Every engineering office has calcs it does on every job. Material properties, capacity factors, a standard check like Lane's weighted creep ratio under a weir. Somebody wrote each one carefully, somebody checked it, and since then it has been copied into every project that needed it.
That copying is where things go quietly wrong. A spreadsheet can only reuse a calc by copying it, so each project ends up holding its own version. Someone fixes a factor in one copy and not the others. A few jobs later, nobody can say which copies still match the one that was checked.
Template references let you put a checked calc into your page without copying it. Think of it as a subroutine for your page.
What a template reference is
A template reference adds a published template to your page as a live block. The template's working shows inline, in your calc, and reads like the rest of the page. It runs with your page's values, and its results are available to the rest of your calc by name.
The difference from copying a template in is what happens next. A copy is just more content on your page, and it drifts the moment anyone edits it. A reference stays the template. Your page runs a specific published version of it, and shows which one.
How it works
Pick it from your template library
Your library holds CalcTree's built-in templates and your team's own workspace templates. Type /template where you want the calc to go, search for the template, and choose Insert as a live reference. You can also add one from the Templates panel in the right sidebar with Add as reference.
It reads like your page
At rest, a referenced template looks like the rest of your calc: same type, same layout, no box around it. Hover over it and it shows that it is a template, with its name, the version it runs and a link to its source. And because it is part of the page, it prints as part of your report.
Link its inputs to your page's values
A referenced template brings its own inputs, and you decide where each one gets its value. Edit an input on the block itself, or in its card in the sidebar. Each input shows whether it is using the template's default, is linked to one of your page's values, or has been changed to an expression of your own.
It runs as part of the calc
Once its inputs are linked, the template is part of your page's calculation. Choose Show on graph from the block's menu and you can see it in the dependency graph: your page's values going in, its results coming out to the rest of your calc. Change an input on your page and everything downstream updates together.
Pinned to a version, updated when you choose
Each reference runs a published version of the template. Editing the template's source page does not change what your page runs. When someone publishes a new version, the block shows that an update is available and you choose when to take it, because updating can change your results.
An example: seepage under a weir
The video starts with a seepage calc for a concrete weir with a sheet pile cutoff: a flow net solved in the page, with the uplift, exit gradient and flotation checks that follow from it. Its geometry and head are inputs on the page, and the graph shows how they drive the solver and every check.
Then a Lane's weighted creep ratio check is added from the template library as a live reference. It drops into the page under its own heading, its head and creep lengths are linked to the values the page already holds, and the graph shows it sitting inside the calc alongside the flow net. The Lane's check is the team's checked template, not a copy of it, so the next job that needs it uses the same one.
Let CalcTree AI build it from your library
Reference templates are not only for adding by hand. Ask CalcTree AI for a calc and it searches your company's template library and CalcTree's built-ins for checked templates that fit, drops them into the page as live references, wires their inputs to your page's values, then writes the rest of the calc around them.
In the video, a new pad footing page holds only the project's inputs. CalcTree AI adds three checked AS 3600 templates as reference templates: concrete properties, reinforcing bar properties and capacity reduction factors. Each one is linked to the page's own values. Then it writes the bearing and bending checks that use their results, and the graph shows one connected calc.
That changes what an AI draft is. The verified checks are ones your team already stands behind, at a known version. What the AI writes around them is ordinary page content you can read, edit and send for review. Your template library becomes the set of parts the AI builds from.
Try it
Template references are available to everyone. To see one working, open a copy of the seepage page in your own workspace and look at how the Lane's check is wired in. Then add one of your own templates to a page with /template.
If you'd like to talk through building a template library for your team, book a call.
