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It's the same for any of the Home Designer versions. You mentioned 24 in your post

My signature is old - I'm using Home Designer Pro 2024

Not in the Home Designer product. You'll need to upgrade to Chief Architect for layers. This discussion has come up many times. I always just draw an as built plan, then copy it to make the changes for the remodel

Does anyone know if I can create layers in any of the Home Designer Pro versions? I'm using 2024, but can upgrade if they have added this. And if not, does anyone know a workaround for solving my need: I do a lot of remodels. I would love to be able to layer my as-built plan under my new plan with my changes so I can see (and show clients) where we started as a base of comparison.

This is crazy. 8 foundation walls are clean. One foundation wall shows a brick ledge. WTH. Someone needs to be able to answer this problem.

I understand that it's likely a brick ledge line but I don't want to see the line. Other foundation walls have a brick ledge but they don't have the brick ledge line. WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

how do I turn off brick ledge line?

LOL ok, that narrows it down lol. Nope, it's a foundation wall, no pony wall.

Thanks Rookie. That's what it was.

that looks like foundation wall so it could be brick ledge of some sort.

FOR SOME REASON SIMILAR WALLS HAVE AN ADDITIONAL LINE. WHY? WHAT IS THE ADDITIONAL LINE?

You have "color" turned off in your 1st screen shot, and "on" in the 2nd. Look at the little house image in the right side tool bar.

Thanks for the response Scott. It's just the regular Plan when you are designing, that no longer shows shaded walls. (see screen shot). If I go to Print Preview, it shows the shaded walls. (see other screen shot) I'm just trying to get the shaded walls back in standard Plan view. I don't know what I did to make them un-shaded. Any other ideas?

Did you check the option to print in color?

Just adding to my question above, when I go to Print Preview, the walls are shaded like they originally were. Get out of Print Preview and they are no longer shaded.

@Renerabbitt Thanks for looking. I'm sure there's ways around this, gonna have to keep digging. I have been using the "save as" for both plan and layout files. It would just be faster & more convenient to be able to select them from the pop up menu. This is the craziest software I've used to date. I've watched videos on older versions of the software as there aren't that many specifically on HDPro 2025. To see that certain features were available previously, but then they take stuff away later. Trying to follow along with tutorials & Tips/Tricks videos is almost impossible when things are removed. As awesome as this software is & could be, it's frustrating (I'm assuming on purpose) to to know there are things that are so simple that have just been disabled to make things harder. PS: I watched your comparison video and it looks like you've poked around in HDPro2025 a little bit. It was awesome to see what someone that has tons of CA experience can still be impressed with the functionality offered by the cheap version of the software. Maybe one of these years I can afford Chief, but until then I'll just keep playing around in this version as it's pretty much paid for.

I just upgraded to Home Designer Pro 2026, and created a new plan for my son and daughter-in-laws renovation project. I was using Print Preview and Print to PDF so I could send them the plan. Now all the walls are no longer shaded. When I created the plan, exterior walls were darker gray, and interior walls were lighter gray. I can't figure out how to restore them to how they were when first created. Does anybody know a way to do this?

It does seem as if these options are not available in HD2025, only HD2026. In that case simply gut a project and for each new project make a copy of your gutted project and start from there

What is your time worth? I've been training people in twinmotion since 2019 and am a very fast technician and even with a polished workflow it still takes me at least an hour to apply all of the new pbr textures and apply lighting in twinmotion to reestablish and render the scene. I bill at $150 an hour, so that's a $150 per design at 30+ designs a year. That math tells me that the annual subscription is absolutely worth it for someone that values raytrace rendering in their business. Do you disagree? Did you try 3d dimensions? As I stated earlier, this alone should vastly improve your design workflow in any 3d view. If you work in 3d view this would be a game changer. Granted we are comparing my knowledge of these tools having used them since early beta in Jan 2025. I have a lot of time in the seat with these tools compared to anyone here that just now got the option to try them out. Are you sure? because it did fix it on my HD2026: You might be surprised, I would encourage you to let go of your disdain for this software at this time and open up to the possibility that their might be solutions from some of the community

@RenerabbittI know PBR isn’t a ray-trace. It was an example of how chief managed to bollox the implementation of an industry standard (PBR) in their HD products. I had concerns that chief would similarly do a half-arsed version of ray-trace. Now, while the ray-trace in 2026 is ok...is it worth the annual subscription they’re charging for it, given that other external engines are doing it better and cheaper? Absolutely not. The few other token-gesture improvements are negligible. I’ve been using the trial version and there’s nothing there that I’d be excitedly throwing my money at. Ill reply to you on my other post regarding the sill z-fighting when I get a chance. Unfortunately, your fix doesn’t fix it. I’ve sat with technical support for months regarding it, and if technical support can’t fix it, I doubt you can, but I’m willing to give it another shot because it drives me that insane!

I still haven’t received any further information on how to get the offered materials. So, never mind Rene, I don’t care to have them anymore.

@RenerabbittThanks for the attempt at help. I'm not sure if the version I'm using is different, but I don't see the options you are referring to. This is what I see when I try to do a File/Save As I don't see an option to save this as a template file. For the New Plan in Preferences, I only see a location to specify a folder location, not a file type. Not exactly sure what the issue is. As I mentioned, this is Home Designer Pro 2025. Any other thoughts?

this is a very old video and is modifying the core data files which I would not recommend. HD2025 I believe has the Save As Template option in your file menu. Also your default plan and layout files are set from preferences under the new plan panel

I couldn't tell from how this was worded but just to be clear PBR is not raytracing or pathtracing, its a raster based approximation based on screen space with global illumination. So you certainly wouldn't be getting any of the qualities of a raytrace engine that is using single or multi bounce path tracing and raytracing. That image I posted above is direct from Home designer with no edits. There are a few big features in the new version of Home Designer but in all honesty, I doubt many HD users will know how to capitalize on those features having limited knowledge of what features they are born from in the premiere line. The project browser and project management mode can drastically improve the condoc process with a few tricks, and mind you, I might be upset about it to, its a single line item with no context and no real example of why its such a powerful feature. Temporary dimensions in 3d views combined with select next side singlehandedly recouped the cost of the software for me this year and it's not even listed as a new feature but its there in HD2026. HD users had never had tab input move, so moving objects in 3d were relegated to the transform replicate tool which is clunky. Now you can move and resize objects in 3d using boolean operations with temp dimensions in a very very fast way. Get used to that feature and you would shave 30% off of your design time: Also please check the other post where you address me, I offered a potential fix for your z fighting issue. If you like you can schedule a free consult with me and I can show you a few things in HD2026 that would get you excited.

I've been struggling trying to add my own custom template file show up in the list when you start a new project. I've created the template I would like to use and have just been doing the save a copy as the new plan file. After accidently saving the file instead of "save as", I tried tackling this task. I watched the following video and I think I'm doing the same steps, but for the life of me it won't show up in the Create New Plan window. Also, is it possible to change the layout template that HDPro uses? Again, I've just been doing the "Save As" file creation but would rather just have it set. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in Advance