Sunken living room but can't paint the lower walls

[mgianzero]

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

[DCortes]

You placed an invisible wall there.  What you should have done was place a Door Way and made it the length you want. Then go in to the Casing tab and remove the Casing.

[Jo_Ann]

Why oh why would you delete your foundation slab?  The house has to have a foundation.   Rebuild the foundation.

 

Look in the living room and you will see a large slab has appeared.  Go back to level 0, and turn on the reference display (so that you can see which part of the slab is showing in the LR). 

I don't know if this is the correct way to do this, but....select that small slab portion and delete it.  Check the living room to see if the concrete is gone. 

 

Of course the foundation is going to show outside the front door.  What did you expect?   Create the terrain perimeter and the put in a porch slab or step in front of the door.

 

Like DCortes said, use a doorway instead of an invisible wall, at the entry to the LR.

[mgianzero]

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.  

 

 

You placed an invisible wall there.  What you should have done was place a Door Way and made it the length you want. Then go in to the Casing tab and remove the Casing.

 

 

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 oh why would you delete your foundation slab?  The house has to have a foundation.   Rebuild the foundation.

 

Look in the living room and you will see a large slab has appeared.  Go back to level 0, and turn on the reference display (so that you can see which part of the slab is showing in the LR). 

I don't know if this is the correct way to do this, but....select that small slab portion and delete it.  Check the living room to see if the concrete is gone. 

 

Of course the foundation is going to show outside the front door.  What did you expect?   Create the terrain perimeter and the put in a porch slab or step in front of the door.

 

Like DCortes said, use a doorway instead of an invisible wall, at the entry to the LR.

 

 

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.

[solver]

Some rooms have Monolithic Slab Foundation checked, some do not. That's why a "foundation" is visible at the front door.

 

On the interior, select a wall in a camera view, grab the bottom handle and pull the wall down to cover the exposed concrete.

[LawB10]

Like the others have said, build the foundation, use a doorway and remove the casing, create the perimeter and then uncheck automatic and flatten pad,

to raise the pad, lower the number, to lower the pad, raise the number.

 

All the rooms in the house has "Floor supplied by the foundation below" and Monolithic slab checked, uncheck those two and the floor heights return

their defaults. I did this and everything fell into place. To paint the sides use a soffit.

 

Use the plan check tool, you have 30 errors on the 1st floor and 9 on the 2nd floor.

 

What's the deal with fake fireplace in LR? click>build>fireplace or search the library

 

Remove the two bifold doors for the dining room and replace with a single bifold door.

 

 

Last, Too all Pro users, it helps HDA and HDS users alot, if you unlock the plan so that it can be edited. You can only look at in HDA and HDS.

[Jo_Ann]

Here's another try at this.

Open the  room spec box for the entry/hall room.  Uncheck 'monolithic slab foundation'.
This makes some of the concrete to the left of the step (in the living room) disappear.   The concrete showing above the step is appearing because the wall is invisible.   Make the wall solid and the concrete is gone. Now is the time to put a doorway there.

Next:  Open the entry/hall dbx again and look at the floor structure(L).
Now open the room dbx for the right front bedroom, and compare the floor structure (L) there.
This is why the front door looks to be at a higher elevation than the front room.

[mgianzero]

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  ...

 

Some rooms have Monolithic Slab Foundation checked, some do not. That's why a "foundation" is visible at the front door.

 

On the interior, select a wall in a camera view, grab the bottom handle and pull the wall down to cover the exposed concrete.

 

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.)

 

Like the others have said, build the foundation, use a doorway and remove the casing, create the perimeter and then uncheck automatic and flatten pad,

to raise the pad, lower the number, to lower the pad, raise the number.

 

All the rooms in the house has "Floor supplied by the foundation below" and Monolithic slab checked, uncheck those two and the floor heights return

their defaults. I did this and everything fell into place. To paint the sides use a soffit.

 

Use the plan check tool, you have 30 errors on the 1st floor and 9 on the 2nd floor.

 

What's the deal with fake fireplace in LR? click>build>fireplace or search the library

 

Remove the two bifold doors for the dining room and replace with a single bifold door.

 

 

Last, Too all Pro users, it helps HDA and HDS users alot, if you unlock the plan so that it can be edited. You can only look at in HDA and HDS.

 

 

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

[mgianzero]

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?

[solver]

To fix the problem shown in post #8 picture, use a soffit to cover the slab.