Troubleshooting
Sign-in and startup
| Symptom | Cause & fix |
|---|---|
| "You can verify your email on the Caident web app…" | The account's email isn't verified. Use Open Caident web app, verify, then sign in again. |
| Access required screen after signing in | Your current organization has no Caident Design license. Switch organizations (dropdown on that screen) or contact your admin. |
| Access screen mentions the device limit | The org's seats are full. Manage devices opens your device list on the web app — remove one, then retry. |
| Pipe Table Unavailable instead of Home | The pipe catalogue couldn't load — no server and no local copy in C:\CaidentDesign or C:\CaidentCalc. Check the connection, restart the app. |
| App closes and reopens by itself right after launch | That's the silent auto-updater installing a new version. Normal. |
Import and room detection
| Symptom | Cause & fix |
|---|---|
| "Scanned PDFs aren't supported yet for automatic wall detection — imported as an image instead." | The scan yielded nothing extractable. The plan is a picture: calibrate the scale, then draw rooms with Compartment / Lasso and walls with Barrier where routing needs them. |
| Rooms merged together or split oddly | Wrong wall/door layer roles. Layers panel → Background section → set each layer's — / Wall / Door role; detection re-runs. |
| Rooms didn't detect at all on a DXF | The file had no units ($INSUNITS), so detection waits for scale. Background Options → Set background scale…, calibrate, done. |
| Dimensions or text from the drawing clutter the plan | Layers panel → Annotations row → Dimmed or Hidden. Or hide the whole PDF Underlay chip if detected text doubles the PDF's baked text. |
| Detected scale is wrong (walls 40 ft long) | The sheet's scale text wasn't readable. Calibrate against a known distance — a 3-ft door opening works. |
| A room I edited keeps its old shape after re-detection | By design: manually edited compartments are never regenerated. Select it and use Reset to auto-detected to hand it back. |
Placement and routing
| Symptom | Cause & fix |
|---|---|
| "No rooms detected. Make sure the background has enclosed wall geometry." | Auto-place found no compartments — detection hasn't run (scale? roles?) or the space genuinely has no enclosed rooms. |
| Auto-place sprinklered a garage / skipped nothing | Skip rules match room labels on the drawing. No "GARAGE" text → ordinary room. Review the placement report. |
| Can't place a device — nothing happens on click | Devices must land inside a space's region. Check you're clicking inside the active space (inactive spaces are faded). |
| Routed pipe crosses a wall it shouldn't | Routing only avoids barriers, not background walls. Draw a Barrier along the wall. |
| Routing ignores my boundary | The boundary doesn't contain the space's sprinklers, so it's dropped. Redraw it around the heads. |
| A deleted routed span comes back after re-route | The router re-grows what the tree needs. Draw the run you want as a manual pipe — that pins it. |
| Vertical Pipe tool is disabled | Needs 2+ spaces and the pair aligned — the tooltip says which is missing. Edit → Align spaces… first. |
Hydraulics
| Symptom | Cause & fix |
|---|---|
| "Cannot calculate yet:" with a list | The model is missing what's listed — sprinklers, riser, source, a connected network, or Static (psi) on the source. |
| "Please sign in before running Quick Calc." | Quick Calc runs on the server and needs your session — sign in. |
| Quick Calc times out / "issue connecting to the calculation server" | Network problem between you and the Caident server. (Despite the message's wording, CaidentCalc does not need to be running for Quick Calc.) |
| "Failed to send — is CaidentCalc running?" | The Send buttons need CaidentCalc open on this machine. Start it, then re-send. |
| "Design is out of sync with Calculation" banner | You edited the design after sending it to Calc. Re-send when ready; dismiss the banner meanwhile. |
Files and exports
| Symptom | Cause & fix |
|---|---|
| "This file does not appear to be a valid Caident Design project file." | The file isn't a .cdsn (or it's corrupt). Recover from a backup copy. |
Export DXF produced a .zip | Expected: the plan has raster (scanned-PDF) backgrounds, which DXF can't embed — the ZIP holds the DXF plus one PNG per background. |
| A recent-projects row fails to open | The file moved or was deleted. Open it from its new location; the row updates on next save. |
When something else is wrong
- Undo (Ctrl+Z) reaches back 50 steps and covers everything, including imports and routing.
- Most "operation failed" alerts carry the underlying message — note it before dismissing.
- The ? menu shows the exact app version — include it when reporting a problem to Caident.