Use AI Help and Design Assist safely

Use Docs AI to read the public documentation

Choose Ask AI in the documentation header for questions about documented controls and workflows. Docs AI uses the page you are reading plus the public documentation, and returns links to relevant articles.

Docs AI does not require a signed-in account and cannot inspect or change a saved job. Questions and answers are logged against an anonymous session and page to improve the documentation, so do not include customer names, addresses, or private project details.

AI Help can use the current workspace context

AI Help can reason about the active view, selected item, project settings, and sanitized drawing context. It can run bounded read-only tools to inspect exact live entities, find registered controls, look up the DeckDraft guide, and read current deterministic structural and plan-check results. Select the relevant deck section, stair, roof, beam, or other object before asking a targeted question.

Expand long conversations for reading

On desktop, choose Expand chat in the AI context strip to open the same conversation in a large centered reading view. Long plan reviews, source lists, and the composer remain together. Return to side panel, click the backdrop, or press Escape to restore the same conversation to the workspace rail.

Verified changes stay deterministic

• The model can propose only registered design commands. It cannot write arbitrary drawing data.
• DeckDraft compiles the complete request, simulates it against a cloned drawing, checks the final outcomes, and re-simulates against the live drawing before applying it.
• A successful customer edit is one atomic transaction in the normal Undo history.
• Structural numbers must be supported by current deterministic DeckDraft results.
• Unsupported or genuinely ambiguous changes stop instead of allowing arbitrary plan mutation.

Review the generated PDF against local requirements

Ask AI Help to review the plan against local code. DeckDraft generates the current plan-set PDF in memory, sends the complete document to Gemini for visual inspection, and searches broadly for current grounded sources for the complete Customer & Site address and confirmed County / Permitting Jurisdiction.

A completed review prioritizes jurisdiction-matched government sources, including official authority sites on .gov, .us, .org, or another domain, then labels recognized organization and supplemental sources. It points to relevant PDF pages or sheets. If the address or jurisdiction is missing, research fails, or no safe relevant grounded sources are found, AI Help says the local review was not completed instead of substituting a generic IRC checklist. A review without an official government source is labeled evidence-limited. This is read-only drafting assistance, not engineering, code, or permit approval.

Review and redline a plan

In Framing, Foundation, Decking, or Roofing, choose Review and redline or ask AI Help to redline, redmark, annotate, or mark up the plan. AI Help uses current drawing inspection and supported deterministic findings, then can place concise selectable text annotations with leaders.

The notes are editable, participate in supported plan and PDF output, and apply together as one Undo step. They are drafting review notes, not engineering, local code approval, permit approval, connector-capacity approval, or field verification.

Treat uploaded sketches and photos as customer intent

A clearly dimensioned sketch can communicate rectangular sections, an L-shaped leg, stairs, house-wall returns, bump-outs, cover regions, and supported structural notes.

Visual input is approximate unless reliable dimensions are visible. Confirm orientation, dimensions, spans, loads, clearances, code requirements, and field conditions in the resulting plan.

Review every changed outcome

1. 1Read the resultConfirm the assistant understood the requested outcome.
2. 2Inspect the drawingCheck placement, dimensions, support, and relationships.
3. 3Check connected outputReview affected elevations, takeoff, details, and warnings.
4. 4Undo when neededUse the normal workspace Undo if the result is not useful.