AirstreamJake

Eric - our place is in the 'piney woods' area of east Texas. Specifically, we are in far northeast Texas, not too far from Texarkana. The land here is not the desert that most people visualize when they think 'Texas' - that part of Texas is in the western half of the state where no one lives. We're in a beautiful area and have about 60 acres. 1/2 is heavily forested with roads and trails, the other half is improved grass meadows that are baled for hay. We've been living in a 2003 Airstream travel trailer that we completely remodeled and which is located in a building that we constructed. The building sits about 3' from the water and also includes a full bathroom. Further pictures attached below to give you the 'lay of the land'. In the final picture, the RV building is to the left and the new homesite with partially-constructed foundation is straight ahead, on the other side of the canoe.

Eric (Solver) - I did as you suggested on my plan, and viola! Couldn't do this without you. Thanks again. My wife and I are building this with just the two of us as labor. I thought you might like to see a few pictures of progress thus far (attachments below). Work now halted for the summer but will resume in the fall. In the meantime, working on finalizing plan details above the foundation level. Archive.zip

Perfect! That's exactly what I wanted. I'll give it a try and, hopefully, will get the same result. Thanks again for all your help.

Okay Solver, I should have thought of the zip file. It is attached below. Thanks in advance for any advice you can give. 1229 SF - 2018-07-17 - Floor Joists - Base Plan.plan.zip

Hello, I am working on a plan which has both front and back screened rooms (not decks). For the screened rooms, I need the floor joists running east-west since those rooms will have no subfloor but will only use deck boards. For the remainder of the house, I need the floor joists to run north-south. So, there are three separate areas where joist direction changes. I have tried doing this using bearing lines and the joist direction tool, but as you can see in the attachments, the tool apparently can't handle three areas and so is getting confused and running the joists east-west in the front and back portions of the house (which should be north south). Does anyone know of a work-around for this? I could probably manually draw the joists in the erroneous sections, but I hate to turn off auto framing if I can avoid it. Sorry I can't attach the plan file itself. Although it's a small home, the plan size of 29 MB exceed the max size of 25. Would be nice if they would increase that max size ... The PDF and .dxf files I was able to attach will hopefully give you the general idea. As an aside, My beams are closely spaced, so I'm only planning on using 2 x 8 joists which will bear on those beams. Does anyone see or have experience with using smaller floor joists such as this, or should I bite the bullet and go with 2 x 10? Load calculations seem to be fine with the short spans for 2 x 8. As always, thanks to all you experts out there that have been so helpful to me and to others. 1229 SF - 2018-07-17 - Floor Joists - Base Plan.pdf 1229 SF - 2018-07-17 - Floor Joists - Base Plan.dxf

Eric, I'd post the plan file, except I have extremely poor internet here on the farm and my plan file is so large that I think it exceeds the maximum size for attachments. Below are two images. I'm building on soft clay, and the interlocked continuous footers allow the house to 'float' as a unit rather than using individual 'spot' footers. We considered slab-on-grade, by far the most common type nowadays in Texas because it is easy and quick for the builder, but my wife and I both prefer the look of a 'raised floor' foundation. And, I like the easy accessibility of plumbing and other utilities. The foundation plan obviously isn't complete since three of the horizontal footers are still lacking as are the two vertical perimeter footings. Also, I have not yet added the piers themselves. Our first step is to pour the footers, and we hope to do the trenching next week, but I need to get exact measurements for spacing - and that's tough to do since I can't get the footers to 'snap' to the CAD lines.

Hi Eric, See the image below. I am currently laying out the footers for my home plan. What I've done is to create a stem wall foundation, outlined the foundation 'footprint' with CAD lines, and then deleted the stem walls. I'm now inserting the continuous footers on which the CMU piers will sit. I've drawn the footers as a slab, and am now trying to slide the sized footers into the foundation outline such that they meet up exactly with the outline. For some reason, the slab footers won't snap to the CAD lines which represent the perimeter of the foundation. Open to any and all suggestions. I'll have six rows of footers, all tied into a footer which will run around the perimeter. The result will be a 'grid' of footers upon which the piers will sit. 1229 SF - 2018-05-03 - Foundation with Continuous Footers.dxf

Hello, I've searched the forum and tried the reference manual, but cannot get object snaps to work when I try to snap a concrete slab to a polyline or to a single CAD line that represents the outline of my foundation. I can get the two aligned fairly closely by manually moving the slab, but can't get it 'spot on' because it won't snap to the polyline or to a CAD line even though I have all snap behaviors on in 'Snap Settings' (under 'Edit').

