Keith_K

...to stop buggering around and submit my proposal to the owners of the property. It doesn't have to be absolutely perfect at this stage and perfections can be made if the proposals ever become reality. With this in mind I humbly post the plan and, should anyone have the time, ask for any constructive criticism you might have, mainly on the aesthetics of it all given that the actual buildings apart from the two new cottages at the top end of the site are already there and most of the work is cosmetic. For want of a better word. It was mentioned in a previous thread that there are three distinct sections all with different ceiling heights so in this regard the default settings can't be applied to the two dwellings at the back of the main block or to the single story section on the right. They apply only to the front section and the cottages. Which brings me to an old chestnut. I am getting the "varied heights in the rooms above" pop-up for the back two apartments. I have checked and checked time and again but I can't correct it. I suppose that in the current stage of things this isn't all that important but I would like to know what it is that is different and have attached screen shots of the specs as they stand. I think it has something to do with the staircase sections (and maybe the utilities gaps between the walls behind them) but whatever I do doesn't fix it. I also have a problem in getting a espresso machine to sit on top of the shelf in 2D view. If I look at it in 3D it seems OK but in 2D all you see or the knobs. Last but not least I tried and tried to get curves on the driveway corners by following the instructions given in the tutorial I printed off but gave up in the end. I'll just have to live with all the angles. Once again I would like to thank all of you who have helped me with the difficulties I encountered (or created) at various stages of this project. Your input has been of great help to me. It looked is if it would be so easy in the beginning... Oaklands - proposed development 05.09.15.plan

Sorry for the delay in replying but I don't log in every day. You can lock and unlock dimensions by going to Tools>Display Settings>Display Options. If you right click in the column under the "Lock" heading and opposite either manual or automatic dimensions (or both) the dimensions will be locked. Note that this is all dimensions. As far as I know you can't do it individual ones. To unlock again all you do is right click on the gold lock symbol. In the centre column of the Display Options you can also check and uncheck things you don't want to see while working on your plan.

Approval at last!! There is no siding on the current buildings at all, just render. The different colours are what I thought was a nice way of defining each separate residential unit and the commercial section (there will still be a petrol station and shop). The two cottages that will be added to the complex also have siding on the upper storeys. Siding seems to be all the rage in the UK at the moment though I must confess I would have liked a better range of colours than what is offered in HD. Nothing from that bloke. He must have found someone he could talk down to.

Well, blow me down! There I was in my little bubble of euphoria after patting myself on the back and telling myself how clever I was when along comes Mick with his fancy, up-to-date software to burst my bubble. Charming. But thank you again for your input The issue on the front wall has been fixed but I will state categorically that those changes to the wall/ceiling heights were not made by me. All I changed were the ceiling heights of the back section after doing the roofs using Katalysts777's method But I will forgive the gremlin that inhabits my computer one last time. All the issues have now been fixed, I am happy and I will be moving on to the next stage of this mind-numbing project. Until the next time then.

So I decided to walk away from the plan for a while on Sunday only coming back to it late yesterday afternoon and again this morning and I have finally achieved my objective. Well, 98% of it anyway. There are still two small things that are causing diarrhoea - my comments re these are on the "Roofs - front with oddity" attachment below. I just need to clear up the one and I will be satisfied. Thank you all for your help. And patience. My next step in this saga will be to drag two cottages across from another plan and place them near the bottom of the long leg of the terrain. When I do this will the default floor specs and stuff change to match those of the existing buildings or should I delete the (D)s from the cottage floor specs to prevent this possibility? Oaklands cottages NO FURNITURE 15.08.15.plan Oaklands - proposed development 25.08.15.plan

Hmmmmm. I wonder....?

