azdesigner

Hi. I live in Phoenix, and most of the plants in the library won't work in my climate. (I checked the Pro offerings, and none of those are good either). Is there any way I can import a photo of a specific plant I want to use? I'm using Home Designer Architectural 2021. Thanks!

Can anyone tell me why I have a gap like this in my gable wall? I see the gap in the dotted lines, but I don't know what it means. This is a 1 1/2 story, and when I build the roof first with an 18 inch ceiling, the walls are fine. Then when I go back and raise the ceiling height to the default, I get these gaps. You can see there are two other gaps, also. Here's the view from above.

@solver Thanks. I don't know why they are making this so hard. I keep wondering why there isn't an option when you change defaults--a pop-up box that asks if you want to change everything retroactively, or just going forward. It doesn't make sense not to have that option. By the way, how can I learn to make videos like the ones you posted here? I think that could be a good way for me to share my plan with family or with my builder.

@davidstvz Thank you, that was really helpful.

To change trim color, I would imagine that I would go into defaults and choose trim and change the color. That's what I did here, but it didn't work. I chose Defaults>Materials>Walls(Exterior) and then chose a brick from the Library. No change. Then I tried Defaults>Walls>Exterior/Interior Walls and changed the exterior from Stucco 6 to Brick 6. No luck there, either. Is this the wrong way to do it? I feel like I'm following what the Reference Manual says to do.

How do I try out different exterior materials? I have done a lot of work on a plan with a stucco exterior, so I don't want to start over, but I would like to see how it looks in siding or brick. I set my defaults to stucco at the beginning, but when I went back to change the defaults, it doesn't update. I realize some defaults are like this, but I can't figure out how to tell the software to do what I want. The reference manual says, concerning defaults for materials: "Material defaults are dynamic, which means that if you change a particular default material, all objects that are set to use that default will automatically update to use the new material." But the material didn't update when I changed it. Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

Thank you, @solver. That was exactly what I needed!

By temporary dimensions, do you mean ones that are not very accurate? Like a foot or two off? Some of my dimensions are off that much, because I was just eye-balling it when I did the initial drawing, like it said to do in the instructions.

Not sure what you mean by this. Can you explain, please?

I drew it the way you described. As shown in the photo, I started drawing at the blue dot in the bottom left corner, going clockwise. Then when adjusting the lengths, I started again at the bottom left, by the blue dot. The first three walls had end handles and adjusted fine. The area in red is what I'm having problems with. It is 2'5", but I want it 2'. This wall has no end handles. When I enter 2', the wall circled in yellow changes from 7' to 7'5". ( I want it to be 7'.)

I'm starting a new plan. After drawing in the perimeter walls with rough dimensions (as suggested in the user guide), I am going back to make each wall dimension completely accurate. When typing in a new wall length, most of the walls have the "move start" and "move end" arrows but a few don't. Why? Without those buttons, the wall I'm working on is resizing the wrong direction and messing up the whole plan. I read through the reference manual, in addition to the user manual, and can't find anything that explains this. Can anyone help?

@DavidJPotter Wow,I can't thank you enough! That was perfect!

@solver Could you please explain a little more? I'm not sure I get it.

@solver, thank you. I'm guessing that I would need Pro to make the slight flare at the gable eaves? Or could I do it in Architectural?

My exterior inspiration is this photo of an old house plan from the 20's or 30's. Might not be possible to do it fully in Architectural, but maybe I could get close? I'm wondering how to create the gable over the front door. Also, looking for opinions here.....does it look like the upstairs half-story roof is sitting on a short wall (maybe 2 feet?) instead of resting on top of the ground floor walls? The distance between the top of the ground floor windows and the bottom edge of the roof seems larger than normal to me.

Thank you, @solver

When I opened up Home Designer Architectural today, I saw that the icons in the bottom left corner (such as the icon to switch from hip to gable roof) are partially hidden, as in being too far down the page. I can only see the very tops of the icons, and the rest is hidden behind the Microsoft tool bar (or whatever that is called with the Windows start button and search bar). It looks just like a web page where you need to scroll down, but of course, that's not the situation. Any idea what could have happened? Helena Phoenix

Darkhorse41, thanks so much for your help.

Thanks for your help, everyone. Just wondering, can I reply to a specific comment, or does it all go in the main thread? DavidJPotter, is there a video that shows how to do what you describe? Darkhorse 41, thank you for sharing that download. Any tips for applying it to the bumpout? How would I remove the auto-generated roof for the bumpout so that I can install the roof?

I can't find a help topic to show me how to do a small roof over a box window, like in the photo attached. Does anyone know of an article or video that would explain this? (I'm trying to do it over a bumpout, not a true box window.) Thanks. Helena Home Designer Architectural 2021 Phoenix

Thanks for your response. I tried doing it with a simple rectangle, and it worked fine, so I think I'm doing it correctly. So I'm guessing that I'm doing something wrong with the more complex design of my actual house plan, which looks like a series of rectangles connected together. Could it be that I have to do create the second floor at the beginning? I spent a lot of time designing the first floor and then tried to build the second floor. Perhaps I should have created the second floor right away? Helena Home Designer Architectural 2021 Phoenix

Hi, first time posting, so I hope I do it right. I'm using Home Designer Architectural 2021. I read the article "Automatically Building a One and a Half Story Roof", which is what I want to do, setting my second floor walls at 24 inches and then later changing them back to the default, as directed. The "half" story builds just fine. However, when I look at the inside using the camera view, there are no knee walls as shown in the example. And the outside shows no difference, either, with the roof sitting on the 1st floor walls instead of the knee walls. Any ideas what I might be doing wrong? HHart Home Designer Architectural 2021