mgianzero

I see a lot of helpful people on here that can record a video of how to explain how to do something with Home Designer Pro. Where can I get that feature? Is this a part of HomeDesigner somehow or is it external software that you use? If so, which are some of the better ones? I use almost exclusively Apple products, so would be best if I can do this on MacOS. Thanks! Marc G.

So I need to draw the lines for the walls as well as the flat region to the identical shape? Why can't the retaining walls just be retaining walls and literally retain from the position on the hill they are placed? Why do I have to explicitly specify a flat region when I have the same elevation lines adjacent to each other? What's the point of this? And does the flat region need to be set to the outer, inner or middle of the walls? Or does it matter? Sorry but I'm not a big fan of how HDP does their terrain interface. I take it that Chief Architect is the same way, huh? And how can I screen cast to show my difficulties? Is this part of HDP or separate software?

YES .... that looks more like my terrain, along with the "curb walls" you use in the front yard! Although I was going to use the terrain wall (non-retaining) type instead. What's the difference? Any ways, I've designed and even remodeling a portion of the inside of the house with HDP - kinda quirky but not that bad. However, I've been spending way too much time on the terrain without much progress. There's got to be an easier way! I didn't think the terrain was that complicated - just a slope on the frontside, flat all around the house and a retaining wall (with some curved plantars) in the back. But trying to flatten the terrain up to and including the curved retaining walls seems unnecessarily complicated. Why do I need to flatten an area if I just set two adjacent elevation lines to the same elevation? If someone like to take this plan and help clean it up, that would be terrific! - perhaps even show me a screencast on how you do it even. I'm thinking I really need to take a class or need some sort of direction here. I find the documentation on terrain design to be minimal. Remodel_11_(backyard_ret._walls_w_terrain).plan.zip

And what about drawing the retaining walls? They draw on top of the terrain, but I don't want that. I want a flat terrain around the house where the walls are and a true retaining wall in the backyard. This is becoming very frustrating. Perhaps I should just hire someone to do what I ask.

Okay, this is much more helpful, thank you. Now I can at least get the home at the correct elevation. However, now I'm struggling with "you need to shape the flat region around the house, particularly at the back of the house up against the retaining wall." This is one area where I think the survey data is not exactly correct. If you look at my survey data without displaying the topography in my file called "Imported survey (all data, no TP or elevation interpreted).plan" that I included previously, you will notice that the entire area around the home (specifically where there is a designated brick wall in pink) should be flat. And the rounded plantars areas behind the home that I attempted to draw in other plans should be true retaining walls (roughly 4 feet tall) that comes right up to the flat area around the home. But I can't seem to get that to work. Can you show me how to place this house on the terrain that is flat adjacent to the home and up to the retaining walls in the back? Here's a pic of the same survey data.

Perhaps I should repost my question another way as I don't think I'm making myself clear here and, therefore, not getting my questions answered. I have a house that is already built (we are just remodeling it) that I am trying to place it on existing terrain because we are redesigning outside as well as inside. So I can't just move things around (make garage at a certain level, etc. in relation to plan). It needs to be what the plans say. I have survey data in a DWG file (which I want to use and NOT ignore) which actually displays contour lines with depth data if you simply open the file inside of HDP as I have done in my attached file. But when I import this data as elevation data, the house not only gets moved off of the terrain, but I am having trouble specifying exactly the location of the house compared to the terrain perimeter laterally using the dimension tool "point-to-point" or "end-to-end" settings so that I can move the home to exactly where I want it. I've included another plan (more simplified plan than before but same footprint) showing the terrain imported and offset. I've also included another plan which shows all the elevations and contour lines (same file as before) so there's no guessing on what it's supposed to look like. See my problem now? How do I correct for this? Remodel (terrain w: basic building only).plan 1898 Lemon Hghts survey.dwg Imported survey (all data, no TP or elevation interpreted).plan