Right gentlemen (and ladies) I am now on the point of tears or, God help me, another heart attack. In the last three days and following all the advice I was given above I have tried to build the roofs on the two upstairs levels on my plan at least 50 times! Late yesterday afternoon I thought that I had succeeded and was convinced that I had saved my work but when I went back to the plan later all the @*&^#!!! problems were back. I am on the point of scrapping this project now but thought I would give it just one more try, working slowly in short steps and engaging my brain to the best of it's current ability. By doing so and on only reaching step 4 I seem to have discovered the root of the problem and that is that the software is ignoring the set ceiling height of the back section of the plan and increasing it to match the height of the front section. This can be clearly seen in the attached image. In order to save my sanity, and indeed this whole project and all the work I have put into it, please advise as to how I can stop the software from increasing the roof height. What would be even better is for someone with more savvy than I have could work on the plan and then let me have a fixed copy (though this might be asking too much) so that I can carry on and finish the work to the point where I can make a presentation to the owners of the building. If there is a fee for any assistance please let me know and I'll see if I can afford it. Hope springs eternal, as they say. Oaklands - proposed development 22.08.15 TEST PLAN.plan

I wanted to post a new copy of the plan but it was taking an absolute age so I gave up waiting. I'll try again tomorrow as it is after midnight here and I need my bed. The Hometalk website must be very tired because it took nine minutes for my reply above to be posted.

I spent hours today redoing all the floor settings for ceiling heights etc. and I also moved a wall. It was drawn as shown in the previous plan because that is the way middle section was tacked between the original back section and the shop in the hand drawn plans. Those two sections were once totally separated but after staring at the plans for a while I thought that it would make more sense to have the wall where it is now. I managed to follow and hear David's video this afternoon and made the necessary adjustments to the overhangs anf then did the build roof thang. The front section built correctly but the back one was another Harry Potter creation so I deleted the roof planes for the back section and will try doing manual roof planes tomorrow when I will also tackle the flat roofs for the angled sections and hope that I have the success that David had. For some reason the system is creating an attic so on the 2D plan I am getting strange walls. That is why I turned off the display of attic walls. However I didn't realise that the display options work totally separately between 2D 3D until I turned them on and the gables appeared. Wahey! The colour change that David experienced also occurred by I fixed it with the colour picker tool thing. My success was, however, somewhat spoiled by the fact that when I turned the attic wall display on in 3D two mysterious walls were also created and I have yet to figure out why because they appear on walls that have never had a first floor above them. David, I was also very interested to see that in your video the walls of the angled section of the plan are straight and crisp as opposed to mine which are "wiggly" and blurry. Do you have a very fancy video card?

Hi Guys. Thank you for your responses. I'm not feeling too chipper today so I'll just answer what I can so that you don't think I am ignoring you and look at things in more depth tomorrow when I hope to be feeling better. Katalyst777 - Yes, that is exactly what I am trying to achieve except that you have created an additional floor resulting in the two large blocks being much higher than they should be. The overhand on the "shed roofs is also a bit too wide because those roof will actually be concrete slabs and will have very little overhang, if any at all. I have attic walls turned off because the programme creates walls that float in the middle of nowhere and which you can't get rid of without turning off the attic wall display. Your idea of doing a copy and sort of starting all over again seems to be a good way to go. David - Thank you for going to all the trouble of doing the video. What you did (apart from the one little hiccup with the siding) seemed so simple after just a few clicks here and there. Unfortunately I can't hear what you are saying even with the volume at full level nor am I able to see clearly where you are pointing and clicking. Tomorrow I'll try and get the video to run in full screen and see if I can follow it better then. Mick - The upper floor has been set with no ceilings because the ceiling will be "mini vaulted" and will follow the pitch of the roof for about ½ - 1 metre in then flatten across. This is because that existing part of the building (currently a workshop) has a ceiling height of only 4.7 metres making the standard flat finished ceiling height too low and that idea was my solution to increase the ceiling height with any additional construction work on the existing walls. It would also give some "character" to the upper floor of that part of the building. The roof directives have been corrected. I haven't a clue as to what changed all those roof heights. They were checked and double checked. I can assume though that on the single storey toilet block this happened when I was mucking around with soffits. The unused 3rd floor is not my creation. It is that of the software which likes to create those pesky attic walls.

