Randall30

Is it possible somehow to create an angled roof line, something like seen here in this photo of a modern black cabin? If so, how is this done?

(I have Chief Architect Home Designer Architectural 2021)
 

I am playing with a floor plan for a 2 story house. I did the main floor, then decided to draw the basement, then drew the second floor. I was only caring about 2D plans for the house. But now I would like to see if I can create a 3D plan. Is there a way to make the basement the 1st floor, the main floor the 2nd floor, the second floor the 3rd floor, give that the basement technically becomes the first floor?

Thank you Rookie65 !!!

EDIT (SOLVED: Yes the lines are for a roof over each room. I am selecting each room one by one then choose to have NO ROOF over each room. A little time consuming but it is making those lines go away.

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I am designing a floor plan for my house, I have it looking good-- except for some weird lines over each room that I think might relate to a roof? I want them to NOT display, because the purpose of this floor plan is to simply show the floor plan to potential buyers when I sell my house; the floor plan does not have to be viewed in 3D etc, I just want a simple floor plan. I have attached the main floor plan so you can see what I mean--- lines crisscrossing over each room, that mean nothing to me, again maybe related to the roof and if so how would I turn them off, or would I somehow create the house with no roof to get rid of the lines?

Thank you to all! It was all so simple once I upgraded to HDS Architectural. Just had to double click on the deck, choose Deck options, then choose Plank Direction, as shown in attached screenshot. Upgraded to Architectural today for $99, worth it. I was able to easily swap floors to create a pier beam foundation (Floor#1) without starting from scratch, using my single story Floor#1 to become Floor#2. And the deck planking direction is now simple to alter angles on. 

Cool thank you. I do not see the floor swapping option in my Home Designer Suite 2016, but I do see it in the HDS Architectural trial version I downloaded; that cinches my decision to upgrade to Architectural for $99. I want that swap floor feature!

I have one story house design. Is there a way to change the first floor, complete with the furniture, appliances, etc to a second floor? My reason is that I want to design a single story house but with a pier and beam foundation; and what I am reading online is that in order to create a pier and beam foundation the piers have to be created as a 'first floor'. So somehow I need to take my existing first floor and change it to a second floor. Or do I need to start from scratch?

How do I set the decking to 45 degrees? I am not seeing any angle options in any of the decking menus and submenus. Seems like if an angled Hatch pattern is chosen that Home Designer should then display that angled pattern otherwise why even have the angled Hatch pattern as an option.

As show in the screenshot here, if I set the deck Fill Style to a Fill Pattern such as Hatch, this is not showing up in the 3D view.

Solution? or is this just something that Home Designer can not do in 3D?

So I think I will upgrade to Home Designer Architectural. I have a question--- during checkout, there is the option to pay an extra $15 to get a USB backup; is this really needed? Can't I just backup the downloaded zip or msi file for the upgrade and copy it myself to my own external USB?

Anybody try the trial version or own Home Designer Architectural who can comment on if you decided to upgrade or if you stayed with Home Designer Suite, and why? I am on the fence (haha no pun intended) deciding whether to pay the $99 upgrade cost (I have Suite 2016). Designing a home that I would hope to build in a year or two, I am not a professional. 

1 hour ago, Randall30 said:

I did do a Crtl+F to search the manual for 'rotate material' and 'rotate' and could not find any matches for rotating material. Maybe my 2016 version is just too old and does not have that feature. I am thinking of upgrading from "Suite" to the 'Architectural' version of Home Designer; I just would like to know the rotate materials could be done if I do that. Maybe I can also search online for a vertical oriented material and use that to create a new material to use, idk.

 

I am going to try the trial versions of Architectural and also Professional; my thought is that my 2016 software version of Suite is just plain outdated.

 

So I tried the trial of Architectural and that does not have the rotate materials option. Hmm. I guess I will try the trial version of the Professional / Premier and see if that has the rotate materials option. Frustrating not to be able to have a simple thing like vertical lap siding--- most of nature is vertical (flora), so vertical wood siding makes so much sense, such as with the Juvet Landscape Hotel siding on their buildings. I just want to be able to emulate that in this software.

14 minutes ago, Rookie65 said:

Check over your manual. It's a simple process, yet I don't know what Suite has. If you plan on doing a lot of design work, I'd suggest skip "Architectural" and go right to the "Pro" version.

