dennmill

Thanks Eric. I will now stop beating my head against the wall trying to find a way to draw stairs that aren't default.

I have Home Designer Pro 2019 When I draw a staircase or a landing, if I specify that it has a railing, balusters and newels, it appears that the newels are placed in default locations that cannot be changed (other than the distance between them). 1. For example, for a flight of stairs HD places the bottom newel on the floor and a little in front of the bottom step. But what if I want the newel sitting completely on top of the first step and back 3" from the tread nose? I don't see anyway to move the newel post generated using the Interior Staircase dialog screen. I could not use the default newel posts and instead add them individually from the Library, but then how do I draw a handrail? 2. In the attached file you can also see that the upper flight goes to a "balcony." However the balcony has a 4" protrusion at the top of the stairs which means that the automatically generated stair railing stops 4" short of the newel post at the top that is part of the balcony railing. How do I extend this railing? Thanks for ANY help, Dennis Stairs Newel example.plan

OK, thanks. It's nice to know that I can quit pulling my hair out wondering what I'm doing wrong. Apparently nothing, just another "program feature"

Ahhh, thank you so much. Not only did you figure out this problem but you greatly enlightened me. I've been pulling my hair out trying to draw this floor and railing and having a hard time of it because the Railing would take over defining the room. i didn't know this was something that I could turn off. Thank you so much. Does Chief Architect pay you for helping out people so much? If not, they should, you and a couple other people. By the way, did you see the other question I had about the Boxed Eave not working as expected?

I've chopped the structure into a smaller one in hopes that the file would be smaller. not sure it changed much. But this file exhibits the problem. Actually I'm having another problem here. The two highest roof planes can either be set for Boxed Eave (1) Default to Overhang or (2) Flush Eave. One of these settings works, I think the Default to Overhang, but the other one only changes one end of the roof planes, not both, so that it's Flush Eave one end and Default to Overhang of the Other. Seems it should be one or the other, not one of each. Thanks for the help Untitled 1.zip

thanks for the speedy reply. That was an interesting experiment, but i didn't get it to work correctly. I added the exterior "opening" layer and still saw no overhang. It took me a while to realize that at the bottom of the Wall Type Definitions screen I needed to set "Build Platform to Exterior of Layer" and then pick the "opening" layer that I just added. That did give me an overhang but I've attached images to show the other side effects that occurred. I decided to make the "opening" 10 inches wide. With a 2.5" main layer the wall is now 12.5" wide. The first problem I noticed was that top rail becomes 12.5" wide instead of the desired 2.5". Also, looking at the plan view I noticed that this railing is centered over the newels, so that the overhang was split in half and is only 5" rather than 10". I cannot find any other place to edit any of these items, like making the top railing 2.5" while keeping the overhang below. So I'm still stuck, but at a different place.

Using Home Designer Pro I'm able to make a loft on the 2nd Floor by drawing a railing and making an "Open Below" room. No problem there. But I would like the loft flooring (2x6 planks) to overhang the supporting structure by about 2 inches (very similar to how a stair tread overhangs the riser by an inch or so). Is there any way to specify the flooring to cantilever a couple inches past the floor framing? I suppose one workaround would be to draw the overhang as a soffit and "coat it" with the same pattern as the flooring. But is there a "proper" way to do this? Thanks

Thank you Eric. The Custom Backsplash idea worked quite well for me.

Eric, thanks for the clarification on where to post. i actually read a few posts from both Q&A and Tips&Techniques and wasn't sure. So with a 50/50 chance I guessed wrong. DJ Potter, thanks for the suggestion. I've resorted to SketchUp before but hoping I didn't have to this time as it doesn't seem as flexible if you need to adjust your SketchUp creation. The manual for HD Pro 2019 says it can edit certain custom objects but it doesn't sound it can't create an arched soffit. I guess it's SketchUp then.

Building a soffit across the top of kitchen cabinets and the sink. Thought it would be nice over the sink to make it arched, like an arched doorway. Can't figure out any way to do this.

When it comes to a Porch room, I do not see where these answers are very helpful. I'm using Home Designer Pro. It has so many options, and if you can't do it in Pro then you probably can't do it in Suite. It appears that there is no way in the world you can set defaults to make HD create a foundation for a Porch, that is, a foundation that will appear everywhere that it should. Rebuilding the foundation (1st reply) doesn't do squat. Settings Defaults (2nd reply) is a nice idea. Unfortunately for a "Porch" room you cannot define a foundation like you can with most any room interior to the house. The 3rd reply spoke accurately. It is possible to set the defaults for a Porch to have a "Monolithic Slab Foundation." You can see this monolithic slab foundation in 3D views, however it doesn't show up in Floor 0 plan view (the foundation floor) nor any other floor plan. And what if I don't want a monolithic slab? Since I want to give the concrete contractor a complete foundation plan, the only way I can get the Porch foundation to show up in the Foundation floor plan view is to manually draw it (which was the "trump card" presented in the 2nd reply). Please let me know if I am missing something, but it appears to me that HD does not allow anything but (1) a monolithic slab foundation for a Porch, and (2) and Porch foundations do not appear on the Foundation floor plan view unless you manually draw them. If you post a reply, please make sure you have tried it first.