Templates and Options for Plan

[JRS4Home]

New User of HDA2015.  In learning the initial use of the program, I created a full recreation of my existing home so my wife and I can remodel from it as it exists today.  I have been experiencing trouble with moldings and cabinets, primarily because I started the plan from a default template not knowing options were different for cabinets and moldings in different templates.

 

Is there a way to copy an entire 3 story plan to a different template - say from Default to Today's Traditional in order to get crown around the top of my cabinets?

[solver]

You may copy your plan and then paste into a new plan created with a different template. 

 

You will loose some information, like room definitions. 

 

I have made the suggestion that it should be easy to apply a style to any plan changing the look of various things.

[Kbird1]

You can also change the Cabinets and moldings in the plan you have too..... you aren't "stuck" with the default ones for a given template.

 

Have a look at the Edit>Defaults>Cabinets>Base/Wall/Full height etc.

 

and  Edit>Defaults>Materials>Cabinet/cabinet door/countertop etc. 

 

These settings may not be retro active though if you have already placed everything , which would mean having to edit cabinets individually or as a group using group select.

 

 

 

to copy an entire plan you need to use edit>edit area> edit area(all floors)

 

M.

[Kbird1]

I am not sure the Edit Area Copy trick will work (but try it anyway) after doing a bit of reading on the old forum as anything that you have changed from "default settings" already will not pickup the new "defaults" from the new Template style..... here is some advice from Dermot Dempsey ,(a Home Designer Software Engineer) that he posted a few years ago but this hasn't changed much, if at all.

You do not need to start over using a new template.

The style templates contain lots of different default objects but the ones that have the biggest affect on the style of your plan are the windows, doors, and cabinets. If you start a new plan and then later decide that you would prefer a different style object, there are several ways you can make this happen.

You can start over using a new style template, but this may involve a lot of work if you have invested a lot of time in your plan.

You can also go in and change the various default settings for your plan but you will not be able to change all of the settings that will affect the style of an object. Also, this may not update all of your existing objects to be exactly the same, so again you may still have to redo a lot of work.

You could also use the method where you use the Edit Area tool to copy your model into a new plan that was started using the template you want but then you would still have to redo all of your windows, doors, or whatever it is you want changed.

Another method would be to copy the object from one plan to another. Just start a new plan using the style of object that you want, place the object in the plan, and then copy it to the plan you are working on. This is probably the easiest and most straight forward method but it still means that you have to replace all of the objects in your plan that are the wrong style one by one. This is the method I would recomend for Version 8 Home Designer products.

If you have one of the Version 9 Home Designer products (except the base version), you can also save objects to the library. This means that you can start a new plan using any style template you want, place an object, and then add it to your library for use in any other plan. You can also customize your own objects to create any style you want and then add these to the library as well. You can now create as many different styles as you like that can be mixed or matched in any plan.

Now to make these tools even more powerful, in some products you can use the Replace From Library tool to replace an object in one plan with any similar object that you have in the library. If you select the option to replace all identical object, you can often replace most of your objects all at once.

Dermot Dempsey
Principle Software Engineer
Chief Architect, Inc.
http://www.ChiefArchitect.com
http://www.HomeDesignerSoftware.com

[Kbird1]

this KB Article may help too , in the future at least, while it is written for Chief I found a lot is applicable to HD Pro too... 

 

http://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00463/

 

 

this is a doc I found on the Forums a number of years ago and have modified with a few notes for my own use , that might help others too.

 

HD Pro Drawing Order.rtf