Browneye

FYI - I was just watching a video on YouTube by David and noticed one issue I had. I had post to ceiling instead of post to beam. That fixed the issue in perspective view but the beam still does not show up in framing view. Any chance there is an option to show that beam in framing view?

I'm using Homedesigner Pro 2021 with Windows 11. I'm designing a backyard shed with a porch that I will build myself. I will need a permit and the city wants to see some plans. I'd also like to follow the plans myself of course. One layout I wanted to show them and have for myself is the framing perspective. When I show framing perspective over the roof, I see a problem. There is no header above the porch. Now I'm no carpenter but I'm pretty sure this framing won't hold as there is no header on the bottom side of the porch roof to transfer load to the posts. I assume this could be in the way I told the software to build the porch but not sure. Is this just a limitation of the software or is there a different way to tell the software how to build (what I guess is an attic wall) so it has a proper header? 16x24 Shed 20240204.plan

Thanks Rookie. That makes sense.

Thanks. I watched the entire video but it did not answer my question.

When placing a cabinet in home designer, is it necessary to move it say 1" from a wall to ensure the doors and drawers open easily or do you butt them right up against the wall? I think I'm overdoing things by always putting 1" on each side of a row of cabinets between the last cabinet (top or bottom) when they butt up against a wall. What about things like a refrigerator and washer/dryer? I'm leaving a 2" space on each side of those items to make sure doors open easily and there is air movement around them.

Thank you so much David. I'll look into these solutions.

By the way, the problem areas are both in the area of the walkway to the garage.

I was able to zip the file. Farmhouse - Test.zip

Thank you David. I'll try your suggestions. I'm not sure why but my plan file size is getting out of control. I performed a simple modification and it went from 22MB to 44MB. Seems the limit for uploading is 14MB.

I have two places in my foundation that are raised and can't seem to get rid of them. I realize you may not be able to help without the plan itself but unfortunately, my plan is now too large to upload here. If there is a way to reduce the size for uploading I'm all ears. I've tried playing around with footings but only the lower part below the foundation raises and lowers. I tried moving foundation walls but then I lose my room definition. The walkway where they are raised is part of a porch that has a -3" floor.

Thanks for your help. I was hoping there was some setting or feature I accidentally added or removed for it not to work on this plan. I thought at first it was because I had checked square eaves instead of plumb but tried to fix that and it still didn't work.

I need a gable roof line on the top front of the house and I thought using the tool would be easier than modifying the roof manually since I'm still learning. The tool is supposed to be the same but it just won't work on my plan now that I've upgraded to pro. If I build a simple 4 wall plan, it works so I guess I have something broken in my plan or don't understand what new features may be causing it not to work.

I decided to upgrade to pro today. Now I can't seem to get the gable roof line tool to work at all. The feeling of the tool is obviously different. I can see the gable roof line I draw and then I click the roof tool with rebuild planes, retain manually drawn roof planes, and retrain manually edited automatic roof planes checked. Then click ok and nothing happens. I've played around with how far or near I draw the gable roof line to the roof line and the wall and still nothing. I watched videos and searched for issues and find nothing. Is there some setting that may be defaulted on pro that causes this problem? I thought maybe I had a special display turned off but even in the perspective view, the gable roof line is not working. I also made a completely new plan by just building 4 walls and then the tool worked but is not working on the attached. Any help is much appreciated. Farmhouse.plan

Thank you solver. The issue with your suggestion is that we have been looking at plans for 10 years now and this plan is the closest thing to what we want to build as our retirement home. Not even other plans from the same architect come close. We love the symmetry, layout, back porch, and several other features/specs. We will be detaching the garage and pushing it out back and to the side a little more, rearranging the kitchen, and some other things. These design changes were the whole reason for purchasing Chief Architect. The plan is to attempt to build it in CA but only use our plan for the rough ideas to give to the architect we choose along with the CAD we purchase. I will look at the link you posted. We are just trying to do what we can to make 100% sure this is what we want to do before purchasing the CAD. Of course once you start digging into CA and the plan, you want everything to look as good as it can be.

Thank you so much David. Now I know I was not doing something wrong. I might need to bite the bullet and purchase Pro because that roof problem has been bugging me for a week.

I'm just looking at the floor plan, pictures, and elevation drawings from a webpage and doing it myself. This is my first time using plan design software so we can see if we even want to purchase the CAD from the webpage (architecturaldesigns.com). It seems to me that one side of the bad ridge is using both correct default ceiling heights because the base is the same and the pitches are the same. I think the problem is the software is somehow assuming the gable roof eave which is behind and perpendicular to the ridge needs to carry down. The ridge is very close to the perpendicular wall behind it. I'm not planning on doing many home designs so I am trying to avoid paying for Pro just to fix the roof if someone knew something simple I'm missing that could fix it.

Also, if it helps, this is what the full front elevation should look like eventually. Once exception is the part on the top left that is an above carport bonus jutting out. I'm not adding that as I'm modifying for a detached garage. I haven't added the gable roof line in the middle of the top section yet. Also, I've reversed the plan.

Thank you David. If you don't mind, I want to restate what you said in my own words to confirm my understanding. Set the finished ceiling height default and build all rooms at that height for a uniform fascia. Build the roof Turn off Auto Build roofs Change the heights of the ceilings as needed.

Sorry, should have thought of that. I'm attaching it now. By the way, you will see the very strange things I did for the right side gable roof to generate that is above the rightmost hip roof. It is still not the way it should be either. The gable on the right side should be about a foot closer to the (left/right) center of the house. Farmhouse.plan

I am using Architectural so I do not have the option of manual roof design. I have a gable ridge that is very near the outside of another gable wall. Both hips have 12" slope. It seems one top of the gable is taking on the overhange of the side of the house and one is stopping at the side of the house. I'm including pictures of what it looks like in my design and what it should look like. Any suggestions on how to fix this?

Thank you. What exact defaults for floors do you mean? I see Floor/Ceiling Platform, Floor Levels, and Room Types under Floors and Rooms under Default Settings.

I am trying to determine exactly which settings to change in each room for the ceiling height. I've always just measured from floor to ceiling but in this software things are much more detailed. When I open a room's room specification window and go to structure, there are no measurements that would be exact. For example, there is no measurement exactly at 108" for a 9' ceiling. The closest measurements are Ceiling under absolute measurements, Rough Ceiling under relative heights, and Finished Ceiling under relative heights. Which field would I change to go to a 10' ceiling and what would be the exact measurement to put in there? I saw another post to just add 1' but which one should I add it to? Also, I am very interested to know why no measurements are exactly 108" or 120". I could understand why floor material thickness and ceiling drywall thickness would be excluded (which seems to be the rough ceiling height) but even that is not exact. No combination of including or excluding flooring or ceiling thickness gets you to the exact 108" or 120".