Arkytek

I purchased and downloaded the "Country Primitives / Farmhouse No.3" only to discover that I cannot use it in my version of Home Designer Pro (2022). Can I get a refund for this purchase? Thanks in advance, Granville Pool teacupfarm@comcast.net Redwood Valley, CA 95470 User Name: "Arkytek"

Waiting for helper so was able to come back to this. Even managed the half-beams at the ends.

I just opened my file today, to grab this picture better showing the dormer windows, and discovered the solution or at least think so. I now see that the "beams" show up in plan view and can be rearranged there. Will work on this later today and report back. Have to actually build things today so can't work on until later.

I did that, Keith, sort of, but have yet to figure out how to precisely control the spacing/positioning. The attempt at ad hoc placement did however make me realize that, if I'm going to have such plant-on beams for real, I'll need to size and space the placement of the two dormers accordingly.

I have created a vaulted ceiling in a kitchen/family room, with plank surface on that ceiling. I would like to add some false beams (plant-ons) that follow the slope, to simulate using 4x10 T-1-11 panels with the joints hidden by the plant-on false beams. I read how to do this more or less with soffits that follow the slope of the ceiling. I even managed to create two that meet each other at the peak, without shooting out through the roof. At least I think so. What I cannot seem to figure out is how to precisely control their placement along the ceiling so they will be precisely 10' from each end of the ceiling of this 30' long room. I want to create two pairs like the ones I have shown here but thought I should learn first how to place them along the length of the room's ceiling.

Rookie65 has the right idea. Just as if I were stacking windows, I can create a shallow niche below a window, with supporting window framing behind the niche. Also I'll mention that not all windows have mounting flanges. We have a Victorian house in town, built in 1891, which certainly has no mounting flanges on any windows!

Thanks David and especially Rookie65. I had thought about this some more, did another search and found a video on using the niche tool. I used it to redo the smaller fake window section and agree it's better that the result I had had earlier. Here's an image of that small one done that way, with the larger one still as before. The process was very tedious but worked reasonably well I think. I used soffits to create mullions and a center muntin to simulate the sash. I also shrank the lower sash of the upper window to nil. All that seems funky now is that remaining upper frame of the niche that sticks outward too much. To get this just right I'd need to make my niche a wee bit deeper but at this stage I'm happy with this result. Now I need to get back to doing real work. Thanks all! --Granville

A bit later it dawned on me that I forgot to post pictures to go with my question. So sorry! Here is the outside view: Since I couldn't mull together four windows in HDPro I turned off all trim and snugged them up together and with the other two that are mulled together. I created the casing with backsplash. Here is the inside view. The lower "window" sections are mirrors. As I said in my earlier post, my quest is to recess those mirror sections to more closely resemble the actual window panes above and in the full-height windows to the left in this image. The added "muntins" like the casings I created with the back splash tool

I created a set of four windows in a balcony wall, looking out the back of the house. Raising the roof of an intersecting wing behind that wall cut into two of those window, requiring them to not reach as far down the wall as the other two. This is for a house we are building for ourselves, in two phases, making design changes as we go along. My wife wants the illusion inside that this set of windows remains uniform across, with the fake lower parts of those shorter windows as mirrors, looking as nearly as possible like sections of the smaller stepped windows above them. I watched a video on how to fake an opening in a wall and thought I could apply it but then realized that my problem is different as I'm trying to modify a wall under the windows, i.e. to make it have a recess under each window, equal to the part that would be there (as in the adjacent windows) if the intersecting roof were not there. I did create mirrors there but while I can create recesses for them in the actual wall, I have yet to come up with a way to do such a recess below a window in Home Designer Pro. Thanks in advance, Granville

Are we talking wood-strip lath, as in days of yore? Use backplash to make the pieces of lath. I used it to create battens for a board & batten siding because the library B&B options have few and unappealing color options. Granville

I look forward to seeing if you get a fix for this. I have also struggled to get wine glasses to appear clear and shiny. My attempts to edit them to help get more clarity nearly made them disappear and still were pretty frosty looking.

I must fervently thank you Eric for all the help, especially as it's on the weekend! I have added roof capping on the flat parts of the parapet (so far just the top and one side bit). Tedious to get it just right but worth the trouble. After a bit of rest and a glass of wine, I'll pull aside the finial from the other wing of the parapet and cap it as well but for now my eyes are tired of staring at my screen. Thanks again. Also thank you for the older thread about using the backsplash to create angled trim, to help another user to create wainscot paneling along a stairway. That's something I'll want to do on this project as well. While I did create such angled trims, using the suggested technique, which did exactly what I (thought I) wanted. I'm sure I'll use that tip to great advantage later on, the other tip about roofing the parapet was the real solution. This all shows how this forum makes the price of the software a right bargain and that really should be emphasized in the sales pitch.

