Browneye

I would love to get some help but now my plan is 31526 KB (well over what is allowed to attach). I have another plan that is no where near as detailed that is 69,750 KB!!!! I would imagine the more detailed a plan (furniture, fixtures, etc) the more file size it would be but sometimes I see my plan file size go up when I haven't done anything. Are your file sizes this large? Any tips to reduce file size?

Ok, now I understand. Thanks. My build is in South Louisiana near Miss.

You said on top of the foundation wall which does not exist in a monolithic slab. The way you worded it confused me. Yes, top of foundation wall but it’s at the bottom of a studded wall. The sill plate (also called the sole plate or bottom plate) is at the bottom of the wall. • Sill plate/sole plate — bottom of the wall, anchored to the foundation; wall studs sit on top of it • Top plate — at the top of the wall, where the ceiling joists or roof trusses rest One nuance: “sill plate” technically refers to the plate that sits directly on the foundation (often pressure-treated and bolted down with anchor bolts), while “sole plate” can refer to any bottom plate of a wall assembly, including interior walls not touching the foundation. In everyday framing talk, though, people often use the terms interchangeably for “the bottom horizontal 2x board of a wall.”

It does appear to be a default item for any foundation. I guess if I'd changed it to 3 1/2" I wouldn't have had to change so many walls. I only have a few 2X6 walls for drainage pipes. Didn't want to completely remove it as I do need sill plates and wasn't sure how much work it would be to add them all back.

Thanks. I have no floor joist or rim joist because I have monolithic slab. At least it seems I have the same definition as you and the software. Its silly that they define this in the foundation vs. letting the software default it to the wall thickness with the option to change it only when you want a sill plate that is different than the wall thickness. The only scenario I can imagine where someone would want option would be if you had an extremely thick interior wall material and wanted to bring the sill plate out past the wall for base board backing.

Just to make sure I am not confusing normal terms with what the software calls a sill plate, I define a sill plate (a.k.a bottom plate) as the wood bottom piece of a wall. In the case of a monolithic slab on grade, the sill plate it treated and is bolted to the slab. There is also usually a sill seal between the bottom plate and the concrete. Typically the bottom plate is the same dimension as the wall being built so 3 1/2" for a 2x4 wall and 5 1/2 for a 2X6 wall. I just checked my 2x4 walls and all show a 5 1/2 sill plate. Shouldn't this be 3 1/2". If I'm correct on all this, maybe I'm expecting too much from the software meaning it should know what size sill plate to put based on the wall thickness? I'm really hoping I'm confused on this because its a pain to go change every single wall that is 2X4.

Thank you Carrie!

Doesn't answer my question. I want to make sure my material list is accurate so I want to know how I specify that the ceiling is sheetrock and its specified in the correct place of the software.

In case my signature no longer shows, I'm using Home Designer Pro 2021. When I click on the materials of a room, I see I've somehow set the Cantilever Underside to a color but then the ceiling finish is also a color. What exactly is "Cantilever Underside" and should this be set to Drywall if that is what I plan to use? I cannot seem to find in the default settings where I changed this. I've looked in Floors and Rooms, Walls, and many other places and cannot find where to set the default. I show in the Structure Dialog in the Room Specification that the Ceiling Finish is 5/8" and I didn't change that so it seems that would be the drywall. The main things I'm trying to figure out is how to set the default ceiling material to drywall and the color for each interior room.

Thanks. My plans say 1" air gap but I guess that means at least 1" because that's the only part of the wall that isn't pre-specified by the material being used. I'll be using 3 5/8" deep brick but of course it all still works out if I adjust the air gap so the total becomes 5 1/2 inches.

I am using Home Designer Pro 2021. I designed my home in the software and then had a professional draw up my plans. Now I want to take the small changes they made and update my plans I built as they made rooms slightly larger or smaller. My problem is that I cannot get their dimensions to match my dimensions. I make all the interior rooms match but then the exterior dimesions don't match. I call them and asked what depth they use for a brick wall thickness. My focus is a 2x4 stud wall with brick. They said their brick ledge is 5 1/2" and the total wall thickness is 9 1/2". They didn't seem too eager to help me understand any more detail than that. I've looked up typical brick depths and see 3 1/2" and 3 5/8 brick depths are normal. Even with a 3 5/8" brick depth, my total wall thickness in the software is only 9 1/16" inch (3 5/8" brick, 1" air gap, 7/16" OSB, 3 1/2" stud, and 1/2" drywall). Question 1 - Why does the software say this wall thickness is 9 1/16" but if you add those figures together, it comes out to 9 1/8" (see attachment). Question 2 - How is a brick ledge considered 5 1/2" (including 7/16" OSB, 1" air gap, and brick)? Assuming 3 5/8" brick, isn't that only 5 5/16"? Where is the other 3/16" coming from? Question 3 - When you look at exterior dimensions of a professional drawing (attached). Are those exterior dimensions actually from the outside of the brick or the outside of slab? Maybe they should be the same but didn't know if some bricklayers use an overhang or something that might be the dimension difference?

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.