David, I really appreciate your helping here, and I see what you did regarding adjusting my terrain level to the height of my home. And yes, my living area is actually sunken from the rest of the house on the slab. So thank you for that help. Sorry about those pony walls - I was trying to draw terrain walls with some sort of footings but I didn’t find the terrain wall feature as versatile as a pony wall. However, this was not really my question. I am mostly adding an additional detached garage near my original garage and needed to know about grading, retaining walls needed, etc for my addition as well as wanting to do some additional landscaping along my hillside. So I wanted to include some of the actual terrain data taken from a survey I had years ago. Unfortunately, the surveyor made lots of mistakes in their measurements. (I attached the file here again). But, I felt I could extract some of the terrain data to get a somewhat accurate representation of the hillside. My idea was to copy some of the contour data as elevation lines into my terrain as opposed to importing all the contour lines since many are not correct. Also, it would be nice to raise the entire home pad to the actual altitude that the house is built at (roughly 135 ft I believe) and include the absolute values of the terrain data too. Isn’t this the way architects do it with HDP or do they place house at 0” and subtract real terrain data from this height? I was having trouble specifying the exact location and orientation of the house since the dimension tool wasn’t working as described to move the terrain perimeter. (You can actually see the house footprint in the terrain data.) I also couldn’t get my terrain to lay flat up to and under the house pad properly. How do I do this? Marc 1898 Lemon Hghts survey.dwg

DIdn't even think of that - a zip file. But I thought HDP needs all the textures and libraries in order to work properly, no? Anyways, here it is - attached. Mind you, this is my plan without the terrain data - just the terrain perimeter. So how do I place my house where it shows in the DWG terrain data and yet at the correct altitude? Remodel11_(backyard_ret._walls).plan.zip

Well, actually this is a HDP model of an existing home which we have already started to remodel and I wanted to use the absolute numbers they had here as opposed to subtracting out the level of my home which is what I think you are suggesting here. I have terrain data that I received from a survey I had done about 15 years ago and it turns out that they made a lot of mistakes in the making of this data file. But I felt there was enough data to get the overall shape of my land plot. I thought, instead of importing the data directly (it never seems to look right when I did this) I could just copy over some elevation lines. So I started doing this with this terrain you see here, but I can't seem to get it to look right. It was either that or try to acquire new terrain data from something like Google Earth - which I was in the process of learning how to do. I've attached my terrain data if you would be so kind as to suggest how I utilize this data in my HDP model. I don't need an exact match of the terrain data for our remodel, but enough of the back and side hillside for expanding our home with a detached garage which may require additional retaining walls I need to know about. Again, my HDP model is too large to upload to the website (almost 44MG) which I do not know how to strip down easily to use as an example for HomeTalk forum. 1898 Lemon Hghts survey.dwg

I built my home with HDP Version 2020. But now I wanted to include my terrain and landscaping. So I added a terrain perimeter and tried to add elevation lines. But when I set my elevation line to 130ft, the terrain ends up burying my house, which makes sense. So how to I raise my entire home to this level so the terrain and house sit at the same level? I tried selection floor level 0 (my foundation) main room and changing the level of the floor to 130', but HDP seems to ignore this value and resets it back to zero (0). (See pic #1 that shows this). I've also included a 3D pic of what my home looks like when compared to my terrain. I want to place my home on top of the terrain, like expected. (See 2nd pic). My home sits on a monolithic slab I'd include my HDP file, but my file size is >25MB and I'm not sure how to easily attach a "skinny" version of my plans to help demonstrate my point. Also, I've searched HomeTalk (and even Chief Talk) but can't seem to find the answer to my question (although I'm not sure what to search for). Marc

Okay. I actually thought that interior wall soffits (from Build->Cabinet->Soffit) was actually considered a wall, such as over a wall cabinet or below the ceiling on a wall. Any ways, I was able to drag the register away from a lower wall to then move it onto the soffit above. Thanks!

I'm trying to place wall ventilation register on the end of a soffit in a room. But HDP will not allow me to do this. I can only install the register on the wall below. Soffits are usually used to hide ventilation ducts which connect to registers. Why can't I do this? See my pic as an example.

I remodeled three bathrooms with HDP and imported my selection of tile with appropriate size to place certain areas of some of the walls in my bathrooms. Is there a simple way to determine how much tile I need to order from these models to give to my contractor? When I select "Tools->Materials List->Calculate Materials in Room" option it merely lists "Wall Board" as "WB1" with a total sq ft for entire room, but each wall has different types of tile and only partially up some walls. Is there some sort of way of just selecting the material on the wall and determining it's area? I've attached some pics of two of my bathrooms with different tiles going up different parts of each wall.

Also, what I feel is a silly question ... Now that I've got my 18" x 24" layout setup, ready to print, why can't I seem to be able to edit the "DATE" and "SCALE" boxes to enter the appropriate date and scale?