I realized after your last post Eric that one of the problems was that I hadn't created any roof planes over the parapet. It was just a wall sticking up. I added roof planes to the sloped sections of parapet and that fixed that very nicely. It also created the fascia for the top of the sloped sections of the parapet and I can see that to really be complete I'd do the same for the flat sections. Thanks so much! Meanwhile, fixing that somehow also fixed the "board" jutting out from the edge of the parapet's side. Hmm...

Well I thought I'd attached the image:

It took me a bit to find the backsplash tool but I did and it worked as advertised to create those angled trim boards. I was pleased to see that I could even specify their thckness and increase it from 3/4" to 1". When I placed those angled trim boards, however, I found that (for whatever unknown reason) there was a bulge in the left-side sloped parapet wall top surface. When I pulled that out, I got a new problem that no tweaking will now seem to eliminate, namely, that bogus "board" sticking out horizontally from the left edge of the parapet. I already had and still have that top corner of a "wall" that you can see in this image sticking through the main roof plane and that I've tried from every angle to address. Opening the edit dialog on the wall that this protruding corner appears to be a part, from either side, doesn't show the protrusion existing. I also tried to address the "ceiling plane" of that parapet, to create the cap, something it obviously needs and I certainly want to create, but can't see how to do that. Perhaps the problem lies in how I created that parapet wall, by simply pulling up the wall in 3D view.

Okay, I'll try harder to figure out how to use backsplash. I must have missed something. I'll also see if I can figure out how to use ceiling plane for the parapet cap. Thanks. Granville

I am trying to create a parapet wall on a gable end and struggling to figure out a way to make angled (in this case 45 degrees as the roof is 12/12 pitch) trim along the rake edge of this parapet. I managed to make trim for the horizontal parts but so far no manipulation of CAD shapes or anything else I can find seems amenable to being suitably angled and placed flat against the wall. I saw another thread that seemed vaguely related, wherein suggestions of using backsplash or soffits to make such plant-ons (in that case for a Tudor style house). I struck out on those possibilities so am apparently not understanding the suggestions.

These suggestions are terrific, not only for this specific task but as a reminder to be creative within the menus. These "metal" frame doors would have been exactly what I needed for one plan I was developing. If I return to it or similar, I'll look forward to using these tips. Granville

I look forward to seeing any helpful answers for this query as your idea would be quite useful. Granville

Quite disappointed to see this answer about layers. I had previously been doing plans in Autosketch, which does have layers. I was using it because I'm designing a new house to replace my existing one, in more or less the same spot on the ground, except much larger. I had created a detailed plan of the existing house and put it in one layer, then designed a new house, putting it in another layer. This enabled me to better place the plan on the ground and able to turn off the existing house layer, as needed. I was excited to get Chief Architect so I could visualize my various design ideas in 3D, without realizing it came with this unfortunate tradeoff. I also like RonTron's notion of using layers to try different accessory structure ideas. I was in fact gearing up to ask how to put my existing house on a hideable layer but was trying to wait until I'd explored the possibilities sufficiently on my own. I guess I can save my effort for learning other features. Granville

Thanks so much Eric! I really thought I'd set up those defaults before I started but a lot went badly wrong along the way. I'm stumbling along and trying to learn. Your two videos, showing the corrections--and how my mistakes might better have been avoided--are tremendously helpful! I will have to rewatch them a few times to drill this all into my superannuated noggin but promise to learn and move onward and upward, thanks to you! I promise that I was planning to raise the celings upstairs (to nine feet) but although I had done it on a previous plan had forgotten how, without raising the side walls. Again, thanks for showing me the way. Granville

Thanks Eric! Here's the file. Granville NS House 1.102.plan

Thanks Eric. I added that info to my signature. I have watched a lot of the training videos, including on YouTube, some of them multiple times, to make sure I understand. I did search the programs helps extensively and tried several different searches on this forum. The rooms are defined. They go grey when I click on each of them and their room names are displayed. Granville

This is my first post. I've been working with Home Designer Pro 2021 for a couple months and created several designs for our home. I've had lots of problems and mostly worked through them in my own, helped a lot by forum posts and on-line tutorials (thank you!). As I started creating another design concept for our proposed house, I have run into a new-to-me problem that has me stumped. I tried using help and searching this forum but no luck there. In this 2-story house design, the floor (structure and all) will not display, leaving the intersecting walls and doors hanging in the space. All three rooms are defined and have floor and ceiling checked but neither displays in the pictorial 3D views. See image below. The floor and ceiling structures DO display in the 3D framing view. See 2nd image below. I'll keep looking for answers but will also be glad of any suggestions! I hope I can get this problem resolved before moving on to more detail in the design, such as windows, kitchen, and bathrooms, not to mention refined trim details and such. If not, I might have to start over... Thanks in advance, Granville