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Does Home Designer offer a glass garage door?

Yes. look at your siding materials

I have a customer requesting vertical siding instead of the traditional horizontal siding. Can this be done? If not does the Pro or Architect version do this?

from my look you do not have walls for the roof to rest on so program freaks out as it wants the roofs to sit on wall. Make walls and set them to be railings For Side walls - Open them in the edit dialogue: ON rail Page: set the railing to OPEN Set posts to POST to BEAM Define start and end post as you wish either half, full or auto - I suggest FULL for your plan as out in the open Their is a tab for manually defining beam dims later ON NEWEL/BALUSTERS page Set dims for posts Width (think wall width) Max spacing 10ft or whatever you want (set it so just bit more then what you have now) for type either Square or choose one in from your library For front and end walls do the same except change post spacing to bit more then width of pavilion. So after walls then it will make a room - Choose Patio or similar. Define room in more detail. Set foundation monolithic slab 4" thick then have it BUILD FOUNDATION. Now you have foundation and walls. GO to default settings for framing and set first floor ceiling framing to what you are using for JOISTS and spacing. Set roof pitch define rafters dims and spacing. Auto create roof. Adjust if needed but for this simple roof should be fine. Build Framing and modify framing to suit. You issue is you do not have a room

I've uploaded my plan from my previous post. Sorry, I should have already done that. Byler8.plan

Using Home Designer Pro 2023, I'm rendering a pavillion on a slab. Within the roof defaults, I changed fascia and soffit/eve to "opening (no material)" and the roof surface and ridge cap to brown corrugated metal. I set it on posts with footers and manually drew roof planes. Rafters initially didn't render. When I opened them, despite having changed them in the defaults to Fir framing 1, under materials they displayed as "opening (no material). I fixed that with the eyedropper. Then I realized my rafters didn't render the proper depth (9 1/4") nor did my ridge beam. In "End2" jpg, the rafters don't display the depth of the rafters on the right. Oddly enough, if I peel the roof surface back and move any rafter in the slightest, it instantly changes to the proper depth. Within "End2a" vector view, there seems to be an underlayment that's causing the problem. It also stops the rafters from sitting on the roof beams in the birdsmouth cut as shown in "End2b" jpg. Any help would be appreciated.

maybe not available anymore from GE....

best advice I received a long time ago when I was given new software. PLAY WITH IT .... eventually you will figure it out and use the help button...

Between this response and another response for someone else who was having crazy roof gable issues, I think I have figured it out ---- thank you!!

Does anyone know why the older GE monogram catalogs contained GE's 48" cooktops and the current one does not?

Ah, good to know CA for curved roofs, thanks So if I set all the slopes and other variables, will those be considered as I am drawing the roof if I have Auto Rebuild Roofs turned off? For example, I just tried using the Gable/Roof Line tool to try to build a gable in the middle portion of the front porch roof and it's not doing anything. I tried drawing along the wall edge and also along the existing roof edge. Nothing happened. I suspect I am making this more difficult than it is and once I figure it out I will be fine, but sheesh it has been a long and windy road trying to become adept at roofs.

Yeah, I think that’s what bugged me the most about the switch to subscription for the Home Designer line. No ability to grandfather in to the perpetual license (at least for the 2026 version) and no substantial discount, other than the limited Black Friday upgrade (which I did decide, for now, to use).

first: curved roofs not exactly done in HD - only CA. for roofs make sure you have your defaults set to what you want. Then go over each exterior walls to set how you want the roof to be over that wall - Gable or Hip etc. Set slopes. - Want two slopes - set those variables. Make sure each room has proper settings for roof over or not. Alot of that can be preset when you set defaults before making floor plan Then I build roof... and if I find something not to my liking I will manually edit those roof planes.

From at least January 2025 Legacy SAA auto renews for perpetual license holders who are paying the fee each year. Please see this post in ChiefTalk. https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/topic/44788-legacy-software-licenses-ssa-renewal/ CAX15 was the last perpetual version you could buy and after that it is subscription only. But some Chief Architect users still have renewable perpetual licenses as long as they keep paying the yearly fee. When they stop paying the yearly fee they are left with version that they stop paying at. Whatever that maybe at the time. I am not aware that this arrangement has changed as yet. I think that is a very fair arrangement at present for longtime users.

Hello, I spend HOURS trying all the different ways to get my roofs to draw "correctly" or at least how I think they should be drawn . I find floor plans extremely fun, but roofs are a huge struggle, with hours of frustration. I've watched several videos and walked through training guides. Does anyone have any wisdom they could share on manually creating decorative gable roofs, dormers, and maybe even a low-pitched roof with a curve on it over the doorway? The automatic roofs rarely look good so I have turned off the auto roofs in the defaults and must do everything manually. Screenshot for some examples of what I am trying to do - not exactly like this, but many of the elements such as the gable on the left side, the gabled dormers, the porch roof. I very much appreciate this forum! Thank you!!

Got it - thank you!

It's a roof plane cutting through the rooms ceiling. Either change the roof plane or change the rooms ceiling height

It looks like it may have been leftover from a camera in 3D view... nothing weird appears in the 3D view though I am going to close the topic, thanks for your help!

This is actually a common way of framing floor trusses on this type of request. Is there a way to do this? I would like to show accurate building sections for homes that use top chord bearing trusses.

I have never asked chief this as I have never planned on stopping my subscription. They should update their terms because that info is counter to the terms on the website

Did something change for Premier SSA subscribers? I thought CA was allowing SSA upgrades and perpetual licenses as long as the SSA was kept current.

This is too bad! I purchased this software for personal use 3 years ago upgrading every year and last year going from Home Architect to Home Designer Pro 2025. The only reason I went with this software was that they had purchasable versions for a reasonable price and loyalty upgrade pricing every year. I was just looking now to see about upgrading to Home Designer Pro 2026 and discovered they went to subscription. Sad that they want to keep their hand in your pocket forcefully instead of making good software and updates you want to purchase. So I will not be making any further purchases of Chief Architect software. They had their subscription base professional version for people who use it for business.

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