CalqLearn Calq: a building from A to Z / Part 10 Checks and data
The building code check
Check the model against a jurisdiction's building code, read what governs the building over its life, and draw the result on the drawings.
On the sample house, you will see the codes Calq holds, read England's documents at the permit stage, open the rules the house is checked against, then check it under another code and draw the result on the plan.
The check is an early-stage check of what the model holds today, not a statement of compliance: the board says so at the foot of the drawer. Every figure of a code comes from a clause that was read, with the document it is in.
01Check against a code
Open Code check from the Data menu and its Code tab. Check against lists the jurisdictions Calq holds, by region: the Gulf, the Middle East and North Africa, Europe, the Americas, and Asia and Pacific, each with the documents it reads. No code: common practice only checks without one.
The code is set on the model, so Calq AI and the permit set speak the same code. The sample house is checked against United Kingdom (England): the Building Regulations 2010 and the Approved Documents.
02Over the building's life
Below the list, Over the building's life says what governs the building in this jurisdiction, from planning to demolition. Pick a stage: each document it calls for is listed with its edition and when it came in, with a link to where it was read. For England at the Permit stage, five documents, from the Building Act 1984 and the Building Regulations 2010 to the Building Safety Act 2022 and its regulations for higher-risk buildings.
What does this stage need? asks Calq AI to read the duties of the stage: what is submitted, inspected or certified, and by whom.
03The rules
The Rules tab counts the elements that fail and pass, here 0 fail and 35 pass, and groups the rules by the part of the code they come from: room sizes, ceiling height, doors, corridors and exits, windows and escape, stairs and guards.
Open a group: each rule says what it requires, how many elements were checked and the clause it comes from. A single bedroom asks at least 7.5 m2 of floor (Nationally Described Space Standard, paragraph 10c): 4 checked, passes. A rule the model cannot measure yet says so.
The Practice tab lists findings with no clause of a code behind them: here the stair has lost its type. Fix with Calq AI hands them to Calq AI.
04Another code, on the drawings
Back on the Code tab, choose Saudi Arabia: the same house is checked at once against the Saudi Building Code SBC 2024, whose rules add light and air. Then turn on Show on the drawings: the plans, elevations and sections and the 3D show the result, and a key on the plan sums it up: here nothing fails and 16 pass.
Colour by chooses how: by result (a failure in blueline with a revision cloud and a triangle counting the rules it fails), by rule (each failure in the colour of its part of the code) or by margin (how far it is off). Passes are washed in highlighter.
Under the Saudi code, 28 elements pass, and its rules name their own clauses: a habitable room asks at least 6.5 m2 of floor (SBC 1101-2024, section 304.1). A figure read in a secondary source says so, and asks you to confirm it in the code.