TominOhio

Have you checked 3D Warehouse?

If I understand your question, you can always us Transform/Replicate Object to do 90% of the work. It will do the equal spacing for you, just not the calculations.

I created a single base cabinet 12” wide, 24” deep, and 78” high in the General panel of the Base Cabinet Specification. I removed the countertop (by setting the countertop thickness to 0”). This created a tall cabinet with a door and a drawer on top. In the cabinet preview panel (the window on the right that shows what the cabinet would look like, I selected the toe kick. This activated the Front panel and allowed me to remove it by setting the Item Height to 0”. I selected and deleted the drawer. I selected the tall door and changed it to a drawer. With the drawer still selected, I clicked on Specify under the Appliance/Door/Drawer option. This opened up a Drawer Face Item Specification window. At the bottom of that window is an option for Style. I clicked on the dropdown menu and selected library. In the library, I went to Home Designer Core Catalogs\Interiors\Furniture\Storage Furniture\Shelving\ Utility Racks\Utility Shelf (tall). I then selected the tall utility shelf in the panel on the right and clicked on OK. Then I clicked on OK in the Drawer Face Item Specification window. If you select that cabinet and open the drawer, it will appear to have the wire shelf. In the Door/Drawer window, I changed the drawer type to a slab drawer and selected Pull (horizontal) as the drawer handle type to more closely resemble your photo.

I created three pullout pantries next to each other. In one, I showed it open with food. In the next I showed it open without food, and in the last one I showed it closed. The only issue I have is that if I try to use the one with food and then close the drawer, the food doesn’t go with the drawer and just “floats” outside the cabinet. I don't know if this helps.

Here's one I found and have used... Turntable.skp

JoAnn, Thanks for all your help. I never would have figured out that I had to extend the 0" elevation cutout to eliminate the spikes. I tried everything I could think of, but nothing worked. I'm glad you solved that mystery for me. I really like your updated version of your plan. It looks great. I'll continue to work on mine and will post a picture of the project when it's finished. Thanks again! Tom

I am slowly but surely figuring some of this terrain stuff out. I opened the plan you generated and opened up the various terrain objects to see what they were and what settings you used. Since you said the order of adding objects didn’t matter, I started by adding two retaining walls on either side of the driveway. Then I added a small Elevation Region and got the “terrain spikes” shown below. Terrain Trial.plan Finally, I added a Rectangular Feature like you did to cover the area of the driveway. This didn’t remove the spikes as you can see. I thought I had duplicated everything you did but I got different results. So obviously, I’ve done something wrong. I’ve attached the simple file I created. I’m hoping it was something simple that I neglected to do or a setting that isn’t right. Thanks again for all your help. Tom Terrain Trial.plan

I'm working my way through this with a simple design. I have the sloping front now and a "cutout" for the driveway, but my driveway area is flat. How did you slope the driveway?

JoAnn, Wow!! What a lot of work you did for me. Thank you so much. I have gone through the file quickly and I am wondering about the order of doing things. Did you create the front slope to the road across the entire terrain first? I was able to reproduce the front slope by drawing two elevation lines across the front of the terrain and setting one to -75" and the one closest to the road at -150". Then I added an elevation region covering the rest of the property and setting that to -20". That worked for the front slope!! Now I am wondering how you did the driveway. I'm not able to create it using another elevation region extending from the road to the garage and setting that elevation to -150". Can you briefly describe the steps you used to create the driveway? I'm also intrigued with how the wall looks. Is that a retaining wall? How did you get the steps in it? Thanks again for your help. You have gone above and beyond on this one and I hate to keep asking you questions but I am not able to figure out the driveway, and the documentation doesn't seem to cover this situation (or maybe I'm a little dense). Tom

