Jo_Ann

I think you are going to have to fake it. In my example: (single garage door) I added 3 soffits (thin depth, about 2" height, 96" wide) carefully recessed into the door to hide the horizontal shadow lines where the door usually bends when it opens. I added 1 soffit (narrow depth, narrow width, height of door, and colored grey) partially recessed into the door to simulate the center shadow line of where the door becomes 2 doors. Then I manually added and resized the hinges and door pulls (from the library, cabinet hardware). Cad boxes (2, colored grey) simulate the open doors. Cad arcs (2) simulate the 'swing'.

Architectural 2015 does allow setting different heights for stair landings, making manual winders much simpler. I don't know if Suite has this feature. If not, the work-around method will have to be used.

Draw a deck, divide into 2 rooms, make walls invsible. Set each room as shown. This gives 2 different floor heights for each set of stairs to snap to. Draw stairs, add landing. Shape the landing. Draw 2nd set of stairs and landing. You may need to pull back the stairs and re-snap them to the landing several times, to get them to sit correctly at the landing. If Suite allows it, remove the railing and balusters from the landing. If NOT allowed, select the landing and open the dialog box. On the materials tab, (balusters and rail) choose misc> opening (no material). Add soffits to represent the 2 winders between the landings. (for clarity, I have given each soffit a different color). In my example, soffits 1,2,3,4 are angled and set to 7.5 height, 48" floor to bottom. Soffit 5 set to 7.5 height, 55" floor to bottom. If your steps need to show a separate tread material (like the stairs) 'copy/paste hold position' every soffit (individually) and set height of each to 1" and set 'floor to bottom' higher to raise them above the existing soffit they need to rest on top of. Soffit sample color RED in my example is set to 1" height, 63" floor to bottom. Manually making winders is a PITA, but it's what you have to do, if that is the style that you want, with Suite or Architectural.

I suspect that you built the 3rd floor with the ceiling set to '0', then you spray painted the osb 'ceiling' with tongue and groove siding? You need to open the dialog box for each room, and uncheck 'ceiling over this room'. You should then be able to see the floor 'below', and the framing structure will also change.

If your 3' walls are meant to be exterior walls, and you want the roof to build on top of them, then do not choose 'ignore 2nd floor' when building the roof. NONE of the room types should be designated as 'attic' rooms. Change the master bedroom to the 'master bedroom' room type. Change the loft room to 'hall', 'nook' or even 'unspecified'. Rebuild the roof. Do a perspective full overview. Up on the toolbar, choose 3D>camera view options>cross section slider. Use the one that will allow you to see the shower room from the south side. Notice that you will need to drop the height of that door (into the shower) to about a 66" height. If you are really short, you might be able to stand up in that room? Redraw over your 'loft' room walls with the straight railing wall (NOT the deck railing wall).

Rick, "Am I correct in assuming that I need to leave Auto Rebuild Roofs turned on until I get the roofs right (otherwise, how can I generate a roof for a room?), then I turn it off so I can make changes to walls that may affect the roof?" YES. The bad news is...I don't think you can get Architectural's auto build roof to build that roof edge. The good news is...you can improvise by using sloped soffits and other shapes. Study the changes I made to floor 1, and build the roof. Add the sloped soffit to the attic level. Play with it's height settings until you get it right, then add the shingle material to it. Copy/paste the soffit, make it thin, add your fascia color to it, and put it up against the shingle soffit. Add a wedge to represent the 'attic' wall under the soffit. Reminder: If your remodel involves building the roof again, you can't turn off 'auto build roof' until the remodel is done. Also, you need to define your garage as a 'garage' room type, then rebuild your foundation, THEN add the garage doors. You have some walls that need to have the layers 'reversed'. Is your 2nd floor really 113"? You need to get these type of things correct before building a roof.

With Architectural, you can paint individual roof planes...but ONLY after 'auto build roof' has been turned OFF. I don't know if Suite has this ability, but you should try it.

Lower the pitch on the East wall of the 'high shed' room. But this will only 'work' if the south wall of the 'high shed' room, is on the north side of the roof ridge of the lower room. You appear to have over-lapped the 'high shed' room to the south of the 'ridge' of the lower gabled room.

Use the 'room divider' wall to section off that area at the window. Open the new 'room' and delete the crown molding.

Your wall on the left is an attic wall. Uncheck 'no room definition' and 'no locate'.

Fred, Check your PM.

Follow the suggestion given in the HD knowledge base on how to build this type of room. Kbird steered you to the right path (post #4).

Here is a 'drain' that I made. Add it to a soffit, then resize the soffit and lower it into the floor.

When looking at your plan, I noticed that your ceiling heights were all over the place. The foundation (24" crawlspace?) didn't look healthy, either. Anyway, (just for fun) I set out trying to replicate the plan and fix some of the issues ( along with a few embellishments). This plan was done in my HDA software version, so you should have no problem opening it. I think most of the dimensions are close, but you can tweak things (ceiling heights?). Just remember to turn off 'auto build roof'. I hope you find this plan (or some of the things in it) to be useful. I changed the addition walls to a hatched pattern to distinquish them from the existing walls. "LLAP" fstrohac baseline cabin.zip

No 'clip surfaces' available in HDA. You might be able to do this: With the 3d full camera window active, on the tool bar select tools>display. Uncheck ceilings and roof planes.

Here is another kb article that you should read. Pay attention to what they suggest for a foyer entry, because this is more representative of your 18' living area walls. http://www.homedesignersoftware.com/support/article/KB-00502/

Search for threads (on this forum) about 'z fighting'.

Did you draw 2nd floor walls over the living area and designate the 'room' as 'open below' (as was already suggested), and then 'auto rebuild roof' ?? It sure does seem to resolve the issues.

I suspect that no one will be able to give you solutions, until you upload the plan file. Make a copy or do a 'save as' (as has been already suggested). Open that plan and strip it down of all items that are not relevant to the structure (cabinets,furniture,plants), and save it. Close the file > find it in the HD folder, and upload it. It should not exceed the upload limit.

Most likely, the existing walls you are seeing on floor 2 are attic walls. Draw the new exterior walls over them. Turn on the floor reference to see where the floor 1 walls are located. After drawing new walls (that exist over floor 1 walls), right click each wall and select 'align with wall below'.

You can also use the box window (tool bar>box window). It will build the roof exactly like you want it. However, it has limited editing. You can alter or delete the existing windows, but you can't add a window.

Try this. It might not be exactly what you want, but I think it is closer. BEGIN by dragging the wall specified, to the opposite side of the room. This shows you where to place the wall break. Designate the wall specified (to the right) as 'full gable'. You can then return the dragged wall back to where it was originally. Set the side walls of the front room to 7.5" pitch (this slightly lowers that front room roof). NEXT: Drag back the wall connections in the remodel (as shown) so that the entire area can be selected as ONE room (this way you won't lose any doors or rooms). Change the finished ceiling height as specified. Set the north wall (specified) as 6" pitch. I hope the roof that it builds is more acceptable. I couldn't make it behave any better. When you are done building the roof, THEN (and ONLY then) turn off auto build roof. You can then raise the ceiling height back up, and re-connect all the walls.

Try this.

Also, you have not built the garage correctly. You need to name it's room type as 'garage', then you need to build>floor>build foundation.

You could auto build a second floor on the house and set the finished ceiling to 0". Then delete the walls that form the 2nd story bump-out. Return to floor 1 and reset the bump-out ceiling to the default value. At least this way your bump-out ceiling will be the same as the house ceiling. I have no idea why the program won't allow the bump-out roof and gable roof to co-exist normally.