CarrieS

@RecoveringArchA lot can be accomplished with Home Designer terrain but it can be a bit tricky at times. Do you have some pictures of what you're trying to do? I could give some insight as to if it is possible to do in Home Designer or some tips to get it done.

If you open the Deck Railing Specification is your Wall Type set to use "Deck Railing/Fence"? based on your image it makes me think you'll see something else there. Change it to Deck Railing/Fence and I should resolve.

Generally it is best to copy the plot into the plan with the house as there are less moving pieces to break. Your plot gets shaded in because it has a fill style applied. You're not seeing it in the plot plan because you have color turned off so it is showing up White. I would tackle this by: Selecting the Plot line, the Setback line, and the North Pointer from the Plot plan and clicking "Copy/Paste" Go into the Main House plan and click Edit> Paste> Paste (you can remove the fill style if you want to by opening the items and setting the Fill Stile to None on the Fill Style Panel) Move the lines into place Go into Edit> Default Settings> CAD> General CAD and set it to use Quadrant Bearing and Decimal Feet Go to Tools> Display Options, find the "CAD, Default" layer and set the Text Style to Plot Plan Text Style. Hope this helps!

Depends a bit on how you added the piers in plan. The Material List will only show what you have in the project. Did you build the foundation with piers? Did you add piers manually as shapes after the fact?

If you just want to view the plans. We do have a Chief Architect Viewer program that you can use to open the files. You can request the viewer here: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/resources/viewerrequest.php If you are using Project Management in Home Designer 2026 you'll want to export your projects so that the viewer can open them. https://www.homedesignersoftware.com/support/article/KB-03212/exporting-projects-and-disconnected-files.html

Hi Kent, I'm sorry to hear that you wont be continuing with Home Designer 2026 but I can understand. Unfortunately, files are not backward compatible so you wont be able to just open the 2026 plan in 2025. Probably the best path forward for you would be to open an earlier version of the plan. One that wasn't saved in 2026 and recreate the changes since that point. Archives can be found in your documents folder. When you first imported the plan into 2026 it would have created a copy of the 2025 version into your Home Designer 2026 Data/Archives folder. If you go in there and look for the first archive of your file it should be the latest 2025 version before being converted to a 2026 version. https://www.homedesignersoftware.com/support/article/KB-00099/accessing-your-archive-files.html Carrie

We've encountered and fixed similar scenarios in the past. If you are using an older version it might still have some behavior that has been fixed in later versions. If you are on a newer version you should send an example into Technical Support so we can report the problem to our developers. If you are on an older version it is likely you will need to patch it with a box shape as previously suggested. Carrie

It sounds like you might have turned off Temporary Dimensions. Click View> Temporary Dimensions I think the hotkey for Temporary Dimensions is "T" so it is quite easy to accidentally turn it off.

The link your provided appears to be broken so I'm going to be guessing a bit here. What version of Home Designer are you using? If you have one of the newer versions (2026/2027) or Home Designer Pro you might be able to achieve what you're looking for using the techniques in this article: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-01958/creating-an-arched-parapet-wall.html You wont be able to do the curved roof plane that the article shows (It's a Chief Architect article) but if you're just going to have multiple elevations or a gable, using multiple roof planes would work for controlling the wall heights quickly If you need the curve you could have multiple roof planes like this article shows: https://www.homedesignersoftware.com/support/article/KB-01187/creating-a-barrel-roof-in-home-designer.html Another technique you might use is to break the wall polylines and adjust the wall edge manually, which is sometimes faster sometimes slower depending on the shape. If you use the roof planes though you can use them for creating finished edges instead of leaving raw framing exposed. Hope this helps!

Did you try right clicking on the file in the project browser?

Hi @Browneye The Cantilever underside only applies if your room overhangs the lower floor. You don't need to really worry about it unless you have that scenario. Though looking closer at it, we don't model actual geometry for that underside surface so it isn't included in the Material List. Carrie

Hi @KTBuilder Home Designer does not have the ability to tell a layout box to look at a different plan. You will need to delete the view from the layout page and send the view again from the new plan.

Perhaps these tutorials will help? https://www.homedesignersoftware.com/support/article/KB-01020/creating-multiple-shed-roofs.html https://www.homedesignersoftware.com/support/article/KB-00359/automatically-building-the-basic-roof-styles.html https://www.homedesignersoftware.com/videos/watch/2237/automatic-roofs.html

This article covers the Automatic Trusses of newer versions as well as Manual Trusses from earlier versions. Hope this helps! https://www.homedesignersoftware.com/support/article/KB-00981/creating-roof-trusses.html

As Rene mentioned the right elevation doesn't match the front so I can't make it "match" what you want but here's what I came up with using some manual manipulation.