Five Quick Questions About Home Designer Suite

[MauiMike]

1. When most people talk about 10’ ceilings, do they mean ‘net’ (i.e., after floor tiles and ceiling finishes)? If so, and since that’s what I would also want, do I put in 120” under the Room Specifications dialog box, specifically under Relative Heights/Finished Ceiling?

 

2. When I do a walkthrough by using 3D/Walkthroughs/Record Walkthrough, and I walk through the entire house, the entire playback is super-fast, and lasts maybe 5 seconds. How do I control the speed of the walkthrough using this method?

 

3. I want the front and back of my house be ‘sunny’ simultaneously, but when I play with the Adjust Sunlight dialog box, I can only get one side of the house to be sunny, and when I rotate the house, the other side is darker. How can I get both to be equally ‘sunny’? 

 

4. In 3D mode there is a hand icon to pan around the house. But in 2D mode, when I zoom in on my floor plan and want to move it around, I’m not seeing a hand mode to allow me to move the plan up/down/left/right, and instead I have to go down to the horizontal scroll bar and to the right for the vertical scroll bar. Is there in fact no ‘hand’ to pan the floor plan in 2D mode?

 

5. If I view the whole house in 3D from the outside, the recessed lights are off. If I use the camera view and go from the outside into the inside, the recessed lights are off. Only when I do the camera view within the house are the recessed lights on. How can I have the recessed lights inside the house always be on?

 

Many thanks,

MauiMike

[solver]

1) Ceiling heights are often a result of what materials the wall is built with, and how it's built. A precut stud for a 10' wall is 116-5/8". Add 3 1-1/2" plates (one bottom, 2 top) and you have a 121-1/8" wall. Finish materials reduce that height.

 

4) The mouse scroll wheel is often also a button. Press it to activate pan mode.

[DavidJPotter]

 

 

1. When most people talk about 10’ ceilings, do they mean ‘net’ (i.e., after floor tiles and ceiling finishes)? If so, and since that’s what I would also want, do I put in 120” under the Room Specifications dialog box, specifically under Relative Heights/Finished Ceiling?

This is a variable issue: when you are speaking of ceiling height the answer needs to be clearly stated, you can measure from the unfinished floor to the unfinished ceiling or you can measure from the finished floor to finished ceiling, which you will find are different dimensions. I set defaults by "Finished Ceiling-finished floor" because that is the most important outcome to the client or for your home. The actual finished thickness of floor coverings and ceiling coverings can vary by room.

 

 

 

2. When I do a walkthrough by using 3D/Walkthroughs/Record Walkthrough, and I walk through the entire house, the entire playback is super-fast, and lasts maybe 5 seconds. How do I control the speed of the walkthrough using this method?

By controlling overall quality settings and by "frames per second"

 

 

 

3. I want the front and back of my house be ‘sunny’ simultaneously, but when I play with the Adjust Sunlight dialog box, I can only get one side of the house to be sunny, and when I rotate the house, the other side is darker. How can I get both to be equally ‘sunny’? 

The software tries to emulate the real world which does not follow your desired behavior of the Sun. I think if you will carefully read the Reference Manual section on Sun Angle will help you understand what can and cannot be done.

 

 

 

5. If I view the whole house in 3D from the outside, the recessed lights are off. If I use the camera view and go from the outside into the inside, the recessed lights are off. Only when I do the camera view within the house are the recessed lights on. How can I have the recessed lights inside the house always be on?

 

All Home Designer titles and versions use a lighting protocol called " Open GL or Open Graphic Language" as such it only allows the presence of "8 light sources per view per second". Interior views are per room, exterior views are 8 light sources per view.

[DavidJPotter]

By the way, I would not call the above "quick questions".

 

DJP

[MauiMike]

By the way, I would not call the above "quick questions".

 

DJP

 

Thanks for taking the time to reply. It seems that many of my questions are about the limitations of the program (or at least my version of it), and I needed to double check that 'it wasn't just me.' For example, when I rotate the house, it bugs me that one side is white (the color of the house), and the other side is gray (because the 'sun' doesn't shine there), and I can't believe there is no setting to give me the color of my house on both sides at all times! Another example--there is no hand icon to allow me to pan the floor plan in 2D view. Another example--you say that I can control the quality setting for the 3D walkthrough, but the only way I see to get high quality is to have a high frame rate, and a high frame rate means my walkthrough ends in 10 seconds. It's a great program, and for $99 allows me to do amazing things, and I'm sure it will only get better with time, but after using it for two years while trying to plan my retirement house, I've collected some questions and I'm finally getting around to asking them, so again thanks for your replies.

 

MauiMike