...that problems would arise. Because my waters told me so and they rarely fail in their predictions. I knew it wasn't going to be plain sailing because I am working on alterations to a structure that already exists especially given the different ceiling heights. After doing all the usual preparations like specifying gable walls and stuff I gave to Auto roof building wotsit a try and got a creation that wouldn't have been out of place in a Harry Potter film. So I resorted to creating the roof planes manually with the result that the roofs were created OK but none of the walls have been made as gables. If I try and drag them up walls in other parts of the plan get dragged as well. There is also what I call "ghosting" on the roofs on the left side of attachment 3 for some reason (arrowed on blue). So, you clever people, what is going on? Eh? And then we get to the shop, office and toilets area which is a flat roofed section of the building. So I thought I would be clever and use soffits to create these roofs. Worked well for the one section but when it came to the angled bit (angled at -9.313º) it all went potty and I eventually gave up trying to fix it. Please guide me in this, thou great redeemers. Oaklands - proposed development 13.08.15 Plan A.plan

Mick, it's the recommended monitor setting of 1920x1080 that causes the elongation of pictures and things on other sites like Facebook and of the icons on my desktop. Using a 1600x1200 screen resolution setting makes it all go away so I guess a simple solution would be to use the recommended setting when I am working on plans and the other when I am not. Wot?

I did some fiddling with the screen resolution yesterday and got a better "look" by using the recommended monitor setting but this had an effect on some other things like elongating pictures and stuff. So I have just followed the instructions in your Nvidia setting suggestions, Mick, and got what I think is probably the best I will be able to achieve. Thank you. I've also changed the screen resolution back to what it was before and it doesn't make any difference to the new look of the plans but does de-elongate pictures so I'll stick with it. Now to do some work. I must finish the garage conversion. I really must.

jhawk 365 - Start a topic of your own and post a copy of your plan in it so that others can have a look at your settings etc. and advise you accordingly without your problem and that of the OP of this topic becoming intertwined and confusing .

Hi Mick, I am doing well, thank you. Tend to panic slightly if I feel as much as a tiny twinge in my chest, most of which are probably quite natural for people of a certain age, but I'll probably get over it. I hope that your results were positive once the monitor had been removed and analysed. Thanks for the tip about the Win 10 Nvidia driver. I couldn't find it but I installed their Ge Force Experience tool which did the update for me and I now have the version number you quoted. I still find the resolution isn't as good as it was on Win 7. The numerals of the dimensions seem unduly large, the colour contrasts within the walls have diminished and the whole look of the window and the toolbars etc. seems to have regressed from being the sharp and professional look it once was to something resembling a very early version of Windows. I have attached a pic of what my screen looks like now. I did try and find an image of what it looked like previously as a comparison but of course Windows 10 changes those too. Now that the proper driver has been installed I wonder whether it would be worth my while to try and re-install Win 10 to see if it makes any difference? But who am I to have a gripe about a Microsoft product? I am a mere mortal and they are the gods of operating systems. Or so they think.

Well, yesterday afternoon I bit the bullet and did 2½ hours of navel gazing while Windows 10 installed itself on my machine. As mentioned by David the installation was trouble free. I have, however, found that the settings are not user friendly (which is par for the course as I am not a computer geek) and I loathe having to enter a password every time I start my computer. I am also quite pee'd off that Microsoft has deemed that, when I upgrade, it will disable the Nvidia graphics card I bought particularly for use with my HD product and install something inferior in it's place. When viewing my plans I have found that they have lost the sharpness and clarity I obtained with the Nvidia product and I can't find anything in the Win 10 settings which will allow me to set the Nvidia card as the default. I might just have to pay for a professional computer person to come and sort things out for me. I am also mightily displeased that when installing Win 10 Pro the games that I had with Win 7 Pro (Mahjong, Solitaire, FreeCell and Chess) have been obliterated. I played these games every night before going to bed as a means of clearing my mind. Apparently there are "apps" which you can get from the "store" but I have had a look at some alternatives and don't really like them. I loved the simplicity of the games I had before. I am seriously considering going back to Win 7.

Thank you for your reassurances about Windows 10. I don't feel so vulnerable now. Jo-Ann I don't have access to Chieftalk. Thank you too for wishing me well with my recovery. It was all so out of the blue being woken up at 01:30 in the morning with what I thoughts was indigestion which the usual remedies didn't ease, then thinking it was my temperamental sternum which has given me pain at times ever since my heart bypass surgery in 1998 but which didn't ease off after taking painkillers and finally realising at 03:45 that there really was something very wrong with me. Fortunately the paramedics were here 10 minutes after I raised the alarm followed, five minutes later, by an ambulance and I was soon in the critical cardiac unit at my local hospital. The following morning I had an angiogram followed by an angioplasty during which a stent was inserted. Mick, I hope your monitoring doesn't find anything serious. Am holding thumbs for you.

