How to construct Office Building with Breezeway to Pole Building

[mkalavitz]

Hello,

 

I am working on my first project with Home Designer Pro.  I have purchased the pro plan.

 

I am wondering if someone can give me some basic guidelines or steps to complete what I am trying to do.

 

I am using this software for my personal projects.  I have purchased a small office building and am going to add a pole building behind it as a small manufacturing job.

 

It has been really easy to model the existing office building (essentially a 2,800 square foot house with a basement).  I am now at the point were I want to add the breezeway

off the back of the office building and then the pole building.

 

A couple of questions I have.

1.  How do I model the breezeway and pole building that will be 2' lower than the office building.  So, there will be a step down and ramp down from the office building main floor into the breezeway.

2.  In addition to the above, the breezeway and pole building should be build on a 6" slab.  It will not have a basement with walls/footings as the office building does.  How to change?  Do I build the pole building first and then establish a slab?  Or, slab and then build the pole building?

3.  The wall height and framing will be different than that of the office building.  It will be built from 6"x6" poles on 6' centers, etc.  Also, the wall heights will be different.  The breezeway wall height will match up to that of the existing office building.  Then the pole building will have wall plate height of 12' 6".  Customize each wall individually?  Or, is there a way to set a standard for a pole building height, lumber, etc.?

4.  The pole barn will have a steel exterior.  But, this exterior will be 2 tone.  That is, there will be a darker color on the bottom 4' and everything above it will have a lighter color.  Is there a way to model this 2-tone appearance?

5.  The existing office building has an asphalt parking lot.  The new pole building will also have an asphalt parking lot installed.  How to model this asphalt parking?

 

Thanks a bunch for the advice and guidance!

 

Mike

 

[mkalavitz]

where does it tell me the version?  X8, X9?  I checked the 'about', but I just don't see it.  Maybe I am overlooking?

[mkalavitz]

OK, I have updated my Sig.  Home Designer Pro 2018

 

I have looked though knowledge base and looks like I need to create a split level home type of structure. One part with a full basement and one part with a slab.

 

I understand that I need to go to Edit 'Structure' and edit floor and ceiling elevations and heights.  But, when I got started on this, I placed the exterior walls, windows, doors, etc.

Now, I want to edit the foundation(s).  When I try to select the exterior wall, I need to control click each room individually to select all of the rooms in the house in order to represent the foundation.  It will not allow me to select the exterior walls only...The values of the ceiling and floor levels/elevations are greyed out.  I can not change them.  I thought maybe I would need to turn off layers in order to select just the foundation, but, there seems to be no good way of doing this.

 

Is there a way to select just the exterior walls or existing foundation and edit the ceiling/floor structure heights?  Still digging and can not find a way. 

 

thx

MK

[solver]

Here is a recent thread where someone is doing something similar.

 

 

The software does not like mixing foundations so you may need to make some manual changes to get things like you want.

 

Here is a sample plan. One building with a full basement, the other 24" lower on a slab.

 

Review the structure panel for the slab building, note the Floor setting and that Monolithic Slab is checked.

 

mkalavitz example.zip