DavidJPotter

Divide the Porch area into three spaces (one for each porch and the area that is lower than the porches. Program each area to have a "ceiling over this room and roof over this room" on the "Structure Tab", then build roofs. You then use the wall break tool to remove the railing where it is not needed, DJP

There are NO tools in Home Designer Pro for that adjustment, sorry. DJP

In an elevation camera when you click-select the object do you not see a rotate handle??? I do. DJP

There are NO wall piers shown in your posted images that I am familiar with. What I do see is a brick wall with the door set to framing, thus insetting it relative to the surface of the brick. In your image from HD Pro you are showing siding 6 walls which is completely different from your brick veneer image photo. After watching your video, I think rather than trying to make walls do what they are not programmed to do, I would use a custom slab to create "wall piers". This would at least emulate them in-camera views and in plan view, they can be given a similar appearance by using the "Fill Tab" so they look like walls in plan view as well. DJP

Try this symbol made and shared at Chief Talk some years ago: DJP Viga.calibz

In drafting generally whether in AutoCAD, Revit or Chief Premier and Home Designer Pro. One commonly shows a wall typical, elevation-cross section like your image using just 2D elements drawn in HD Pro in a separate plan in plan view. Another way in Chief or HD Pro is to create a back-clipped cross-section view and then add mere 2D filled polylines to represent your rafters and other detailed objects. This is MUCH easier to do that to 3D model all such objects whether in Chief Premier of Home Designer Pro. You need the elevations and exterior views to look correct (but not necessarily perfect to nine decimal points) and details, cross sections, elevations and especially wall details-framing details are done using a combination of 3D and 2D objects. DJP

I believe you can avoid that outcome by separating the large cabinet that encloses the fridge from the drawers. It is unwanted behavior and you should have been able to do what you at first intended, you may want to send this to Tech Support as part of a bug report. My advice is to split the one large cabinet into two cabinets and I will bet that this time, the drawers line up properly. Any software has pre-programmed limitations built into it and I think you just found one. DJP

No this is actually simple in Suite DJP

Leave the bulk of the house floor at the default "Zero inches", then lower just the garage by -56" (Your posted image shows 8 steps to the front porch so I used 7" per step times the number of steps. You then create the Terrain Plane and set its "Building Pad" to a height of 56" (this setting works in the reverse of lowering the garage). When you then build the foundation, set the stem wall height to about 66" to fill in between the floor of the house and the terrain plane. DJP

It did not work, sorry. Keep trying! DJP

Call Chief Architect Customer Service to know for sure. DJP

Set the interior "Finished Ceiling" to 11'. Build roofs at an 11' plate height. once roofs are built, then by way of the Room Specification Dialog - Structure Tab - Finished Ceiling Height, reset the Finished Ceiling to 10'. With "Auto Rebuild Roofs" OFF, the roofs will stay at an eleven-foot plate height but the interior ceiling will remain where you last set it at 10'. If I have understood what you want to do this should work. DJP

Thank you to Eric and Keith for the clarification! DJP

I would like to understand exactly what you are saying here please. DJP

My apologies, I was speaking about an ability that exists only in Chief Architect Premier (I assumed it worked the same in Home Designer - it does not), so in the case of stacked windows and doors with transom windows above them one would then have to manually place the unseen window/door labels DJP

With the windows and door label layers checked "on" stacked door and transom or a window and a transom above the labels start out on top of each other. So all you need to do is to left-click-select a window or door with transom and if you are zoomed in close you will see a tiny dot which is the selected door or window's label. Once selected just drag the label out a little bit to reveal the other stacked object's label in plan view. DJP

Use enlarged "Corbels" from the Library Browser to support your balcony. DJP

Stairs are programmed to be drawn on the level below the deck, you can turn on the "Reference Display" so you can see, in plan view, where the deck is but the key is that the stairs are drawn below the deck to the deck level. DJP

I opened my trial copy of HD Pro 2021 and Eric is right, Window and Door labels cannot be moved by settings or direct manipulation whereas they can in any version of Chief Architect Premier, sorry. You get what you pay for. DJP

The way it is commonly done is how BeachHouse1 described it. I usually place a CAD arc with an arrow on the end and then add the text "to light fixture above or below" as the case may be. That is the way most drafters do this. DJP

see if this helps DJP

I merely thought that you misspelled "Crashing". The only cashing going on is the C:/Documents/Home Designer Pro 2018 Data/Archives where copies of plan and layout files are duplicated and stored as I have already explained. DJP

Not that I know of other than a "Textures" folder found in C:/Documents/Home Designer Pro 2018 Data/Textures but that folder is not for crashing but just a good place to rest your custom material textures. There is also a folder found in C:/Documents/Home Designer Pro 2018 Data/Archives where all copies of plan and layout files you work on are "Archived". This folder is useful in case a plan or layout becomes corrupted, where in some cases a project can be resurrected from this Archives folder ( this folder is also known as an Auto Archive folder). Your best ongoing operation is to manually save every few seconds so when or if a crash occurs, you will only "lose" a few seconds worth of data. Since you have a lot of confidence in your PC and its hardware, I would carefully check and update all software drivers as that is the main candidate as a cause for any crashes. I have not experienced a crash since the year 2005 and that was caused by a bad mouse driver. Very few users are competent and personally responsible enough to care about crash directories (which there are none except as I mentioned above). Texture files are stored in C:/Documents/Home Designer Pro 2018 Data/Textures. All other necessary files that support your plan files are also found in C:/Documents/Home Designer Pro 2018 Data/ and C:/Program Files/Home Designer Pro 2018 (I have no idea how such things are parsed on a Mac or Apple) All material, symbol and other associations are stored in each Plan File. Layout files only contain data manually sent to it from plan files. DJP

I can o ly think of two possibilities: 1. You have a corrupt software driver for your mouse or video card or both 2. Your PC currently does not meet hardware "Minimum Requirements" to open and run your software. DJP

I never, in 24 years have rotated a structure to obtain "Magnetic North"!!! That is what a "North Pointer" is for so you rotate it relative to the house and thus set the proper relative relationship to North and the default location of your structure in plan view. There is NEVER a good reason to rotate a plan for any reason other than to make the plan file harder to work on. Open your "Help" files and then search them for information about the "North Pointer" tool and then do not waste your time on any other Goose Chases no matter how enticing looking. DJP