Actually this might work the best since I'd avoid having to scan an oversized piece of paper at the printers. That can get time consuming and expensive if I've got a few different set of plans to work with, and future plans in the works for other projects down the road. Marc

Wow - so there's really just a workaround to do this and I wasn't missing anything in particular. This approach also makes it not only convenient, but costly since I have to pay for two oversized prints at my local Kinkos. That's a bit depressing, especially since I just upgraded to HDP 2020 a few weeks ago. I'm not really a designer or architect, but I'm making some great progress with just using HDP and some ingenuity. But just can't justify the upgrade to Chief Architect Premier when I only use this program on occasion for a few simple jobs. Thanks for the help.

Sorry, but after searching the forum, I found a post named "Layout Template" was seemed to fit my question but I really didn't follow what's been discussed there. So I hope I'm not confusing things by starting new post on a similar subject. I have a floor plan that I want printed to a ARCH D (24" x 36") blueprint sheet using a scale of 1/4" to 1ft. But the default layout file seems to place my layout framing border (not sure that's the term for it) at something much smaller than needed in a 24" x 36" sheet size. I did the following mostly based on what I learned in HDP video tutorial labeled "Layouts". 1) I opened my plan view that I wish to export to layout. 2) Then, under "File->Print->Custom Sheet Sizes" I created one of size ARCH D (24" x 36") - this was not included in the tutorial. 3) I select "File->New plan layout" and it creates a blank layout. Then I save the layout file with same name as plan (with layout extension) in the same directory. This step is where I think I'm doing something wrong as the the border displayed around the layout seems to be too small for my plan view - leaves larger than desired margins so it doesn't really fill a 24" x 36" sheet of paper enough. 3) I then select "File->Print->Drawing Sheet Setup" and select "ARCH D (24" x 36") as my new drawing sheet (drawing scale is 1" = 1"). This makes my sheet the size I want, but the layout border appears to be too small now. I guess I can resize it by dragging the handles, but these is a tedious process. 4) Then I select my plan view tab again and choose "File->Send to layout" with scaling at 1/4" to 1ft. This is where it really doesn't look right in my layout. The plan view seems to fill the expected size with that scale, but the layout boarder is too small for my larger size paper. (see attachment for example) What am I doing wrong? Marc

Well, I just discovered how to "somewhat" fix the stem wall problem with my garage. Apparently, when you change the Room type on the General panel of the Room specification to Garage, HDP will automatically add the monolithic slab foundation to the underside of the garage, DESPITE my not drawing a foundation underneath. This, I find, is somewhat confusing. However, to answer Jo_Ann's comment "Why oh why would you delete your foundation slab? The house has to have a foundation. Rebuild the foundation." I say ... well, if I later decide to build a foundation as you suggest, the stem wall, once again shows up inside the house and cannot be covered (painted, material changed) to make it look right from the inside. So how can I get this all to work?

Thanks again for everyone's help here. Again, I'm fairly new to HDP (and architecture in general) but I'm making progress. Since I didn't realize how many problems I had incurred, I found it too tedious to select and change all wall heights, floor slab options, etc since there's no way I know of to globally choose and change all the rooms to match. So I took the liberty to redraw my whole floor plan again. Here are my replies to some of your comments ... Yes, I realized the slab problem and one of reasons I redrew the entire floor from scratch. When I went to camera view and grabbed the bottom handle, it would not do as you say. Concrete is still exposed. What am I doing wrong? (See my attached plan.) I never knew about the "plan check" option under tools. Nice to know. I made a fake fireplace because the fireplace option with HDP does not allow you to edit the firebox and place a material inside it that was different from exterior. Only way I knew to do this was to create a fake fireplace using the technique described here: https://www.homedesignersoftware.com/support/article/KB-00744/creating-a-custom-fireplace-and-chimney.html. Notice how my firebox is made of brick, but outside is stone, just like home is built. Also, the firebox in HDP fireplace has angled sides and mine is completely square. Didn't see how you could change that feature. So then this leads me to a similar problem I had before regarding a stem wall showing into my living room. It appears that you cannot place a sunken room next to a garage (with usual stem wall sides) while leaving the backside of living room as drywall. Why is this? I want the garage room definition as I want the concrete stem walls. Just not showing into the living room. (See my picture that shows this.) I've attached my redraw plans, which merely shows all walls and only the few doorways in leu of invisible walls as suggested by others. Most windows, doors and other features have not been added yet. Again, I apologize if I appear to be asking the same questions again, but I can't seem to fully understand how to do this. House (shell, interior walls, porch).plan

