ERousculp

Thanks for the replies. I'll get back to the model soon and keep going with: 1) the first floor generating the foundation 2) modifying the 1st floor until the auto generated foundation walls are the exact dimension 3) turning off auto-regenerate and manually add the rest of the walls to the foundation 4) set the foundation characteristics room by room What does anybody think about the garage walls? It is block and could be generated in the foundation level. This would mean having a doorway from the garage (foundation level) into the mudroom (1st floor). On one hand it makes sense since the garage is block. On the other I could see how it would mess up the programs auto-configurator logic. Also, a roof would be placed directly on foundation walls. As opposed to spending a lot of time running down the wrong path... I will go with the normal method, but I was wondering if anyone had tried it before?

Two Questions: 1) Is it ever advisable to start a model with the foundation? We are building a new house on an existing foundation so the first floor should really be referenced from the foundation. The foundation is partial basement and crawl space with a 24" drop to another crawl space and a 3" drop from that to the garage floor. The garage is also existing and has block walls (it will be attached). I have created one plan that is only the foundation and garage (garage with 101" walls above the pad) but haven't tried to add the first floor. Am I headed for disaster? The thing I like about this is that the foundation is exactly the correct dimensions. I have also created the first floor plan (with multiple floor heights) and derived the foundation. A suppose I can stay away from auto rebuilds and just make my modifications. The derived foundation is pretty funky with what appears to be off-set walls in certain places. 2) Is it ok to make the block garage walls part of the foundation level?