JoAnn, thanks for pointing me to the Knowledge Base article on Using Terrain Features and Regions. I have reviewed that article before, but I thought I would take another look at it, because obviously I’m missing something important. I tried to take my plan and apply the steps in the article, but right off the bat I could see differences in what they are trying to do and what I want. I have so many questions, I don’t quite know where to start. But let me just start by walking through what I did and the results I got from those steps. My first objective was to show the hill in the front yard that extends down to the road (shown in Picture 1 below). The actual flat portion of the yard that can’t be seen from this view extends out about 10-15 feet from the porch step before dropping off very steeply to the road. The slope that is seen in front of the house is probably a 60-degree drop from the flat portion to the road. In my model, I already have the house and front porch/steps done. These are shown in screenshots of the plan and 3D views (Picture 2). My next step was to create the terrain perimeter. Here’s where I get a little stuck, because if I put the base terrain level just under the bottom step, I’m not sure how to lower the level of the road when I add it. But I’ll cross that bridge later since no one has steered me otherwise. I added the Terrain Perimeter and opened the Terrain Specification. The Building Pad was set on Automatic, and it was at 20 1/8” (greyed out). I unchecked the Automatic box and changed the Subfloor Height Above Terrain to 22” to fine tune the position relative to the bottom step. My terrain is currently flat completely around the house. A screenshot of the plan and 3D views is shown in Picture 3. Next I wanted to create the flat area in front of the left part of the house where the driveway will go. The driveway will be approximately 150” below the level of the flat terrain shown in Picture 2. According to the article, proceeding from Step 5, 5. When the Terrain Perimeter is the desired shape and size, select Terrain> Terrain Tools> Elevation Line from the menu, then click and drag in the drawing area to create your first elevation line. Only the portion of an elevation line drawn within the Terrain Perimeter will affect how your terrain is generated. 6. Once the elevation line is drawn, it can be moved and its length adjusted as needed by selecting and using the edit handles. 7. With the elevation line selected, click the Open Object edit button to open the Elevation Line Specification dialog and specify the desired Elevation. Following the direction of Step 5, I drew a series of horizontal lines in the plan view where the driveway will go (drawn in the X-direction). This is shown in Picture 4. I then marqueed across all the lines so I could change their elevation at the same time. I set the elevation to -150” and clicked on OK. The result is shown in Picture 5. The entire terrain was moved down to the -150” elevation. I thought I was following the instructions in the article to the letter, but it certainly didn’t give me the result I wanted. Again, according to the article, · Additional elevation lines can be added to control slope steepness and direction The implication of the above diagram is that if you draw 5 lines and set them at -320”, this will cause a valley that will be 320” deep and the “sides” to this area will gradually slope to this elevation in the area of the five lines. That is not what happened in my case. So, this is one of those cases where I must be missing something very basic – maybe the first few steps I took were wrong, causing the rest of the terrain model to do funny things. I would very much appreciate if someone could tell me specifically what I am doing wrong. Thanks, Tom

David, Thanks for the response. I have reviewed the Knowledge Base and have studied the walkout basement design. The difference between what they are creating and my design is that they have a uniform slope from front to back. The design I am trying to model has a level portion in front of most of the house, then a slope to the road, with a large "cutout" at road level for the driveway. Then I have to add the retaining walls between the level portion and the driveway, not to mention that the driveway also slopes. I am just stumped about how to get started. I'll keep looking in the meantime... Tom

I am modeling the house shown in the photograph below. The main floor of the house sits above the road about 12-15 feet. The driveway is sloped upward a couple of feet from the road to the garage. I want to put in the terrain, but I am having a few problems. I have read the chapters on terrain and watched all the videos, but I can’t figure out how to create the sloped driveway 12 feet below the main terrain perimeter. Another issue that is related is that when I add the road and open the Road Specification dialog box, I don’t see a way to change the elevation of the road. This leads me to believe that the road has to be at the base terrain elevation (i.e., 0”). Is the correct approach to set the overall terrain around the house at -15 feet and then “raise” the terrain for the side yards? So, my main question is this: What are the general steps to create the terrain around this house? Thanks in advance for your help. Tom

Thanks, Eric!

I purchased Home Designer Architectural 2019 in June of 2018. After working with it for a couple of months and reading about the additional features available in Home Designer Pro, I upgraded to Home Designer Pro 2019 in August of 2018. When I upgraded, I did not purchase a backup DVD. I would now like to buy a backup DVD for the Home Designer Pro, but I could not see on your website how to buy it after having purchased the main software. Can you please tell me how I would go about purchasing the backup DVD? Thank you!

