDX001: its gridline labels 30>29 run against its wall -- placed by the tiling, not the labels.
[AUTOSITE] PLAN CLASH: PDX022 names the same gridlines as PDX021 (19>20) -- placed as planned; interference will show it.

It builds the grid and the wall lines from those labels:

[AUTOSITE] 16 wall runs, 30 numbered + 8 lettered gridlines
[AUTOSITE] wall-line datum FACE (this shop's default, from the AutoCAD profile)

It attaches the panels:
```
[ATTACH] swept 0 placed 76
```
If the panel drawings and the new drawing were started with different drawing units, it says so and corrects the scale: [ATTACH] UNITS: 76 panel(s) arrived at scale 0.039370 because the panel drawings and this site carry different INSUNITS. CV geometry is inches in both, so they were reset to 1:1.

It draws the slab, the footings and the wall clearance line:

[AUTOSITE] slab edge: 16 sides on the walls' inside faces (datum FACE), 2 spur wall(s) wrapped
[CV-GROUND] 76 footings (2'-0" wide x 1'-0" deep, stepping with each panel's bottom); wall clearance line 10'-0" outside the walls' outside faces (thickest panel 7.25 in).

It lays the panels out cast-in — this is Construction Layout IN (129 — Construction Layout IN and OUT) running inside Autosite:

[LAYOUT] cast-IN on the poured slab: 76 of 76 panels in rows along their walls -- each nearest where it stands, 1.5 in form-board spacing, top toward the wall, top plates on one line, 10'-0" off the wall line, wholly inside the closure strip.
[LAYOUT] WARNING: 5 bed(s) still lie inside the brace line of a panel that goes up before them, so it is lifted through those braces: PDX071 PDX057 PDX055 PDX037 PDX032

It places the crane for the first pick and says what it scored:

[CRANE-FIRST] LR1300 starts OUTSIDE at 298.4,285.1 for the first pick, PDX001 (66.4 t, from its NOD dimensions): pick radius 52'-0 1/4" (cap 85.1 t), set radius 24'-3" (cap 164.0 t); 2443 positions in reach were scored, nearest the halfway point first. The whole track footprint was scored, not the tail circle.

It checks the cast:

[CV-INTERFERE] 76 cast panels checked: 0 interfering pair(s) between panels, 0 off the slab or in the wall clearance (76 cast in, inside the 5'-0" closure strip; 0 cast out, beyond the 10'-0" wall clearance); every one is a red solid on layer CV-INTERFERE.

It finishes with a summary and a reminder:

[AUTOSITE] done: grid, walls, attach (76 panels), slab, footings, clearance line, cast-in layout, the crane's first-pick position and the cast check ran. Tilt-Up stands the panels. Save the drawing to keep it.

On the test computer the whole run took about three minutes.

Save the drawing.

Click Tilt-Up Panels to stand the panels on their walls. On PDX248 it reported:

[TILT] matched 76 of 76 saved panels; restored 76 to constructed state.

Reading the result¶

After Autosite the plan shows the grid, the wall lines and the slab, with all 76 placed panels lying flat on the slab inside the building, and the crane outside one corner with its reach rings.
After Tilt-Up every placed panel stands on its wall. On PDX248 the panels follow the stepped face — PDX014 and PDX018 stand on the short returns of the step between gridlines A and A.4 — and the two spur walls carry their panels: PDX056 and PDX057 on one, PDX052 and PDX053 on the other.
The seven panels Autosite did not place (PDX078 to PDX083 and PDX24012) are left out of the site. The command line says why in general terms: not on the wall ring, or no grid markers.
The PLAN CLASH line is the product telling you two panels claim the same gridlines (PDX021 and PDX022 both name 19>20). Autosite places both as planned, and says the interference check will show the clash. The labels it compares are the ones set in each panel’s Main Panel.
Braces after Tilt-Up. Tilt-Up drew 254 brace lines on the 76 panels, and warned: 76 panel(s) had no programmed brace point and are braced by the DEFAULTS (bpauto's count, 2/3 of the height above the slab, on concrete) -- FOR DESIGN until their Brace Points are set (CV-3340). Set each panel’s Brace Points before relying on them.

When Autosite refuses¶

Autosite walks the panels by their grid markers. When none of the panels carries them, it draws nothing and says so. On the Everett Dat project (48 panels, no grid markers) the command line read:

[AUTOSITE] REFUSED: none of the 48 Evere panels carries grid markers (the gridline labels and wall line set in Main Panel). Autosite places panels by those markers, so there is nothing to walk. Add them in Main Panel, or build this site with Grid, Wall Line and Attach.

For a project like that, build the site the long way: Tutorial 10: Site Drawing (grid and wall lines) and Tutorial 11: Attach Panels.

What this lesson does not cover¶

The tooltip says Autosite includes tilt-up; the run does not. It ends at the cast-in layout and tells you “Tilt-Up stands the panels”. Click Tilt-Up Panels yourself.
The rest of the pick sequence. Autosite places the crane for the first pick only.
A sited crane position. See the warning at the top of this page.

Watch the lesson¶

A companion video for this lesson is planned alongside the written curriculum.