Struggling with terrains

[MikeMike]

I'm using Home Designer Architect to layout some proposed retaining walls, and am struggling to even get basics to look right. I have retaining walls that meet at right angles, but at the joint, the footing sweeps up like 4 ft to meet some other elevation (I think). 

 

Overall I'm a bit confused when using elevation regions and retaining walls. Where are the walls supposed to go? On the high side? On the low side? Split down the middle?

 

I'm missing something - can anyone help?

[MikeMike]

The background on this is that I have a lot that's 400 ft front to back and slopes downhill back to front about 12' in elevation. I'm trying to put in a drive under garage, but when I set the terrain elevation for the driveway to cut it into hill, other parts of the hill "pop up", some times really radically. 

 

Why would telling the program (2019 version) that one elevation point was lower cause other areas to raise themselves up?

[MikeMike]

I've watched a number of videos. So far, I'm having better luck turning off the automatic settings in the terrain properties and turning off flatten in the same dialog.

 

Also, when terrain is not gentle, the algorithms used to generate the terrain can make things swing wildly. I've ended up putting really big rectangular elevations *outside* of my terrain perimeter to tone those down a bit. 

 

One of the challenges that I have is that the dimension lines from the building make it hard to find things like elevation points, lines, and regions. 

 

Does anyone know a way to temporarily hide the dimensions so I can see where I have put elevation data?

 

 

[DavidJPotter]

43 minutes ago, MikeMike said:

Does anyone know a way to temporarily hide the dimensions so I can see where I have put elevation data?

Temporarily turn off the "Dimensions" layer to make dimensions temporarily disappear.

 

DJP 

[KirkClemons]

I would recommend attaching a copy of your plan with your latest attempts at drawing the retaining walls and terrain data.

With Terrain issues/questions, it's generally an exercise in simplifying the terrain data so that it is as accurate as possible while not being so complex that it looks bad.