Eric - thanks for walking me through this. I completed adding the pier foundation to my plan today, just in time for the concrete guy to provide an estimate tomorrow. You are correct, the sill plate is usually not continuous but, for purposes of my plan, I've left it there for now while working on the piers. To help others out in the future, I've attached a 3D image of my house plan on CMU piers. I still need to add the beams between the sill plates and the floor joists, but that's a job for another day. 1229 SF - House Plan on Piers.stl

Hi Eric - all of this was extremely helpful, and I literally couldn't have done it without your input. I've now got the sample house sitting properly on the piers and with the newly-created sill plate inserted between the piers and joists (see attached plan - mainly for future readers of this post). Your suggestion to turn on the Floor Layer display also fixed the air gap that I was seeing between the wall base plate and the floor joists. It's a learning process, but I think I've now got what I need to start applying this to my actual house plan. I only have two remaining problems, minor and I can work around if needed: (1). Since my piers and footers are an architectural block, I can't get the piers themselves to snap to the CAD lines outlining the foundation. Instead, it snaps to the widest part of the architectural block; i.e., the footers, and (2). Since my sill plate is really a transformed floor joist, the program still identifies it as a floor joist and not as a sill plate. No big deal, but is there a way to predesignate it such that the program realizes it's really a sill plate? Thanks for getting me to the point that I can add in my piers on my plan. I've got a concrete guy coming out tomorrow to give me a quote so I can get the foundation underway, and I was getting concerned that I wouldn't be ready for him! House on Piers.plan

Okay, that worked. However, I expected that the lowest framing member would be the sill plate; however, it appears the sill plate is missing and so the lowest framing member is the rim joist. How do I get a sill plate in there if it didn't automatically generate? Also, there is a gap (see plan) between the wall base plate and the floor joists (see attached plan). Is that just how the program displays things in framing view, or is there a true gap there? Is the gap caused by the missing sill plate? House on Piers.plan

Eric, thanks for once again getting me over the hump. I had tried using a slab-type foundation, then deleting the slab, but that of course was not the right approach (which, in hindsight, is obvious). Your suggestion was spot on. I'm now trying to get the pillar height correct (as can be seen on the plan below), but I've looked through all the options on the menu and can't seem to find the height of the floor to which the pillars need to reach. I know it's got to be a simple thing to do, but I've looked everywhere and can't find what I need. House on Piers.plan

Attached below is my best shot thus far at getting the house to sit on CMU piers, as I desire. However, as you can see, there is no framed platform (sill plate, floor joists, rim joists) for the first floor. Can anyone give me any ideas on where to go from here? House on Piers.plan

Solver, I am working on such a plan now, and I will post it as soon as I have worked through to my best solution. A comment though, admittedly made out of frustration. Having spent $600 for design software that is marketed to non-professionals (i.e., I didn't purchase from their more advanced software line), it is disappointing to say the least to find that the software can't readily and easily handle one of the most common foundation types in the South. Homes have been built in the way I describe here for hundreds of years, and still today, the 'wooden beams on concrete block piers' are probably the most common foundation type other than slab (in the south anyway, where we don't have basements). Why in the world could this type of foundation not be automatically generated, without each new Home Designer user having to reinvent the wheel? Just venting.

Hello, I am trying to create a foundation for my home that will consist of perimeter and interior CMU (block) piers. This is a extremely common type of foundation in the south, but one which does not seem to be easily accommodated in Home Designer (Pro version, in my case). It is not one of the three foundation types among which one must choose in the Default Options panel. See the one-page 'Raised Floor Foundation Guide' which I've attached below for pictures of the structure of the foundation I am trying to create. On my home, the perimeter CMU piers will rest upon either a continuous concrete grade beam or on concrete spot footings (see pictures in attachment). On top of each CMU block pier will be a perimeter beam (girder) consisting of two 1-3/4" x 11-7/8" LVL. On top of the girder will rest the floor platform (rim board and I-beam joists, etc). The floor joists will be supported in the interior of the structure by LVL girders resting on CMU piers on spot footings. Does anyone have any direction for me as to how I can get started in producing this type of foundation plan in Home Designer? Any help or pointers would be greatly appreciated. Raised Floor Foundation Guide.pdf