..and from what I have read on discussions elsewhere it would seem that my HD 2014 Pro software will not work properly on the new platform and is therefore redundant with a lot of work that I have done and the dosh it cost me to buy down the drain. I expect to hear quite soon as to when my Windows 10 download from MS will be available to me so I have been weighing up my options which, for someone whose pension/income is a mere $234 a week, are seemingly severely limited. 1. HD Pro 2016 @ £296/$462 - too expensive as I can't not eat for two weeks. 2. HD Architectural 2016 @ £125/$195 which I could try and save for over 5 weeks or so. (Strangely this is only a few of Pounds less than what I paid for HD Pro in 2014) 3. Giving up the hobby I love. Some of you will know the sort of work I do using my current software. Will I be able to do anything anywhere near it using Architectural? And if my impressions about the compatibility between Windows 10 and my current software are wrong please don't shout at me! I have only been out of hospital for a few days after having a couple of heart attacks and am feeling somewhat sensitive and emotional.

Gosh! A response just as I was about to post again! I took down those previous images yesterday as I was trying to delete this topic completely but it seems as if you aren't allowed to do that. After a couple of hours of fiddling I have managed to get what I wanted. I decided that as the extension for the coffee shop was so small I would use SIPS walls and see if this helped me achieve the breaks I( needed. And yes, they did. Well to a 99% success rate. What has happened is that I am no longer able to open the DBX for the coffee shop for whatever reason. The change of walls has also changed the floor finish of the coffee shop from tile to oak plank and I have decided to just leave it because it isn't all that unattractive. I guess that what the past few days have taught me is that while it is nice to get help from others because it tends to sort things out quicker, one can (sort of) get there on one's own in the end. Now, after waiting for what seems like an interminable time for the plan to upload, I'm off to feed the birds and then for a shower followed by a nice cold beer! Oaklands - proposed development 19.07.15 correct celing heights.plan

Because the project I am working is an existing building and all the changes will be internal (except for a small extension to the proposed coffee shop) I thought I would make my life easier and the drawing simpler to follow if I changed the detailed walls that I had drawn (i.e. showing insulation gap etc.) to solid colours - grey for existing walls and black for new walls. The attached picture below is the suggested changes to be made to what is currently a car showroom. The 5500mm dimensions in the picture are the size of the full height sliding doors. The 650mm and 200mm dimensions that I have ringed are existing walls. When I try and use the wall break tool nothing happens and no break line is inserted. I tried dragging a "new" wall back and then drawing and old wall in the gap and the result is shown in the image. If it is the case that the tool doesn't work in solid walls because it needs more than one layer in a wall I could go back to the previously used detailed wall specs (which defeats my original thought of simplicity in the drawing entirely) but I would prefer the wall break tool to work. Or maybe the solution is that I shouldn't really think.

Good morning, afternoon, evening, whatever. With all the different times of posting I see on these forums I never know what time of day it is. Mick, thanks for the pointers about the deck. Bloody hell! The small things you have to remember. It's no wonder that my 70 year old brain can't cope sometimes. Alterations have been made according and when I did so two rooms on the first floor had their flooring changed to decking. I checked all the floors on that level and found that they all now had a 0 floor finish despite the defaults for that floor being set at 12mm so I had to change them all. There does seem to be an oddness between versions and the cynic in me says that this is purposely done by CA to force people to upgrade. Does money grow on trees in their garden, do you think. It's not only between versions that strange behaviours occur either. Paragraph three is an indication as is the fact that when I draw an invisible wall today it comes up as a solid wall so I've had to use the door opening option at the top of the stairs in what Jo-Ann calls the West staircase. It has also been decided by whatever devilish powers create odd things within the system on a daily basis to confuse and/or piss one off that as of today the landing at the top of the stairs will not show as having a floor either in camera or doll house views any longer. This is despite the specs showing that there is a floor under the room. I'll leave it until tomorrow in the hope that it will settle down. Jo-Ann, when I design stuff and in particular a set of houses or apartments I try and make them all slightly different from the others which is why the two staircases aren't the same. Maybe this is because I try and design things that I would like to live in myself and there is nothing worse for me than row upon row of buildings which are identical both inside and out. Little boxes, little boxes... As for being entertaining - I like making things just a bit more interesting than the clinical and enjoy using words to convey this. Besides which If I took everything to do with the problems I create in my designs too seriously I'd become a dipsomaniac.