Perhaps I need to backup a bit and better describe my thought process here and I think I can reply to everyone's comments more appropriately. I am creating a HDP plan for an existing house for which I also happen to have the original plans from 1967. When i first drew the house, I ignored the sunken living room since it was not my focus. But now that I've drawn the entire house, I wished to simply modify it to reflect the true sunken living room. When doing this I referred to Home Designer's website which discussed this same feature here: https://www.homedesignersoftware.com/support/article/KB-00901/creating-a-sunken-living-room.html If you notice, it suggests I use invisible walls rather than a wall with a large doorway so I did just that. I tried redoing it as a you suggested and it made no difference in the outcome - I still have a stem wall to deal with. So I don't think your suggestion worked, or perhaps I am implementing it incorrectly. Why did I delete the foundation? I deleted the foundation for several reasons. First of all, when changing the floor heights after the home is already built with an EXISTING foundation, HDP does not allow you to change the floor levels. I had to delete the foundation to make the floor edits and then redraw the foundation. (I discovered this the hard way.) My second reason was that the things were not aligning properly and having the foundation drawn would hide some features I was concerned about. For example, you commented about the foundation showing outside the front door. Well, when I deleted the foundation, that same stem wall exists, so why is it still there? Also, if you notice, my front door sits higher than the surrounding walls. I expected it to sit higher than sunken living room, but why does it sit higher than the same level bedroom on the left? It's not so evident when the foundation is drawn. My third reason is this model of mine is only to remodel mostly the inner walls of the home and a detached addition. Why do I need to draw a foundation when I don't really need it? It looks cleaner without it. I think this discussion leads me to another question here. When I first started to create my sunken living room (7 1/2" lower than rest of house) I decided to simply redefine the living room as -7 1/2" and keep the remaining house at 0" (default level). I thought this would be much easier than selecting all the rooms individually and raising them by 7 1/2" since I do not see a feature in HDP to raise an entire level up by a certain amount. Remember, I already drew the house, so I doesn't do anything to change the default floor height to + 7 1/2" at this point. Is there something I am missing here? Last question I have is ... if I deleted the foundation because I don't want it, then why do I still get this small area from the front door and main hallway that has a raised monolithic-like slab under it? I just want the entire house at same level with nothing under it.

I was successful in making a sunken living room as you can see. But why does it make these "foundation-like" walls at the ends and under the front door when I deleted the foundation option? Also, why can't I paint over or change the material to make it match the stucco exterior or the drywall interior? Main House.plan

I just tried what you suggested by drawing in a room divider that connects the living and bedroom and redraw the roof and it comes out PERFECTLY! Then went back and deleted this room divider. Awesome suggestion. Didn't think of fooling the auto-build roof feature like that.

Yes I did. Apparently one of the limitations to Home Designer Pro is that it only imports / exports to DXF format and not DWG. So I found a free conversion program that does this for me. Then when I import the data, I can either import it as is - in which case it merely draws contour lines as an image using CAD lines OR I can specify that that my data is really "elevation data" in the "convert to" column and then my data can be seen in both plan view AND 3D elevation view. The program I used to convert data was for a Mac. I'm sure you can find an equivalent option using Windows.

I've had the same desire to do this same thing - wanting the option to show variations of a remodel. I even spoke to to technical support about it. They all said the only way was to save various copies like you and other have mentioned. Again, I think it is not really the same thing since you would need to make modifications to all copies as you said and also that swapping between versions does not have the same immediate effect. You probably don't want to spend the additional amount to upgrade, but I believe you can get more what you want with Chief Architect Premier. No one seemed to mention this, but with Premier you have the option to create and modify different layers and also create layer sets. Why not assign different walls to different layers and swap between them using layer sets? I played around with a trial copy and it seemed to work. Just an idea. Marc

David, That video explained it all. As you can tell, I had to do a bit of editing to get to the point where I did. However, I'm always uneasy about when and where to use the "break line" tool. But now that I know exactly where where the roof planes intersected at the overhang, I can see it's easy to find. That was what I wasn't seeing. Thank you so much for taking the time to explain things so clearly with a video. Marc