BraveUserMike

I think it would help me a lot to know the correct way to design the stairwell. Should I be drawing all the walls for the stairwell on both the 1st and 2nd floor? Should I use room dividers to define sections of the stair well as rooms so I can set ceiling heights? I understand stairs can automatically cut their way through floors, do they cut their way through walls? Should I build the stairs before the roof? Here are some photos of the actual stairs

Oh my goodness, thank you! It was the unchecking no room definition I was missing. I had put a wall on the 2nd floor extending the right exterior wall of the 2nd floor a bunch of times before with no effect. Defining the room is what made the difference. I left the ridgeline wall on the 2nd floor as a hip wall. made the back wall between the house and the roof covered patio on the 2nd floor a knee wall added the wall behind the right wall of the 2nd floor to enclose the room copy and pasted the autogenerated leftmost wall over the roof covered patio to make sure the gable length remained the same on both roof lines and it was golden All that's left now is the stairs

Yep, back to trying and trying and trying different things to get a single roof ridge across the 2nd floor without success. This time I'm going to call it quits and go to bed.

As an experiment I deleted the stairwell and enclosed part of the planter with an invisible wall in line with the break in the half wall that separates the planter from the porch. This made the entire 1st floor roof line to the right of the 2nd floor correct. It did not correct the 2nd floor roof line

I tried pushing the location of the break in the invisible wall on the front porch around some more to see the effect. With large changes you could see the 1st floor roof line move either forwards or backwards but no changes in the 2nd floor roof line. Looking at the stairs more closely you can see a downward slope of gable going through the stair wall. It also looks like there is an upwards slope of gable sticking out of the roof just a little bit

Working from v3 where the 2nd floor has a roof: Set section of exterior 2nd floor south wall between front corner of bedroom and stairs to full gable Set invisible wall in middle of stairs to full gable Set section of exterior wall past stairs to full gable This gives a gable roof line on the south wall of the 2nd floor but the roof ridge too low. The roof ridge should be in line with the rest of the 2nd floor. Working from v4 Setting the same sections of the 2nd floor south wall to full gable has the same result except for the hole in the middle. Going back and adjusting the position of the invisible wall that defines the front porch .. up to 5' 1" makes the hole smaller down to 5' 7/8" makes the hole go away At this point setting the front wall of the 2nd floor bedroom to full gable works

So I decided to try to work my way in from the south side. I turned on reference floor display and added a break in the invisible wall defining the front porch in line with the front of the front wall of the 2nd floor. I section the section of the invisible wall defining the patio to full gable. This corrected the 1st floor roof line from the south wall all the way past where it should meet the 2nd floor roof. Except you can see a hint of a ridge line following up from the master bath front gable. I started adjusting the position of the break in the invisible wall that defines the front porch. Up to 5' 7/8" back from the front of the porch the ridge extends from the master bath gable. 5' 1" and over the ridge extends from the front porch gable. At 5' 7/8" inches I get an error message "Error in side ridges while producing a roof plane. After the error the 1st floor roof is completely correct and the middle of the 2nd floor roof is gone. I did a save as v4 here then an undo and save as over v3 so I have both versions to try to work from.

Next I thought I would try getting the rest of the 2nd floor corrected. I tried setting the section of south wall of the 2nd floor that is behind the stairs to full gable. It made a little gable over that little section, nothing approaching joining the 1st floor roof so I undid. There are two sections of auto generated wall behind the 2nd floor back wall. I tried setting them to gable along with the section of the south 2nd floor wall and that didn't work so I undid. I tried deleting the auto generated walls and with autoregenerate roofs on they immediately come back. Nothing I tried worked so I closed and went back to the save after adding the gable to the front of the bathroom. I added the gable to the front porch. So now I'm back to guessing and trial and error about what to do next.

Next I've switched over to the south exterior wall. exterior wall past the break that lines up with the 2nd floor wall>full gable invisible wall that defines the patio under the roof>full gable That gave me a correct roof line on the south wall excluding the front wall of the bathroom, only as far in as a few feet past the south wall. Then I added the gable on the front bathroom wall

I verified that the wall breaks in the North and South exterior walls still existed and lined up with the 2nd story front wall. Then I started with at the garage side 1)1st floor living room wall>full gable 2)1st floor invisible wall defining under roof patio>full gable 3)2nd floor bedroom wall>full gable That gave me a correct roof line on the north side of house, except the garage 4) front wall of garage>full gable That gave me a correct roof line on the entire north side of the house as far in as the roof ridge of the garage. 5) I tried setting the front wall of the 2nd floor bedroom to the right of the garage to full gable and it didn't make the change in the perspective view so I undid and will move on to somewhere else for now.

