suspended partial wall

[nihonrdnk]

Hello All,

  I am new to using Home Designer. I purchased the Home Designer Suite Bld 16.3.0.59 and I am using it on a Macbook Pro running OS X yosemite V 10.10.1  I have been searching (with no luck) for a thread both here and throughout the web for some ideas about how to get a representation of my dining room into Home designer.  

 

I currently have a living room that is roughly 24' x 20' that has a dining room that is partially abutted on one of the 24' sides.  The wall structure between 2 rooms looks like the screen shot I have attached.  I was able to draw a 3d version of this in sketch up, but cannot get it to work in HD.  If I try to add it from ketchup, it only adds as a symbol and does not represent the wall components like a wall built in HD.  

 

My main problem is what I would call a partial wall hanging from the ceiling down 16"  I attempted to create this scenario by drawing one big wall and then placing a number of overlapping pass through windows going from the floor to 81" in the center area and then having a pass through window with a top at 81" and a bottom at 25" immediately next to it. Unfortunately, that leaves a small sliver of wall where the dotted lines in the screen shot would be.

 

Can someone help me understand how I can draw a partial wall from a ceiling as well as from the floor on top of each other so that in the 3d view it will look similar to my attached photo.  With that capability, I believe I can construct my layout.  If there is a better way to do this as well, I am all ears.

 

Any information or direction that could be provided, is greatly appreciated

 

Thanks

JD

[DavidJPotter]

Here is a You Tube tutorial about a workable solution:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H75Ry8AfHJ0&feature=youtu.be

 

DJP

[Elovia]

Nice video, David.

 

In watching it, I came up with another possible solution.  Of course, that's the nice thing about this software; there's often more than one way to achieve a similar result.

 

Draw the interior wall, and break it as shown in the video with an invisible middle section.  Break the right-hand section again (with reference to the video), and set the left-most segment of the right-hand visible section (the one closest to the invisible section) to be a solid rail or half-height wall depending on which it is called in Suite.  Then also set the left-hand section of visible wall to be a solid rail or half-height wall.  Finally, use a soffit for the overhead suspended wall section.  This may help with the baseboard molding issue encountered in the video.

 

Hope this helps.

[Jo_Ann]

I tried this too.

I added the two pass-throughs, with all of their interior/exterior trim removed.  I then added a doorway between them (with all of it's trim removed).

 

Resize the doorway until it meets the pass-throughs. 

Grab the center handle of the doorway and slightly move the whole doorway over the offending wall of one of the pass-throughs.

Grab the opposite sizing handle of the doorway and drag it slightly over the other pass-through wall.

You might have to play with the pass-through handles as well, until it works.

I think this works for Suite, and it will keep the base molding on the walls.

[solver]

One I did several months ago. Just like Jo_Ann suggested, 2 pass-throughs and a doorway.

 

I seem to remember changing the width of something directly in the Specification Dialog.

 

 

[RobynKS]

Wow that video is a great help David. From an architects view point I would have complicated it with structural thinking. Mmmm food for thought. I looked at her sketch and thought well in real life at those dimensions that cannot be done in dry wall. LOL So I am assuming the beam will actually sit on a noggin  inside the outside wall and then be covered with Gyprock????

[nihonrdnk]

All,

  Thank you of the quick responses.  The video was as well as the comments are spectacular and i will be trying them today.  I will repost the results later when I have successfully completed it.

 

 As far as the structural thinking for my question, I drew a quick sketch of what I wanted the walls to look like in HD, but I left out the wooden columns that currently exist supporting the beam across the top,  that being said, I know that it will have to have support to cover the span.  Our goal currently with software is draw our house as it is (current project), and then draw it visually the way we would like it to be (next HD project)  then using my wife's skills (she is a civil engineer) and those of an architect as well as the physical blue prints we have for the home when it was built, review what changes we can actually make and retain structural integrity

 

Thank you all very much for your help