wazzubrad

Mick, Thanks for that suggestion, I was able to clean up the beams. Yes, I purchased X7. I think for the layout templates and details alone it will be worth it for me and the plan print out size is restricted in HD Pro. I am learning with this roof issue I created and the varying plate heights, that I have much more to learn. I think I am the problem here and unfortunately wasting peoples time! Onwards though. I am having a lot of fun figuring this out. -Brad

Mick, Regarding not using the open to below method, this is what I sent to technical support; "When using the open to below method for creating non-default ceiling heights, the software leaves "beams" along the ceiling area of the adjoining rooms. I have attached the plans below in a .zip file and also a .jpg of the area on the plan. It would also be helpful to add in the room specification box, an option to set the ceiling height at the desired height for open to below. Currently, when trying to set a non-default (I have the default set at 9'-0") ceiling height of 11'-0", I set the open to below ceiling height on the 2nd level to 2-0" to increase the ceiling height to what should make the total height 11'0". But, this doesn't get me to 11'-0", it sets the height at 12'-31/8". It is probably taking into consideration the subfloor height of the 2nd level, which is not present, but calculated. As a work around, I can calculate the difference of these measurements and then dial it in to 11'-0" to get the proper height." I attached the plan here if anyone is interested in taking a look. Thanks Mick, -Brad Our House4 - Open to below.zip

solver - I finished the plan using your suggestions of just the necessary walls, and I think I found the problem with the roof blowing through the 2nd level walls. The roof built perfectly after building just the necessary walls like solver suggested. After getting the roof built without my issue, I was screwing around and manually editing the roof but screwed something up so I had to delete the roof. On this plan, I have 2nd level exterior walls that are 6-1/2" thick, and they bear on main level interior walls that are 4-1/2" thick. I wanted to increase the wall thickness of the main level 4-1/2" bearing walls to 6-1/2" so they would align with those 2nd level exterior walls. I did this one wall at a time and would then rebuild the roof. The first wall I edited is shown in the attached photo. When I change this wall to 6-1/2" and rebuild the roof, the roof blows the walls on the 2nd level. When I change it back to 4-1/2" and rebuild, the roof builds correctly. Weird. I didn't continue working to see if resizing the other walls continued the issue or not. I attached the plan I was working on along with the photo. Thanks guys for all your help. I will forward this info to the support ticket. -Brad Our House4.plan

DJP - those are great videos, thank you.

I recently purchased Home Designer Pro and am learning how to use it. For the most part, I love it and I am having a lot of fun. I am a home builder but my son is sick so I have stepped away from work until we can get him up and going again. I am interested in designing a home for our family and am using HD Pro to put together a permit set of plans. I would also like to start putting together a few other plans to market for future Spec's and also like the idea of being to customize my own plans and make changes as needed, as my time will most assuredly not allow! So far it seems that I can accomplish everything I need to get this done. But, I am constantly second guessing whether it would be better to bite the bullet and purchase CA Premier before I get any further along. I noticed in the trial version of CA Premier, that there are default views to send my plans to the Layout. Which is inconveniently missing from HD Pro. How to you feel about this? Is it worth the price of the upgrade? Thank you for your input! -Brad

Thanks solver. I will give that a shot.

Eric, I have tried to draw the plans according to the things I learned using suggestions in this thread, video tutorials, and other threads. I was able to eliminate the errors that were given when auto building the roof.

Eric, I like your suggestion. I have actually started completely over 3x and I received the same result.

Hey guys, below is an update from CA support. I recently completed another attempt at building this plan to see what I could to to fix the roof issue and the issue is still present. I made darn sure the default settings were correct and then double checked all ceiling heights. For some reason that roof section wants to blow right through my walls on the 2nd level and into the living space. It is weird that the roof only blows through the walls on one half of the house on the 2nd level. Unfortunately, using the open to below method creates more issues for me than it solves. From vertical walls not joining properly and showing OSB, to the creation of ceiling "beams" at adjoining rooms where I have created non-default ceiling heights, base trim on the walls. I realize some of these are fixable but apart from the roof extending into the living space on the 2nd level, the desired result of simply specifying ceiling heights in the room specifications works magnificently. And at this point, for some reason, I am feeling like the roof issue might not be related to various ceiling heights anyways. I wish I could provide more detailed information on the issue, but I am short on time. I haven't heard anything back from CA on their submission to the software engineers. Thank you for your help, -Brad - Support Answer -Leanne S. Monday, Feb 23, 2015 - 03:59 PM PST Hello Bill, Yes, you will need to manually remove the base molding so it isn't displayed in the Open Below room. This is expected and normal behavior at this time, but we would be happy to forward a feature request to our Development team to consider having a default setting specifically for the Open Below room type so that base moldings for rooms defined using that type wouldn't have to have any moldings applied by default. You may want to check in to purchasing and scheduling some one-on-one time with a certified Trainer, if you need more detailed help learning how to create the plan. Information on this service can be located on the website at: http://www.chiefarchitect.com/training/personal-training.html Of course, if you run in to a new issue, please feel free to start a new ticket and we'll do our best to get you pointed in the right direction, even if it does end up to be more Training related than technical in nature. Thank you.

