MississippiMims

After completing a recent house plan, I went back and changed a couple of walls to foundation walls so they will have a footing under them. When I did this, the footing lines showed up in the floorplan but not in the foundation plan. Is there a setting to change this?

I ran into this problem not too long ago. What I discovered was that my contractors actually preferred the measurements to go to the outside of the slab including the brick ledge. In my area (North Mississippi) the contractors I use a pre-built brick box that attaches inside the slab formwork. They were having to do add the brick box dimension to the plan dimensions when forming the slab. After talking to one of my contractors I started doing my plans to include the brick box therefor saving them a step on site. The problem then was that one contractor uses a 5" brick box and others use a 6". This required me being able to control the brick ledge dimension. The solution, which Eric explained very well, was to go into the wall set up and change the air pocket dimension until the brick and air pocket together equaled whatever dimension I want the brick ledge to be. If I know what contractor I'm using for a particular job, I will draw the plans to match his brick box. If I don't know, or the homeowner has someone they want to use, I am careful to make a note on the foundation plan that states what size brick ledge I am using. Look back in my last few posts to find Eric's tutorial on this process.

Excellent tutorial Eric. Thank you.

I tried changing the overall wall thickness but the slab dimensions where unaffected. The only thing I'm trying to accomplish is getting my overall slab dimensions to an even measurement. My concrete guy has 6" boxes that he uses to form the brick ledge. If a wall's overall length is 20', I would like for the slab dimension to be 21'.

Thank you Eric. My original exterior wall was checked "no room definition". I will now attempt to work on the wall definition to change my brick ledge. Wes

Thank you David. I was able to place my walls following your instructions. I don't think that the program includes the new space in the overall square footage. Is there any way to accomplish that? I notice the program will not let me select the room. On a side note - is there any way to set the brick ledge on the slab to an even 6"? Richards.plan

I'm trying to add a bonus room over an attached garage without changing the roof structure. One end will be a gable wall and the other will separate the room from attic space. The two side walls will be four or five feet knee walls depending on where they intersect the roof. I have tried to attach my file but it keeps giving me an "error 200". Does anyone know of a tutorial?

With object snaps off, I discovered that when I placed a dimension on a wall and then tried to place a dimension on an adjacent wall, the new dimension would snap to the previous dimension point. Even though the original dimension would be from outside of one wall to the outside of another, it might not necessarily be on the corner. If I had not placed the original dimension point perfectly on the corner, it would throw my second dimension off by as much as 1/2". I found success by zooming in really close for precise placement. I also had to learn that I could zoom out and back in while holding the mouse.

Does anyone know how to turn off dimension snaps. I'm trying to dimension my slab to the exterior walls. The auto dimensions snap to the edge of the brick ledge. When I try to do the dimensions manually, the program is constantly snapping to places I don't want or inexplicably adds 1/2" to my dimension. How can I place dimensions with no snaps?

Thanks for the advise. I'll give it a try.

I am trying to build a small covered porch or stoop in the area in front of the front door of my plan. When I try to add a room using invisible rails it wont incorporate a slab. When I try adding an invisible wall, the slab keeps the existing brick ledge instead of incorporating with the new room. I also would like to bring the porch out a foot or two from the front bedroom wall as an accent. I would like some advise on how to make the roof extend from the ridge of the garage structure to cover the new porch.

Actually just tried to save a PDF of my layouts in this size to send to my printer and noticed this problem. Does this mean that I wasted my time setting up a 24x36 layout sheet and now must set up an 11x17 sheet? Thank you for the heads up.

Ok. Thank you.

So this is basically saving a blank copy of the layout and then opening that blank copy when I need that paper size?

I'm creating a 24" x 36" layout and when I changed the paper size the graphics did not change with it. I have already resized the graphics to match the paper size and would now like to save that as a template to have the next time I need to use this paper size. I searched the Knowledge Base and found a tutorial that said to go to File - Templates - something. I'm using Home Designer Pro '19 and there is no "template" option under the file tab. Any suggestions?

While I try that I was also wondering if there is a way to make columns and piers show up in an overlay. It will make it easier to line them up for load transfer.

I did. I tried both the Auto Dormer tool as well as the Auto Floating dormer tool. I finally saved a second copy of my project and deleted walls until the dormer would place and used that copy for elevations showing the aesthetic dormers.

Thank you for your response. There are two center dormers that the client wanted to add simply for aesthetics without changing the second floor plan. If this is a dormer that simply sits on the roof structure, without an opening in the roof, is there a way to place one independent from interior wall conditions?

My client wants to add two dormers for aesthetics only. They do not want to change the interior walls so these will be true floating dormers as in the structure will be resting on the roof plane alone with no opening in the roof plane. When I try to place a floating dormer, I get the warning about intersecting other walls. Is there a way to add the dormers regardless of interior walls?