Thanks David.

I just downloaded some attic pull-down stairs from 3D Warehouse. There is one model that says the stairs are “animated” and that they open and close by clicking. Another one says it can be shown in the up or down position by opening the layer manager and selecting and de-selecting either “Stairs UP” layer or “Stairs DOWN” layer. These are all .skp files. I’m not familiar with details of 3D modeling, but I was just wondering if there was any combination of keys (e.g., function keys, etc.) or any way to do an end run in HD Pro that would allow me to show one of these stair models in either position, or are these options only available in Sketchup? This would be analogous to how we can show a door open or closed in HD software by selecting “Options” and “Show Open” or “Show Closed”.

Thanks, Eric. I'm not sure how it got turned off - which bothers me because I don't know what I did to turn it off. Anyway, thanks for steering me in the right direction. I did find it in the camera view options after several minutes of looking. Signature is updated. Tom

I recently upgraded to HD Pro and am still learning it. I set the sun angle and time of day and something I did turned off the sun shadows. I've been through the reference manual, but I can't see anything I might have done to turn them off. I'm sure it is something very simple for the more experienced users. Can someone tell me what I did? Sun shadows lost.plan Thanks, Tom

David, Thanks very much for the video. I assume the same would apply to any bonus catalogs and manufacturer catalogs I have downloaded in the past... Tom

I currently have Home Designer Architectural 2019 that I have been using for the past month or so. Over that time, I have generated a nice library of downloaded objects as well as objects and architectural blocks I have made and stored in my User Library. I am now considering upgrading to HD Pro and am concerned about losing my library. When I upgrade, are all the libraries simply moved over to the Pro subdirectory automatically? Should I have any concern about losing anything I currently have in any of my libraries? Thanks, Tom

David, Thank you for the very clear video. It's becoming clearer to me that since I can't do everything in Architectural, I need to start thinking out of the box more. Your approach was a very good one based, I'm sure, on a lot of experience. I very much appreciate your time to help me resolve this. Tom

I am modeling our barn that has a gambrel roof over the right part and a shed roof over the left part. A photo of the actual barn is here (photo 1). I am able to create a gambrel roof over the entire barn, but when I try to get it to stop at the interior wall, I’m not sure how to do it. If I break the walls on the front and rear of the barn at the interior wall intersection and designate the interior wall as a high shed/gable wall as recommended in one of the videos to get a shed roof, I get a very bizarre roof (see photo 2). I am able to get the gambrel roof over the main barn and if I remove the roof over the shed part (smaller room on left), it is looking pretty close (see photo 3), but I can’t figure out how to get the part on the left covered with a shed roof. I have been through all the videos, the roof webinar, the knowledge base, the reference guide, and the tutorials in the users’ guide but haven’t seen any mention of “combined” roofs. Any help would be appreciated. I have attached my file. Barn - 1.plan Questions: 1. Is it possible to model the actual barn in Architectural, or do I need Pro so I can manually generate the roof planes? 2. If it is possible in Architectural, what steps have I omitted or screwed up? Thanks, Tom

Yeah, I wondered if that was something that could only be done in Pro. I can do it one wall at a time. I want the materials list to be accurate. Also, some brick prices are per 1000. As an engineer, I'm able to do the math to convert to square feet, but I just thought it would be nice if the materials list was accurate for the design. Thanks for your help! Tom

Eric, thanks for your response. I apologize for my ignorance, but if I select multiple walls in any view, I don't seem to have the ability to open the wall specification dialog box to change the material. 1. Is there something I'm doing wrong? 2. If you were trying to do this in Architectural, would you do it in plan view or in 3D? Thanks, Tom

If I change the Siding-6 to brick, do I have to do each wall individually? If I change the Siding-6 to brick in the default settings, it doesn't appear to change any existing walls, only future walls that are drawn. Is there a simple way to change the entire exterior of a house and see it reflected in the materials list without redrawing walls?