Ha! You may laugh young lady because you know that you lot are doing my head in! I ran two plan checks. Ground floor had 26 “errors”. 2 for no garage doors. 1 for no smoke detector. 2 for no telephone jacks. 8 for not having a room name allocated. 9 for walls being out of alignment with the foundation wall but we know why that is and it doesn’t bother me. The last 3 were for walls being out of alignment with the room above and this has been done purposely so it is not an error. First floor had 23 “errors”. 8 for lights not being connected to a switch. 1 for no smoke detector. 2 for no telephone jacks. 11 for not having a room name allocated and the last one was for a wall being out of alignment with a wall below and given what I have written above this is also not an error. Try as a might I can’t see what you guys are seeing either. I can find no broken walls. There is no insulation showing through a wall in either in your picture, Mick, or in mine. Nor can I see anything wrong with a counter top riding over a stove top. This is what I see. The stove is higher than the counter in both kitchens so perhaps my old version is more clever than the new ones in that it doesn’t show phantom counter tops running the length of the wall. I have saved the original plan as one “with fixtures” because furniture and fittings are not relative to the actual plan and will be used for presentation purposes only and it takes ages to download. This is the basic plan with all that bumph removed. Despite your weird visions I would, however like you to tell me why the software refuses point blank to allow me to change the decking from limestone tiles (no, don’t ask me how the tiles got there in the first place) to deck planking. Please.

My word, Jo-Ann! The topic trundles along for a while and then whoooosh! You come out all guns blazing. I don't know which copy of the plans you looked at (probably the very early one) but regardless of the little glitches that have occurred and discussed here I have been working on other aspects of the plan on a daily basis and hadn't got to the stairwell on the right yet when that plan was posted. A lot has changed since then and while a plan check keeps on flagging up misaligned walls this is to be expected as not all walls on the forst floor have any correlation to those on the second That said I categorically state that I have no broken or overhanging walls anywhere and for the life of me I can't see the issue with the counter top at all. Maybe later versions of the software are highlighting things that the older versions we poor folk have to battle on with can't see. Rather than a "bunch of work" all I have to complete now are the two upstairs bathrooms and then this plan is done as far as I am concerned. Unless of course you guys find summat else wrong with it. Then all I can hope for is that when I drag it over and place it in it's position on the garage site there won't be a clash of default settings that will make it all fall down. Oaklands cottages 22.06.15.plan

Mick, Apropos you much earlier comment about the misalignment of walls. This probably only applies to the foundation and ground floors which can only be "out" by a pixel or two because I have to drag the foundation wall into position to align with the ground floor and have probably ever so slightly missed a "spot on" alignment. I'm not too bothered about that. I have checked the ground and first floors and they are perfectly in alignment. You might also be happy to know that: (a) broken walls no longer exist and: ( while I was having my first cup of coffee this morning I decided to have a bit of a fiddle while my brain was fresh. I idly clicked on the room specification for the porch and unchecked "ceiling above this room". And lo! The phantom walls were no more. Yay me! I am happy with things as they now stand and have decided to forgo the firewall. I do like them though. Perhaps because the use thereof was ingrained in me when I lived in South Africa. There just about every planning authority insist on parapet firewalls to a minimum of 30cm whenever any dwellings share a wall which I think is a very good thing. Here in the UK they don't really give a toss about it and then everyone cries when a house catches fire and several adjoining houses are also damaged because the fire spreads through the roof. Common sense doesn't always prevail. Thanks again for your input.

I used a soffit as I wanted the roof of the porch to be flat. I've done it before and didn't get attic walls. Oaklands cottages 22.06.15.plan