rvbinder

@Robborito: The sketch is roughly to scale. The upper edge of the terrain boundary is about 200 feet, to allow placement of street, sidewalk, and adjacent buildings. I posted the .plan file as I have been asked by the forum admins to do that in the past. The plot boundary (lite green) is 120' at the top (north) side, 95' on the east (right side), 28' on the vertical west edge. The southwest curve has radius ~50'. The south edge is about 95'. The retaining wall at the street is about 2' high at on the northwest gradually increasing to about 4' at the southeast corner. The 0 level of the house is about 7' over the zero level of the terrain. The garage apron should be about 1 foot below this, i.e., about 6' over the zero level. The northeast corner is about 8' over the terrain zero level. @DavidJPotter: I looked at the videos again, and found a few more clues to this puzzle. I was able to get a terrain model that sufficiently corresponds to my site, although it took a lot of trial and error as all of the tutorials use only rectangles, noting that placing elevation objects inside of the terrain boundary might not work (that's an understatement.) My model starts with two rectangular terrain elevation areas of height zero at the and left and bottom, which extend beyond the terrain boundary. This leaves an undefined triangle at the apex of the curve, as I cannot see how to make a flat elevation area with a curved side. That seems to be producing undulations in the otherwise flat street (6" high) and sidewalk (12" high) that I've drawn over the zero level. After getting to a close-enough model (street, sidewalk, retaining wall, and curved upslope) I have been trying to model a cut for the 12' wide driveway shown in the sketch. It should start at street level, then climb up to the flat apron area with acceptable transitions and a linear rise (i.e., just following the terrain as shown in the tutorials is not acceptable.) Using a straight retaining wall and a flat terrain region for the apron, I can get the west side of it to look reasonable. However, I cannot get the east side of the driveway to look anything other than bizarre. I tried placing terrain breaks at both the sides of the cut, and drawing in 12' long elevation lines between them corresponding to the top and bottom of driveway elevations. This produces even more weirdness. Please provide an example of how you'd model a cut for a linear rise of a driveway with this non-rectangular and sloped terrain.

I want to create a sufficiently representative 3-D model of the sloped lot for an existing structure and its immediate vicinity. The site is a trapezoid with one rounded side, which rises more less uniformly from the southwest to northeast. The frontage will preserve these contours, while new paved areas will slice through it adjacent to the house and garage. The attached sketch shows what I'm trying to do. This assumes that the baseline terrain specification level is 0, then layers & contours are added following the increasing height noted. I've tried to construct this using splines for elevation, retaining walls, and terrain breaks. The HD Pro model (attached) is a mess that does peculiar things when I try to add-in more features (I've removed most of that.) I've looked at the help, docs, and tutorials, tired many hours of experiments, but I can't get much better than this. I have many specific questions, but the main one is this: What exactly are the steps to create a model that is stable (doesn't become distorted when I change/add something) and which represents the desired slopes and flat regions? terrain-learning3.plan

I want to add a "Raised Heel Wall" (see for example https://www.apawood.org/raised-heel-trusses) to the third floor of an existing plan. So, instead of my rafters sitting on top of the third floor joists, this low wall about 16" high extends the existing exterior wall perimeter upwards to support the rafters. The roof design will not change. The Heel wall will be different HDP wall type than the existing exterior walls to accommodate more insulation. Making changes like this usually breaks a lot of other things in my models, so my question is, what approach will allow me to insert this wall and raise the roof with the least disruption? Thanks in advance.

@DavidJPotter I do not see any way to set the roof parameters to achieve the variation of interest, starting from scratch or thereafter. (1) Where exactly in the feature navigation would this be done? When in the process of defining a roof plane would this be done? Are you suggesting that I couldn't delete a plane and start over?

The existing roof is a simple tent: 45 deg pitch, two gables, and covered in tar paper and 90+ year old slate. The new roof system will be: Existing Deck (1x9 softwood boards over 2x6 rafters) Air Barrier 2" Polyiso Insulation sheets 2" EPS Insulation sheets Flat-laid 2x4s to create a venting channel 5/8" OSB or CDX Sheathing Ice and water underlayment, e.g., Grace Steel Shingles

I want to represent a roof structure over the rafters that is about 8" deep. I tried increasing the Roof Plane.General.Measurements,Structure Thickness, but it makes no difference in the 3D rendering of the roof. How can I do this?

One more thing ... In the file you updated, all of the plants show on the floor plan view, but are not rendered in the 3D view. There is no hide/show function for all plants in 3D I can find. How can I re-enable display of the plants in 3D?

@Jo_AnnThanks for the suggestions. I did not edit any of the interior structures, including the basement walls when this problem occurred - they disappeared as a result of some other change I made trying to correct the exterior room problems. @DavidJPotter Thank your for the revisions. I suppose it might be possible to untangle the thicket of invisible dependencies and non-intuitive behavior of your system with further study, but I don't plan to make a career of its use. I have RTM quite a bit. I rarely find any useful guidance in it about how to represent the complex structures I'm interested in and avoid the pitfalls that seemingly obvious actions entail. I guess I'm just too simple minded - I learned to draw with pencil, paper, and a T-square, so I my mental model is that when I put a line down, it stays there until I explicitly erase it.

