DavidJPotter

The wall elevation tool will only display one wall in the room where the camera was created so I would recommend you using the "Full Elevation-Cross Section" camera tool which will show all three spaces at once in elevation. DJP

Here is a You Tube video of a possible solution, already suggested: https://youtu.be/-v-v55-VvbY DJP

I usually just place a 2D CAD circle around the drain of a sink and use a 2D CAD line to a wall switch to indicate a switched garbage disposal. Plan view annotation has been enough for me these last twenty five years. Sometimes I will add a 2D Text item next to the circle using the letters "GD" to further annotate the presence of a garbage disposal. DJP

When you name a space "Deck", it is automatically programmed to have no roof or ceiling. In order to overcome this, you go to the Room Specification Dialog - Structure Tab and mark "Ceiling over this room" and "Roof over this room" check boxes and then rebuild roofs. DJP

No, the entire area of a stairwell should be a single room programmed as "Open Below", the slanted ceiling I suppose would be formed by the underside of a roof plane or planes. DJP

No Home Designer title will import AutoCAD .dwg files, only .dxf files as has been indicated with import properly. DJP

I recommend you contact Tech Support, Monday -Friday, Pacific Time Hours. Your problem is certainly unwanted but in twenty years of personal use, I cannot recall that happening to me. Tech Support is your best bet for a solution. In the mean time you might try uninstalling and reinstalling the program to see if that helps. DJP

If you could share a copy of your plan file others could then look and see what actually could be done. It may simply be the geometry you set for the plan but I would need to see the plan to know. DJP

I have several versions of Home Designer and Chief Architect Premier on my PC that I updated to Windows 10 in July and since then I have had nothing but clear sailing. DJP

That is a feature of Chief Architect Premier in that you can create custom layer names and move objects from one layer to another along with many other useful features. Home Designer Pro is exactly like Chief Premier but with a lot less useful features. DJP

As an exercise I did change an Imperial plan file to Metric and as I postulated after the copy-paste one then has to re set defaults in Metric (this is not done automatically by the software but must be done by the end user). It is a bit of careful, pain staking work but is doable. This includes roof planes which are aberrated by the copy-paste (they must be redone after default settings are repaired). But if you must do this, that is what is required. Also terrain objects are lost in the copy-paste and so would have to be recreated after the copy-paste. It would be nice if Chief Architect Inc could add a routine making this action easier to do but like I said, it can be done, it is just a lot of work for the end user. DJP

I am sorry but I deleted the file, perhaps Eric can share his edited file with you. I wanted to help you to fix the file yourself DJP

Home Designer Pro 2016 should allow this action. In detail what I am referring to is in Pro you can use the "Edit Area" tool to select the entire model all floors and then move the entire model in 1 degree increments (the entire model not just a wing of it) using Pro's "Transform-Replicate tool" that has an input called "rotate" and other behaviors. If you are trying to rotate the home to align with a "North Pointer" it is easier to set the "North Pointer" to the existing house model rather than rotating the house model to align with an arbitrary "North". The same is true for setting a terrain plane that emulates one's property lines (you rotate the property lines [terrain plane] and not the house model and its walls). If you would share your purpose with us, then better advice could then follow as well. You could shift-select just the wing walls and use the "Transform-Replicate" tool to "Rotate" just those selected walls in Home Designer Pro but after rotating those walls, they would then manually have to be realigned and connected to the rest of the house's walls. Rotating the entire model is NOT RECOMMENDED because that action causes a lot of other annoying problems of "off angles" making dimensioning harder to accomplish and other non-optimum situations. You are better off leaving the majority of walls in the classic "north-south" of the plan view screen. DJP

As far as I know (I opened my copy of Suite 2015 and looked) Suite 2015 does not have that capability. DJP

"Does not work" means that you gave up, I mentioned that default settings must be updated in the target plan (that is probably what you missed) or you update those settings after copy-paste but it certainly can be done by the end user (not the software by itself). DJP

I have not tried this myself but it seems to me that if I wanted to do as you do, I would open a blank plan in Metric units (that is something you do when starting a new plan, you choose Imperial or Metric Units for the plan). Then in the blank plan I would set its defaults in metric to match the existing plan to be copied. Then using the "Edit Area" command I would copy-paste each floor from the imperial plan into the metric blank plan, one floor at a time, using the "Reference Floor Display" to realign the floors to each other (Architectural has the command "Edit - paste-hold position"so you should use that). DJP

Such walls which are not bounded by a room dialog can still be adjusted by way of the wall's Wall Poly-line DJP

I did a You Tube video of me messing around on your file which turned out to be a little unusual but interesting (to me at least): https://youtu.be/GD8AwSUAWK4 DJP

It is unclear exactly what you want, as an outcome (what do the walls represent in your example?). What do the walls represent or what is your intention? The results are empiric and speak for themselves. Part of learning how the software works or fails to work can be discovered empirically, the theory as to how they work is contained in your Reference Manual, Users Guide and in various tutorial videos. How the software is programmed by its creators is beyond my purview, I know how to use the software to get a specific result because I have been using and teaching this software to others for over twenty years but that does not mean that I know why it does many things that it does do. DJP

Alan, you uncheck that setting and then manually move the roof plane edge away from the wall (the unwanted result is fully due to the roof plane edge being too close the the surface edge of the exterior wall, unchecking "special snapping" merely allows you to manually move the roof plane edge enough to stop the roof plane intrusion into the wall's outer surfaces). Give that a try before giving up. DJP

I looked for but could not find the command you mentioned in Home Designer Pro. Can you say exactly where it can be found please. DJP PS: Never mind, I did find it in the Reference Manual and subsequently in the Roof Specification Dialog. Thank you for pointing that out as I have been blind to its existence until you pointed it out Kat

One can override 3D object parameters by using the "Control Key" and then drag an edge handle which overrides the objects default behavior (this is not a matter or user error but rather a lack of user knowledge). That is not to say that there are physical limitations built into the software, there are some but there is much one can do within those boundaries. Some of these methods are in the Reference Manual and Users Guide and some of these I have learned by myself or in concert with other users via Home Talk and Chief Talk. I am not sure what you mean by "...beyond three total floors" in that Home Designer software titles are by default limited to three floors (basement-floor 0, first floor-floor 1 and second floor-floor 2). There are other factors that can effect window placement in a clerestory environment like whether or not the space is properly programmed (by you) for a clerestory condition (see Reference Manual for further data). I appreciate the obvious care you have expended to communicate your problems but a screen image capture or plan copy then allows greater clarity of understanding to those who would respond to help. DJP

I would use a shaped soffit (cabinet tools) to emulate-represent the floor-door. I suppose you might find something to download from 3D Warehouse as well but that is up to you. DJP

Here is a You Tube video of me working on your file, I still think you should find and read about parapet walls in the Knowledge Base Help articles on the Home Designer website as well, like Eric suggested. DJP PS: This video excludes the annoying football audio of yesterday's You Tube video (my bad)

With roof editing and roof edicate always make sure that roof edges that are parallel to walls are absolutely parallel and not kinda or sorta parallel using the perpendicular/parallel tool on all manually edited roof edges. Mating edges should always be made using the "join roofs" tool. If you will do that it will reduce close to zero problems like the one you are having. DJP