stpete111

Thank you so much JoAnn!!!

Oh my gosh that's amazing work, JoAnn!, Very nicely done! Yes, please do upload the Plan I would still greatly appreciate it!!

JoAnn, I hope you didn't put a whole bunch of time into this as of yet. The entire reason I've been doing this is to start with a reproduction of my home before starting a remodeling process - we wanted to use the software to aid in ideas. We very much by chance met an Architect yesterday at a birthday party our kids were at. We really hit it off and he is now going to be working with us in exchange for a good meal and some good craft beers I shared my experience with HDS and this forum and he was glad to hear of forum of helpful folks like this being available. Thanks again very much, Mick and JoAnn for all your help, you've been great. JoAnn, I'm still willing to try and figure out how we can get you onto a better computer...

Yes the weather down here in New Orleans has been horrendous as of late!

So all we need is a pc that can run windows 7 under normal load, right?

Ok see attachments. Let me know if this is helpful detail or confusing overkill! Note that I identify the house as 3 sections - Left section, center, and right. Hoping those identifiers are fairly obvious. Be sure to see the actual names of the files as I've tried to make them as descriptive as possible. (And yep there's a patio in the rear of the left section adding to the complex roof, but I honestly could care less about that patio's existence in the software model)

Ok understood on the knee walls, however those knee walls worked quite well as exterior walls before I started to get into the madness of the wrapped roof. The second section of the house (middle section) was the one I actually had working pretty well! Anyway, understood on the confusion - stay tuned, detailed diagram with arrows and fun stuff like that on its way...

So just in case this is helpful, I wanted to take a picture of the inside of the room that has the knee walls. Sometimes helps to visualize from the inside.

So it's just an older hardware problem? Wow that is 100% a problem I can solve. I have more pc parts here than I know what to do with...

Thanks again, Mick, I really appreciate any input you may have. @JoAnn, are your installation issues computer-related or Home Designer software-related? Now we're getting into an area I'm actually good at - I'm in IT support. Let me know if I can help with any issues that are related to general computer problems.

Good point for sure, Mick. I'll likely upgrade to Architectural with that said.

These two errors here (attached) are the root of my issues w/o a doubt. The last attachment is the 2D of the FULL upstairs. Note the highlighted knee walls, something you guys haven't had to deal with up until this point. These guys are causing issues. I'm going ahead and attaching my real plan with the full house, in case anyone decides they want a challenge this weekend. If no one touches it at all, I totally understand and I don't expect it at all. The first plan has JoAnn's setting applied to the upstairs at this point - therefore this is basing the roof on the 2nd floor walls, whereas Mick's approach bases it on the 1st story walls. The other one is before I applied any of JoAnn's settings, maybe better off than the first one. Hope you two have a great weekend! Avron1-2 Roof JoAnn Settings 1.1.plan Avron1-2 Roof TestF.plan

@stpete: if you buy HDA you get the money you spent on Suite back as an instant rebate , so you lose nothing by upgrading in the same year..... M. Agreed that at the end of the day I've only spent a total of $200 on Architectural, which is what it costs to a new user, but I was 1.) curious if the additional $100 that I have to spend gets me $100 more worth of features 2.) is there a discount for upgrades such that if you've bought a lower-tier product, then decide to upgrade to a higher one, they will charge you less of the differential amount as a discount (e.g you buy Suite for $99, decide you want Arch, you can upgrade to Arch for say, an additional $75 instead of an additional $99). I don't think CA would do this though, b/c ppl who want Arch from the start would just go buy Suite first then use the discount upgrade to get Arch. Anyway, I'm getting off topic - and if I'm going to upgrade, I would want to go all the way to Pro to really notice the difference in features. That's not something I can afford right now unfortunately.

Good morning - sorry about the delayed response, I was out-of-pocket all day yesterday. Attached as requested. You can now see the entire 1st floor of my plan.

This is what my mess looks like after applying JoAnn's settings. Sorry, all I can do is laugh... I suck at this!

This may be one of my problems. I get this error when I try to change the most far right room in our left section of the house to the Structure settings reflected in JoAnn's model. One thing you guys haven't had to deal with are the knee walls I have in the middle section of the house... another logical plus for uploading the plan I'm actually working on

I really appreciate your willingness to keep looking at this with me. Should I upload my real plan? I don't know why there would be any other difference than the rest of the house being attached to the right (there's one more section that's not in my original pic) but trying to apply you and JoAnn's settings is not giving me the right results. If I were to upload my plan, please tell me what the Structure settings (ceiling heights) should be for both floors of the section in question - I will apply that to each individual room so you don't have to do that tedious part. If you've already started on your own model or just don't want to get involved with my mess, no worries at all.

Got it. Please note that I do read every word of you and Jo Ann's posts and try to apply the settings and/or at least understand them. If it seems like I ignored or missed something you said in a prior post, it simply means I tried applying that setting in my real plan, and I ended up worse off for some reason. I'm starting to think I should just upload my real plan...

Ok I see, well Mick is right, you are very good at coming up with creative workarounds to get the right results in this software. I wish I could just afford Pro, but alas. Does Chief Architect ever run discounts on upgrades?

Quick question - anyone know why my attic walls look like wood like this, while you all's is correctly the siding? Thanks.

Thanks again JoAnn, 1. Oh, actually I've been having to change ceiling heights via individual room this whole time anyway - it's definitely time-consuming but I'm used to it. Small price to pay for getting this right. 2. Ok I will take a look and consider the upgrade So I'm looking at your plan now in Architectural trial - I see you did two interior walls for the outside walls? And did you build the walls of the dormers manually? Just trying to determine exactly what I'm doing in Suite...

JoAnn, slight sidebar here - I'm looking at the comparison matrix of Architectural vs Suite to see if it's worth me spending the extra $100 to upgrade. It really seems the main difference is the additional templates and library items in Architectural. Does that sound right?

Thank you for this additional effort, Mick. I am in fact having some trouble translating your settings in your attached plan to my real plan (the one that includes the rest of the house, not the example I uploaded). I'm not yet sure why this is, but I am continuing to tweak to see if I can figure it out. I actually was able to open your plan in Suite - it just gave me a warning message basically saying "Modifications may be limited by the person who created this plan." So I started trying to transfer what you have in your settings to my real plan. My main issue is the back wall (the issue most assuredly being caused by that dishwasher area you speak of. I did what you suggested in my real plan, but the back part of the roof won't match the first part. So I know, now I'm wondering why I didn't just upload my real plan to begin with... DOH! Ok so right now I'm going to go grab the Trial of Architectural to take a look at JoAnn's model and see what I might be able to grab out of that. I'll report back, and possibly upload my real full house plan if this starts getting too hairy!

JoAnn! Wow, thank you for this! Point well taken on never rebuilding the roof again, and the critical importance of turning off Auto Rebuild roofs after getting everything right. I do wonder why I have a problem since yes I have already done all the interior walls? I will go grab the trial of Architectural right now.

Mick, never mind I got it. It's the Overhang setting that was causing it. Your setting of 4 likely worked ok because you were able to get your to a 125/12 pitch. I can only use 96, so I had to adjust my overhand to 2" Thanks again!!!