I did do a Crtl+F to search the manual for 'rotate material' and 'rotate' and could not find any matches for rotating material. Maybe my 2016 version is just too old and does not have that feature. I am thinking of upgrading from "Suite" to the 'Architectural' version of Home Designer; I just would like to know the rotate materials could be done if I do that. Maybe I can also search online for a vertical oriented material and use that to create a new material to use, idk.

I am going to try the trial versions of Architectural and also Professional; my thought is that my 2016 software version of Suite is just plain outdated.

40 minutes ago, Rookie65 said:

Spend some time with your reference manual. If you put the material in the plan, you can then select the material from the "plan materials" section. Go to patterns/textures where you should be able to rotate the material 90 degrees.

I am not seeing 'Plan Materials" in any menu section. Perhaps that is in a more recent version of the software? I have Home Designer Suite 2016.

I want to put vertical weathered lap siding on a house exterior but I do not see this in the materials listing, there is only horizontal weathered lap siding as shown in attached image. Is there a way to make it vertical??? Ultimately I am trying to go for a look like with the Juvet Landscape Hotel siding (photo attached). Can anybody help me? (I am using Chief Architect Home Designer Suite 2016 and if I can get this to work I will likely upgrade to the Architect version.). If needed I am even willing to purchase a separate materials library if it would accomplish this. Or do I need to create my own material?

Doh! So simple! Just did it. Thank you katalyst!

How to get rid of an image (.jpg) floor plan that I initially imported to 'trace over' (drawing exterior and interior walls, etc)? Now that I have put in my walls, bath tub, etc., the jpg image is distracting and there must be a way to get rid of it?

YOu can also resize the Edit handles in the preferences , download the Reference Manual off the Help Menu , and Perhaps the User

Guide too and look into some of the Tutorials

M.

I am definitely going to need to watch tutorials. For the record, I did watch the tutorial on windows, and even looked up selecting and resizing windows in the Help system, just that it did not help, I was utterly stuck; I must have selected a room or something, idk, but there is definitely a learning curve to this software!

Well now it is working. I deactivated the license on my Acer S5 Ultrabook laptop and installed and activated it on my powerful ASUS all in one PC (nvidia graphics, etc) and the windows selecting went flawless; I updated the Home Designer Suite 2015 software to see if that caused the bug but it still worked fine on the ASUS. I thought hmm maybe the laptop just is not powerful enough-- one thing on the ASUS was I easily saw the handles to resize windows, something I had NOT seen on my laptop. 

I went back to the laptop, started a new project, boxed in 4 exterior walls like before and then added a couple of windows and now all is good. I can select windows in 2D and 3D, I see the resize handles. I can not figure what happened. Maybe I hit some hotkey on my keyboard that caused some issue preventing seeing the resize handles for windows but I am glad it works now! Puzzling.

I am frustrated, having an almost impossible time selecting windows with my newly installed Home Designer Suite 2016. About a 5% success rate, seems to be hit or miss. 95% of the time I click on a window to select it, whether in 2D or 3D view, and I end up selecting the wall. Pressing the TAB key does nothing (I thought that was supposed to select nearby objects?). The thing is, this worked fine on the demo trial version, but now that I paid $99 for the working version so I can save projects, I have about given up trying to select windows. I know how it should work, because it was working flawlessly with the demo trial version; same software. One thing different is that I did save my project in a Dropbox folder where with the trial version of course I could not save anything. I can select other objects like walls, a bed, a range, I just have a 1 in 20 success rate selecting a window with the paid version. And I did update the software prior to all this, so I have the latest version.  Very puzzled. Any thoughts? Can I return this for a refund if the problem is not resolved (because windows are very important for the house I am wanting to design).

Also, if I get lucky and do select a window, I can only resize it in the 3D view, not the 2D view. I can move it in the 2D view, but I can't resize it. All quite frustrating, clicking to select a window and nothing selects in 3D (95% of the time) or in 2D the wall usually selects. But I just don't get why I can not widen the window in 2D if I do manage to select the window!?

 Randall

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Windows 7 x64

Quad Core, 4GB RAM

Acer Aspire S5 laptop