Where a finding came from.

Citations

A finding you cannot trace is a finding you cannot take to a consultant. Every code finding carries the clause it is drawn from and the sheet the evidence came from, and both are the drawing's own facts rather than a summary of them.

What a citation is made of

• The clause. The code, the article and the jurisdiction pack it came from — OBC 2025 Article 9.8.4.1, OESC 2024 Rule 8-104, By-law 569-2013 Article 10.5.20.20.
• The sheet. The sheet number read off the title block, so a finding names A2.3 rather than "page 7".
• The evidence. What was measured or read that produced the finding, in the units the rule is written in.

Clicking one

A citation in SpecChecker opens the document it refers to at that page. The file is fetched from your own workspace and opened from your browser's memory, so a citation opens the copy you uploaded rather than a copy of it somewhere else. In Blueprint Auditor, a finding with a location on the sheet takes you to that sheet with the place marked.

What a citation is not

• It is not a legal opinion, and a clean run is "nothing obvious" rather than "compliant".
• It is not written by the model. Citations come from the rule pack and the extraction, so there is no route by which a plausible-sounding clause number can be invented.
• A rule the drawing cannot answer is reported as a checklist item with its clause, and is never dressed up as a finding.