Hey guys, I followed your suggestion and submitted the plan to technical support. Here is the response; Leanne S. Monday, Feb 23, 2015 - 11:57 AM PST Hello Brad, There are some excellent hints in the thread on what needs to be changed in order to have the roof automatically generate correctly. The recommendation to go ahead and use the "Reset to Defaults" tool to restore the Ceiling Heights for Floor 1 back to their default value is the best place to start. Then follow the instructions to have rooms created on Floor 2 that are "Open Below," as opposed to raising an individual room's Ceiling Height to be that of the second story. If you do not want to do this, then you can also manually go ahead and modify the automatically generated roof planes on Floor 1 that are not needed, or delete the roof completely and create it manually, in order for Floor 2 to display the walls. It would be nice, however, if the program handled this specific scenario better in its existing state, so we have gone ahead and submitted a request to our Development team of software engineers to look in to this and see if there is a better way that they can handle the automatic roof generation for this file. Thank you.

Joann, I opted not to redraw that way as I thought it would be an unconventional way (I say unconventional, but I really am not the person to deem this unconventional!) to draw a plan with varying plate heights. I also didn't want to create any more issues than I had already created by using a different method. It sounds like your suggestion would be the way that both you and Kbird would have drawn this type of plan up. Is that correct?

Kbird, you are correct on the stud dimensions. I had to go measure one to prove it to myself. Kind of embarrassing to admit that I had that wrong. The issue presented itself again after a manual roof edit went bad and I needed to delete the roof and rebuild. After rebuilding, the old issue was back again. So I checked all ceiling heights again to make sure everything was where I wanted it and nothing changed there. Then I noticed that one of the entry column walls was then protruding through the newly rebuilt roof so I lowered back down to the ceiling plane. Then deleted the roof and rebuilt it. It was back to good again. So other than that column wall, I really don't know what causing these issues. I am going to try building that entry porch roof as you have suggested above. Thanks again, -Brad

DJP - That video was fantastic! I learned a lot more than just fixing the roof by paying attention to how you were moving around in the plan, Shift + F6 I love it! And It fixed my issue so thank you. Ok, so I had originally set my default room heights for each level at 109-1/8" rough for a 9' plate height and typical wall framing and the same for the 2nd level except I wanted an 8' plate height so it was set to 97-1/8". When I adjusted the default setting height to 108" and 96" and rebuilt the roof, I got the same result as in your video. Perfect. On the entry "porch" columns I hadn't set the correct terrain elevation yet to bring the ground up to the slab elevation so that should hopefully take care of that issue. For the interior entry area, I wanted a plate height of 144" so that is why that roof pops up above the porch roof. I manually edited it as you suggested and it cleaned that area up very nicely. You mentioned somewhere around the 10min mark of the video that some things just need to be cleaned up. My question is, those areas are mostly the exterior walls that are on the 2nd level were OSB or stud ends are showing though. How do you edit those areas to show the designated exterior material? Some of those areas are Int/Int walls on the lst level and to change to Int/Ext on the 2nd level I haven't figured out yet. Yes persistence is key, my goal is to be proficient enough with the software to build my own plans. Whether I am efficient enough though is to be determined! Thanks again for taking the time to show me this. I am up an running again! -Brad

Kbird - thanks for the suggestions. I will give those a shot. Didn't think about the reprecussions of the slab rm. I did check the absolute elevation in there and it matches the rest of level 1, but maybe something else in there is causing the issue. I do like the idea of making all rooms in level 1 same height and then opening things up with the open to below idea. Will give it a shot. I didn't know CA was based up there until after I purchased the software.

I appreciate everyone's help, but I am lost on it too, and about fed up!