DavidJPotter

Terrain, as a feature was added around the year 2,000 and is always treated as an add on feature that you set relative to the structure's floor height (zero inches) of the first floor. You do this by opening the "Terrain Specification Dialog - Building Pad", you commonly un-check "Automatic" so you can then raise or lower the terrain to the model to obtain the correct orientation of the terrain to the building. Commonly the lowest point of the front elevation is at the bottom of the Garage door (which is commonly just above the grade). Your posted image appears to be on a rather slanted terrain lot but usually the front of the lot, next to the garage and front door will be flattened a bit to make ingress and egress easier so you may have to flatten the terrain a bit just at the front and then adjust the terrain to fit the house (the same thing contractors do with bulldozers and other earth moving equipment on a building site. DJP

Is this what you are trying to do? DJP

The most likely, possible answer is that if the ceiling heights are different, one space to the other in your posted image, setting those actual heights would produce what you wish automatically but I am just guessing because you have not shown us what you outcome should look like in an elevation view. Are the ceiling heights different? DJP

What you are looking for is in the "Terrain Specification Dialog - Show terrain under structure check box" please take a look. DJP

Eric has been using this software for at least 5 years and me almost 25 years, take a deep breath and keep going. DJP

You can either manually move the roof system over the front of the house by raising the ceiling height and rebuild roof (you would raise the ceiling height of the porch as well or you can manually raise the porch roof and tie it into the main home manually which would cause it to tie in further up roof as well. It is a matter of what you are willing to do and what the client wants. DJP

DJP

Without a copy of your plan and a photo of the front elevation of this home, know one could otherwise than guess. Do you have an image of that the front of the home is supposed to look like? Share it please. DJP

Without a copy of your plan and a photo of the front elevation of this home, know one could otherwise than guess. Do you have an image of that the front of the home is supposed to look like? Share it please. DJP

For Hip roofs None Are Needed!!! Just set your ceiling heights where you need roofs at varying heights. Home Designer software and Chief Premier both create hip roofs by default! DJP

Were I you, I would use a glass wall for the shower walls. Change the material for a glass wall from glass to glass block. Also change the thickness of the glass wall to the thickness of Glass block. Then using the Tri Color icon (Adjust Material properties tool) adjust the "Transparency" property of glass block to suit or emulate your actual glass block. DJP

That is an extremely simple hip roof system which one should be able to autogenerate, provided that the settings that YOU input are correct. It should take less than five minutes to do after you learn how and where and what the settings are designed to do, no manual editing, and no roof polylines. DJP PS: thank you for making me study and find out what "Roof Polylines" are for and how they are to be used. Now that I understand how they work, I believe I was right in the first place to not bother to learn them since I already knew how to get auto roofs and manual roofs. Roof polylines are for creating asymmetric roof systems which I do not favor and can do anyways using manual tools.

DJP

Attached are the two pages about "Roof Polyline" how to use, etc , once I read what the tool does I again decided that I do not need it since I have already learned how to manually edit and create roofs. You be the judge. It is only two pages of the whole 2,000 plus pages of the Reference Manual, take a look please. DJP Roof Polylines Section.pdf

You can do as you wish (I know I do). I have been using and teaching this software for about 25 years. They added the Roof Polylines tool about ten years ago. By that time I already knew how to set up for auto-roof generation using ceiling heights, Wall Specification Dialog - Roof Tab settings and using the gable line tool, and I already knew how to manually edit and build roof systems, so I never bothered to study that tool or use it. That does not mean that if one bothered to carefully read its documentation in the Reference Manual and then practice using that tool that they could not expect to get good results. I often help new users straighten out their plan files and roof system and of course the FIRST thing I delete, once found, is the roof polylines that are always 100% the cause of the new users being able to get a desired product. You and I both are free to do as we wish. The common denominator of New User troubles is lack of actual study, followed by practice to verify that they now understand what they are doing and how to do it. Most new users just guess and hope for the best and the usual outcome is pleading questions here and unwanted results. Whatever you do, please study a tool, practice using that tool until you are certain you understand how to use it before you inflict its use on your plan file (create test plans to use for study and practice.) I am being honest with you, please be honest with yourself. DJP

Generally, you can use railing symbols from the Library Browser to emulate roof railings. To answer any other way, anyone would need to know what software application (Suite, Architectural, HD Pro etc) and the year you bought it (2021, 2020, 2019, 2018 etc) and to know more exactly, in detail, exactly the look you are going for. DJP

Just keep in mind that "flat regions" are only used where you need a flat space, like around a house or playground. Most of the time you simply want a relative change or gradient and that is always produced between two terrain lines or splines, set to differing values and to never place those lines or splines too close to each other. For abrupt changes or drops one uses a "Terrain Break". When terrain objects are too close or they cross each other causes "bazaaro world" every time. DJP

DJP

Well, you did not say exactly which Home Designer product you have or its version, so I tried it in Suite 2021 and then X12, I hope you get a better idea of how to work with Terrain from my efforts to help: Keep it simple and let it flow DJP