TomGriff

A wedge shaped step like that at the top of a flight of stairs would be poor design practice and a trip hazard. I would add a triangular protrusion to the balcony where the stairs meet up to it. Then the stairs should mate up fine. Not sure if it works on other versions, but on Pro, if you right click on an upper floor wall that is close to one underneath, it will give you the option to align with wall below. Tom

It does work quite well in Pro, although it is only a surface treatment. You can't see through the wall. Tom

Let me guess...Custom Backsplash. Tom

Go to the floor plan and click on the wall where you want the gap. Then using the handle that appears at the end of the wall, drag it back to where you want it to stop. You can also click on the dimension that shows up to precisely control the gap. Tom

Got it! I used the soffit tool to add a 4" x 2" filler on top of the foundation walls, leaving a 4" x 2" recessed ledge around the top of the pit. Only problem I ran into was that when I added the fourth soffit, it completely filled in the pit. Not sure why, but the fix was to deselect the "Auto Adjust Height" box. The overall solution was to create a room open below using room dividers, Then drop down a level and create foundation walls, using the reference floor feature to align and offset them with the opening above. Then use the soffits to raise the tops of the foundation walls to within 2" of the floor to create the ledge. Thanks for the help, Tom

That is pretty much what I have with the exception of the raised ridge around the edge of the pit. What I need to do is create a recessed lip around the edge for the steel floor grates to sit in, so they are flush with the floor. Most grates are around 1 1/2' thick, so if I had a lip that deep and a couple inches wide around the top. life would be good. Thanks, Tom

I did use the room divider with the open below selection and it created the step shown in the pic. The slab feature will probably work to fill it in, but it doesn't look very user friendly at first glance. I'll have to spend some time to figure it out. Thanks, Tom

I'm trying to create a pit in the slab floor of a garage. It needs to be about 36"W x 24'D x 12'L, with a 2" step around the top edge to support steel grating. So far I've created a room open below in the garage, and that seems to have formed the pit, but there is a step around the top that appears to be 4" wide x 4" deep and nothing I do seems to change it. Any ideas on how to get the 2" deep step I'm looking for? Thanks, Tom

Yes, the room divider feature (in the Build Walls tab) is the way to do it. Tom

I don't see the mention of floor loading anywhere in the program, and Home Designer seems happy to create spans any distance you like. Is there anywhere in the program where you can specify floor loading to determine the span of a floor joist or rafter, or is the engineering strictly up to the user? Tom

It looks as though you have some or all of the walls of the upper floor set back from the walls of the lower floor, which creates a design issue with the roof on the lower floor. You need to reduce the pitch of the roof to keep its ridge below the windows on the upper floor and/or adjust the amount of setback to make it work. You may also want to consider changing the style of the roof. It looks as though the hip roof you are using gets quite complicated with your design. A gable or two may help. Tom

You can also create a manual roof plane, open it, and set the baseline height to whatever you need. The height of the wall under the roof plane will adjust to suit the baseline setting. Tom

I'm using Home Designer Pro and it has an edit box next to the floor structure for this. Apparently the Architect version doesn't offer that option. Tom

Double click on the floor and under room specification/structure/floor, you can set the amount of wall showing below the door to whatever you like. Tom

Try placing a room divider where you want the original vaulted ceiling to extend and check the "ceiling over this room" box in the new addition. Tom