Help

What Bite is

Ask Bite, at the bottom right of the pages, opens Bite: ask it in your own words about your firm's projects, an answer on the project page, or how Pre-Con Assist works, and it answers in a few sentences. On a project you can change, it can also make changes for you and read drawings. It shows only when Forgenux has switched it on for your firm.

What it reads

Only what you can already see: your firm's projects (their names, where each one stands, its elevations), the project page you ask from (the criteria, each elevation and its answer, what's flagged in Before you send), and these Help pages. Never another firm's projects.

Tip. Ask from the project page when the question is about an elevation, so Bite reads what that page shows.

Changing the project

On a project you can change, ask Bite in your own words: "make the bays 5'-0" on center", "add a tie-back at 12'-0"", "a pair of doors in bay 2 and spandrel across the top row", "add SF-3, storefront 12'-0" by 10'-0" with a single door in the middle bay", "the wind is 30 psf in, 41 out at the corners". The page makes the change exactly as if you had typed it, sizes it as usual, and Bite says what it shows now. Each change is one step: Undo takes it back.

Bite can set everything you can on an elevation: the mark and sheet, the family, which way it faces, the size, the bays and horizontals, a flat, sloped or stepped head, tie-backs, doors, spandrel and the glass on each lite. It sets the criteria in every section (wind, deflection, mullions and head, dead load, energy, seismic), copies or deletes an elevation when you ask, and adds a glass type from its make-up as the drawings write it. Bays are counted from the left and rows of lites from the bottom, as the page lists them.

Tip. Give the sizes off the drawings. Bite asks for a size you didn't give rather than guess one.

Reading drawings

The paperclip in the Bite panel, left of the box you type in, attaches a PDF or a picture of the elevations or the window schedule; you can also drag the files onto the panel. It reads drawings on a project you can change, so open the project first (or start one with New project). The file goes on the project's drawings, Bite reads the frames off it (a drawing set takes a few minutes; keep working), and lists what it found with each sheet. Add the elevations puts in the ones whose marks aren't on the project yet; with the criteria read takes the wind, deflection and energy code off the drawings too; Update ... on the project too changes the elevations already there whose marks were read to match the drawings. Check each one against the drawings: Undo takes it all back.

Drawings already on the project can be read by asking: "read A4.01 and set up the frames", or "read the elevation sheets and update CW-1 and CW-2". What's read is added when it's ready.

Tip. Send just the sheets with the glazing: elevations and the window schedule read best. A project can be read three times a day.

What it can't do

Size anything

It never works out a depth, a load or a pass of its own: the page sizes every change, as it does yours.

Save, send or order

Bite can't send the project, order a review or pay. It tells you where on the page that is done.

Sign off

Like everything here it is preliminary: final design is by the delegated-design engineer after award.

Memory and jokes

Tell Bite "remember that we use IECC 2021, climate zone 5B" (or how you like answers) and it keeps the note across days and uses it when it helps; when you tell it something like that in passing, it may keep a note too. "What do you remember?" lists them, "forget ..." drops one, and Memory at the top of the panel shows them all, each with Forget. Notes are yours: your team doesn't see them, and they never hold a framing maker, a person's name or contact details.

Now and then, at most once a day and never on bad news, Bite adds a joke after an answer. Ask for one any time ("tell me a joke"); "no more jokes", or the switch in Memory, turns them off.

Show me

Ask Bite where something is and it takes you there: "where do I put the wind pressures?", "show me the tie-back tool", "take me to Team". It opens the page and the section, scrolls to the place and rings it, with a short note beside it. The page stays usable underneath; Done, the × or Esc ends it. A how-to answer from Help with a place to go has a Show me button.

Ask for a tour ("show me around", "walk me through drawing an elevation", "a tour of sending") and Bite goes from place to place with Next and Back: your first project, drawing an elevation, the design criteria, glass, sending for a check, and your account and team. A step on the project page waits for you to open a project. When Bite isn't sure which place you mean, it offers the closest ones to pick from, and Ask Bite in full if none of them is it. Showing you round is answered by the site itself, at once.

Quick answers

Hello, thanks, and the how-to and "what does it mean" questions these Help pages answer, Bite answers straight from Help, at once. Those answers say From Help; Ask Bite in full sends the question on for a fuller answer. A question asked again about exactly the same thing, with nothing changed, gets the answer it got before (As I answered before). Anything about your elevations, or a change to make, Bite works through in full.

Good to know

Its answers appear as they are written. Stop (or Esc) ends one part way; changes already made stay, and Undo takes them back. A question that didn't get an answer has Try again. Bite follows the conversation on each project, so "now make it 6 bays" follows on, and it keeps a short record of what you asked and changed there for two weeks, so you can pick up where you left off; New starts a fresh conversation. Sidebar keeps Bite open down the right of the window while you work (drag its left edge to make it wider); Float puts it back.

Forgenux can see what you ask and what Bite answered, and what it remembers about you. An answer it can't give here, it keeps back and says so. Close or Esc closes it; it opens again where you left it.