Select the room as shown in the attached screenshot, which was changed to "unspecified" (not by me.) Open the object to edit it, change any attribute of the room. Click Ok. Reopen the room, and NONE of those changes are saved.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/sn4pmv0vydc7g4k/AADFhRQahqbWPoLUPW34bl_Za?dl=0

I'm using room type "Court" to represent a patio. A day ago, this was completed and correct. Then it started acting strangely as I worked on an adjacent room: although I didn't touch the Patio room, its north wall changed itself from wall type brick to something else as well as its dimensions, and other assorted weirdness. I corrected that, but then, after making changes to another room, the Patio room changed itself to room type "unspecified" and dropped all the settings I had laboriously input. I entered the settings again to correct that and hit "Ok", but nothing is saved and the room is still type "unspecified" with default settings. This is repeatable - all changes to the "unspecified" room are dropped on clicking Ok. Your tool has also removed about half of the basement plan in the house structure, which was not even connected to the Patio. This is annoying to say the least. As the plan file is 39.7 MB, I cannot upload it. How can I recover the many hours of work that were lost and prevent such data corruption from recurring?

Plus 1

I'm not sure what I did in the dimension menu, but I now have an auto-dimension infestation, both interior and exterior. How can I all of the automatically applied dimension lines?

The plan file is attached. Garage-Levels.plan

I want to model an attached garage with two levels, sitting on a monolithic slab foundation. The garage upper level connects to the living space at 0" height and provides a curb for two sides of the lower level. The lower level is to be -6" where it meets the upper level and then slope 1" in 10' to the driveway (about 2" total.) The slab at the garage doors should be flush with the surface of the driveway. The stem wall for the living space should wrap around the entire garage at the same height. I tried subdividing the garage space by making a room for the upper level, using either a wall divider, an interior wall checked as "invisible", or railing with invisible elements. All of these result in a protruding lip at the edges (see attached, showing how this looks with room divider wall.) For example. although the plan view shows the divider as a single line, it is rendered in 3d with fat lip of about 12" (see attached.) Also, in 3D, the plan line seems to define the center line of the fat lip, so that its edge is not flush where it meets (not intersects) another wall. I cannot work out how to set the various room heights. For example, I thought it would be as simple as setting the lower level floor eight as -6", but this had some bizarre side effects, with the stem wall height being changed. I have a had a look at the Sunken Floor how-to, and that doesn't help. So, how can I define a garage that represents what seem to be fairly simple relationships?

I'm trying to develop an HDP plan that corresponds to the attached sketch. I have a good as-built, including terrain to the property line. This has a lot details: wall types, dimensions, defaults, etc.. that I don't want to re-enter. I've tried to adapt a copy of the as-built as a new plan but it is mostly a mess. The terrain keeps shifting, even though I don't change it. I tried terrain holes for retaining walls, driveway, etc. but this doesn't line up as needed. I suspect there is a necessary sequence/configuration to achieve this, but I don't see it. It seems I have to first define the terrain boundary as including all of the environment elements of interest, and then create a new structure defined with foundation walls of varying depths. If I start with a completely new plan file, in what order should I create the elements? Lot with environment as terrain? Terrain contours? Retaining walls that drop several feet? "terrain holes" for the apron, sloped driveway, and their retaining walls? Considerations and questions: Adjacent off-property buildings are needed to show sight lines and lighting effects and existing off-property street and sidewalk are needed to show how access will work. How do I show them but exclude them from the plan? The new basement and garage will be enclosed within a new foundation wall. There will be a bearing foundation wall for the new gable end between the basement and the garage. The new basement floor will be lower that the existing to achieve an 8' finished height. The new garage slab will be about 12-18" lower than the bsmt. It will also slope towards the garage doors. These 3 spaces (existing bsmt, new bsmt, new garage) should be level 0, but how do I define the various heights, and how do I indicate about 3" slope to the front of the garage? How do I define a open terrace (patio) that sits on top of the garage, 2" under the main floor, and is accessed from the new first floor, through the new gable end wall? How do I indicate a slope on the terrace surface for drainage? How do I define, as part of the terrain, the new apron, driveway, and retaining walls? At what building level? Thanks in advance.

Solved. Thanks

All actions on my Terrain sub-menus are grayed-out for no apparent reason: Modifier, Feature, Garden Bed, Water features, stepping stone, Terrain wall and curb (straight curved retaining wall are still active) , Road and Sidewalk Plant and Sprinkler are active. Please advise how to enable.

I don't see anyway to change the color (materiel) of lapped horizontal board siding. How can do that?

Thanks

This how the as-built is: five flat panels floor to top. I cannot see anyway to achieve this.

When looking at 3D views with light fixtures, HDP often shows a twinkling pixelation, after I move the orbit control and stop. An example is attached. Feature?

That corrected the problem. Thanks.

I cannot get HD Pro to correctly recognize the interior/exterior walls on the 3rd floor of my plan. I have checked alignment, wall orientation, wall type, gable options, wall breaks, etc. No such problem with walls of basement, 1st, and 2nd floor. The problem seems to be occurring where the 3rd west exterior wall is attached to an interior knee wall - screen shot attached. Complete file .plan is 37 MB, so cannot upload. How do I get the exterior walls correctly recognized, so that rooms, etc. are correctly recognized? Thanks

I'm replacing large cast iron radiators with Euro-style flat panel radiators. I'm showing the new items on the plan with a soffit object. I used a fill that distinguishes them in the floor plan. They can be placed in 3D and provide a good approximation of the actual items. They're easier to work with than generic boxes or slabs. But, this has several limitations: I cannot enter a part number, description, and mfg to be tallied in the materials report. I cannot draw horizontal lines on the soffit to correspond to the actual radiators. So, how can I create an object that allows detailing the exterior, defining attributes that can be tallied, and defining a unique fill for the plan view?