1) while on floor 1: build>floor>build foundation>radio left on monolithic slab, click ok I notice that the pool deck has gotten out of line with the house and under roof patio so I undo, correct the pool deck, and redo step 1 2)switch back to 1st floor, build>roof>build roof>select auto rebuild roofs, click ok 3)Edit>Reset to Default>select radio for all floors, select check box for Roof Directives in Walls, click ok 4) Tools>Display Options>uncheck dimensions automatic, dimensions manual, roof planes (roof baselines was already unchecked),room labels, room interior dimensions (other two were already unchecked), I also unchecked CAD default to hide the survey, click ok 5)View>uncheck reference grid 6)Perspective Full View tiled vertically 7)Saved

Please

Hey y-g-m-n, Thank you for suggestions, I originally drew these plans in 2019 and i wasn’t at all concerned about the roofs at the time. In 22 I designed a kitchen remodel in them and still wasn’t worried about the roof. The staircase and stairwell were part of one of those efforts and I don’t even remember which. I’m trying to finish and correct the main house layout as part of the current effort and I’m definitely having problems with and around the stairs. There were stairs in the staircase from whenever I originally did the plans but I deleted them as part of the process of trying to get this area right. I’m not sure what walls I should be drawing before putting the stairs and what I should leave for the stairs to auto-generate. I’m not sure if I should build the stairs before the roof or vice versa. As built the 1st floor section of stairs and the landing are 42” side and the 2nd floor section of stairs is 40” wide. I’m not sure if I should be working with the as built dimensions or start with 42 and 42. The curved wall of the stairwell is some sort of concrete, definitely thinner than standard cbs walls of the 1st floor exterior but definitely concrete. It intersects the cbs wall of the front door, the exterior wall of the bedroom, and the the interior wall of the closet in that bedroom. The same upstairs. The exterior walls upstairs are stucco not cbs so the interior dimensions change. That obviously plays into the 40” wide steps on the 2nd floor vs 42 on the 1st floor and back to my question of do I design it as 42 and 42 or 42 and 40. The short wall that separates the planter from the porch buts up against and maybe commingles with the edge of the curved wall on the 1st floor A lot of things intersect here and the software is obviously not happy with it. The 1st floor section of the stairwell has a shed roof on it. I’m not sure if the software can handle having the curved all as a gable wall under a shed roof or not. Sometimes when I build the roof the joint between the curved wall and the front door wall gets pulled apart and a big chunk of the interior looses its room definition. I know I need to do something different but I have so many things I’m not certain about how they work coming together at the same time I don’t how to work the problem.

show off, lol I was up all night..... and I have.....

This is what it is supposed to be:

Okay, I stayed up all night certain that the next click would fix everything but that hasn't happened. I could use some guidance. Something in the area of the staircase is messing everything up. I've tried drawing the stair well on the 2nd floor with the ceiling height lowered. I've tried drawing the stair well only on the 1st floor with the ceiling heigh raised. I've tried about a million variations of wall specifications. I've tried adding breaks all kinds of places. I'm at a total loss. This is what I have now......

In real life the planter doesn't have a floor at any depth

I had to adjust the ceiling height to account to lowered stem wall top.

Maybe I'm just dense. I had already looked at the structure in the room dialog and it didn't make sense at first. I think I have it figured out now. This is slab on grade construction. There is no stem wall but I think what it's doing is calling the slab a 4" stem wall. So it won't let me change the height of the stem wall. So I think changing the stem wall top under absolute elevations equates to changing the grade under the slab. Putting -4" there worked. I think I have this set up in Jo Ann fashion now. I used two closed boxes to make the front of the planter and another to make the slab leading up to the porch/entry.

Hey Jo Ann, I'm trying Jo Ann I'm tryin Okay, so I deleted the half wall in the front which was defining my planter as a room. Now the slab for the porch/patio/entry is extending all the way across despite my leaving the half wall in between. While we're talking about it...I actually need to lower the porch/patio/entry floor. The chattahoochee is 4.75" lower than the porcelain tile of my main floor.

I'd be willing to purchase the current version of HomeDesigner Architect but it doesn't look like that would be much better. It seems like you really need Pro to avoid these hassels. I found shapes in the library and that proved a much cleaner solution. I still had to pull all three walls back from their intersection for the software to let me put the box there but after I placed the box I was able to put the walls back together inside of it.

Oh, I am. Doing a search in help for column brings up results talking about making selections in the display column, nothing about structural columns. Same thing in the user guide. Almost the same thing in the reference guide. In the reference guide there is one reference to columns in the millwork library. No explanation is given about how to use said library object. If there is any explanation about how non wall objects are incorporated into walls I've failed to find it and I'm looking. None of the columns in the library resemble my column but I'll go play with one anyway and see if I can't figure out how they work. It's hard to believe this isn't documented. This must be done fairly regularly. Have HomeDesigner suite users had to give up using columns? How am I going to add the pole barn I'm planning after this?

Hello, Thank you for your response. I think what you are saying is it can't be done. It sounds like you are describing making something that visually looks like a 16x16 poured column. I was afraid that would be the answer. I was hoping there was a way to draw structural columns so they show on the plans like they would on a stamped set of plans and add the correct materials to the materials list. I don't actually know what a 16x16 steel reinforced column looks like on a stamped set of plans but I was hoping the software did. This column is actually probably block. There are some decorative stucco elements on the front of this house but this column isn't one of them. You can easily hear the difference between stucco over concrete and decorative stucco wrappings. Now that I'm attending to just this column and not the overall exterior, I just remeasured and it's 16.5"-16.75" that matches block with stucco. As far as getting it to line up the column with the half walls and the room divider the tiny room method you described worked best. I'm afraid of what happens when I build the roof.