DaveJo

Here is an actual view of the house if it might help to get this right.

Not sure I attached the right version of the plan as Pro was not closed when I selected a file to be uploaded. This one is correct. GT 12-20-18 1 new.plan

Not sure I attached the right version of the

I watched your video and thought I had everything set right, but when I start to draw terrain lines I get a huge terrain hump centered on the middle of the house. I set the garage floor at -42", regular house floor is at 0, then drew a terrain line at the front of the garage and also set it at -42 to get started on the terrain. But the result is bizarre, with a tall hill created at the front of the house. I'm attaching the plan with it returned to the version set to the point before I drew that first terrain line that created the hill. Thank you GT 12-20-18 1 new.plan

Thanks David. Very helpful. I thought about doing what you said with the garage floor, but the box indicated in the structure specifications for the garage under absolute elevations, "Floor "D":, is grayed out. Not sure what to do to activate that box so I can change the value. Or is what you mean to set the garage floor manually something completely different from that?

Thanks much. Yeah, I figured maybe that was not so wise, but learned the hard way. At any rate, I just deleted the whole terrain, redrew it along with driveway, sidewalks etc, and now will use terrain lines from the site plan to do this. One unrelated question - in order to get the terrain right, I need for the garage slab to be 34" lower than the main house floor, same ceiling height, meaning I have a really tall garage (this happened as a result of the slope of the lot). How should I go about that? I assume it will be in the garage room specifications under structure, but am not sure quite what to change to achieve that result.

I'm using Home Designer Pro and was using the program to design a landscaping plan for a house I designed with the program, had detailed by a draftsman and is already built. I inputted some elevation points manually to get started using site plan data, but the plan quickly generated some really screwy contours. So I want to start over and tried using the clear terrain tool, but the contours keep coming back. One post I read said to close all tabs except plan view so I did that, cleared the terrain data but the contours again reappeared. I cleared the terrain with only plan view open, saved and closed the program, then re-opened it. Same result. So hopefully someone has some answers on this. Clear terrain is not much use if it doesn't stay cleared. Thanks for any help

Thanks much. I should have known that - I've been using it to change siding etc on the exteriors. I really appreciate your replying quickly.

Hopefully a simple question. I've gotten through designing the floor plan, a lot of the exteriors, roofs etc in Home Designer Pro 2018 as a first time user, and have turned my attention to the interior. I started to edit the floor and ceiling materials using what I thought were the instructions provided - Go to the structure tab of the room specification dialog, find floor finish and click on the edit button. But there is no edit button for floors, and under structure it is just the underfloor specifications, not floor materials. Under ceiling, there is an edit option for finish, but when i click on it there is just a dialog for thickness, not materials. I googled and searched through home designer pro videos and Youtube videos, but can't find information as to where you can change floor and ceiling materials. I'm attaching a screen shot of the room specification dialog box. I am submitting this on what is labeled Home Designer Forums, but when I have done this in the past I have been lectured that this is Chief Architect forum and not Home Designer. This is the only forum I can find labeled Home Designer, with nothing about Chief Architect in any of the headings. Hopefully this is the right place.

Ok, I found it. It's under Tools>Display Options>Dimensions, Automatic. I unchecked the box and that did it.

Thanks for this. I looked for "Layer in Display Options" called "Auto Dimension" under both defaults and preferences and could not find them. I just don't know where what you are referring to is located. Dave

I'm a new user to Chief Architect and am using 2017 Architectural. I was trying to dimension rooms using specific numbers rather than drawing and ran into difficulty finding any sort of dialogue box popping up once the room was selected. I went down finally and selected "Auto Interior Dimensions" for that room and got a whole bunch of different dimensions that just fill the room space. I now want to turn those off but clicking back on the Auto Interior Dimensions icon does not do that. I am running into a fair number of these kinds of things that seem like they should be intuitively simple, yet run into problems and spend a lot of time trying to decipher the software and how to use it.