How do I adjust height of house to match my terrain?

[mgianzero]

I built my home with HDP Version 2020.  But now I wanted to include my terrain and landscaping.  So I added a terrain perimeter and tried to add elevation lines.  But when I set my elevation line to 130ft, the terrain ends up burying my house, which makes sense.  So how to I raise my entire home to this level so the terrain and house sit at the same level?

 

I tried selection floor level 0 (my foundation) main room and changing the level of the floor to 130', but HDP seems to ignore this value and resets it back to zero (0).  (See pic #1 that shows this).

 

I've also included a 3D pic of what my home looks like when compared to my terrain.  I want to place my home on top of the terrain, like expected.  (See 2nd pic).

 

My home sits on a monolithic slab I'd include my HDP file, but my file size is >25MB and I'm not sure how to easily attach a "skinny" version of my plans to help demonstrate my point.

 

Also, I've searched HomeTalk (and even Chief Talk) but can't seem to find the answer to my question (although I'm not sure what to search for).

 

 

Marc

[DavidJPotter]

Terrain, as a feature was added around the year 2,000 and is always treated as an add on feature that you set relative to the structure's floor height (zero inches) of the first floor. You do this by opening the "Terrain Specification Dialog - Building Pad", you commonly un-check "Automatic" so you can then raise or lower the terrain to the model to obtain the correct orientation of the terrain to the building. Commonly the lowest point of the front elevation is at the bottom of the Garage door (which is commonly just above the grade).

 

Your posted image appears to be on a rather slanted terrain lot but usually the front of the lot, next to the garage and front door will be flattened a bit to make ingress and egress easier so you may have to flatten the terrain a bit just at the front and then adjust the terrain to fit the house (the same thing contractors do with bulldozers and  other earth moving equipment on a building site.

 

DJP

[mgianzero]

Well, actually this is a HDP model of an existing home which we have already started to remodel and I wanted to use the absolute numbers they had here as opposed to subtracting out the level of my home which is what I think you are suggesting here.  I have terrain data that I received from a survey I had done about 15 years ago and it turns out that they made a lot of mistakes in the making of this data file.  But I felt there was enough data to get the overall shape of my land plot.  I thought, instead of importing the data directly (it never seems to look right when I did this) I could just copy over some elevation lines.  So I started doing this with this terrain you see here, but I can't seem to get it to look right.  It was either that or try to acquire new terrain data from something like Google Earth - which I was in the process of learning how to do. 

 

I've attached my terrain data if you would be so kind as to suggest how I utilize this data in my HDP model.  I don't need an exact match of the terrain data for our remodel, but enough of the back and side hillside for expanding our home with a detached garage which may require additional retaining walls I need to know about. 

 

Again, my HDP model is too large to upload to the website (almost 44MG) which I do not know how to strip down easily to use as an example for HomeTalk forum.  

 

1898 Lemon Hghts survey.dwg

[LawB10]

Use The Zip tool in Windows.

 

Open Explorer, find the file, highlight it ,don't click on it, then click the Zip icon in the upper left corner.

[mgianzero]

DIdn't even think of that - a zip file.  But I thought HDP needs all the textures and libraries in order to work properly, no?

 

Anyways, here it is - attached.  Mind you, this is my plan without the terrain data - just the terrain perimeter.

 

So how do I place my house where it shows in the DWG terrain data and yet at the correct altitude?

Remodel11_(backyard_ret._walls).plan.zip

[DavidJPotter]

DJP

[mgianzero]

David,

 

I really appreciate your helping here, and I see what you did regarding adjusting my terrain level to the height of my home.  And yes, my living area is actually sunken from the rest of the house on the slab.  So thank you for that help.  Sorry about those pony walls - I was trying to draw terrain walls with some sort of footings but I didn’t find the terrain wall feature as versatile as a pony wall.  

 

However, this was not really my question.  I am mostly adding an additional detached garage near my original garage and needed to know about grading, retaining walls needed, etc for my addition as well as wanting to do some additional landscaping along my hillside.

 

So I wanted to include some of the actual terrain data taken from a survey I had years ago.  Unfortunately, the surveyor made lots of mistakes in their measurements. (I attached the file here again).  But, I felt I could extract some of the terrain data to get a somewhat accurate representation of the hillside.  My idea was to copy some of the contour data as elevation lines into my terrain as opposed to importing all the contour lines since many are not correct.

 

Also, it would be nice to raise the entire home pad to the actual altitude that the house is built at (roughly 135 ft I believe) and include the absolute values of the terrain data too.  Isn’t this the way architects do it with HDP or do they place house at 0” and subtract real terrain data from this height?   I was having trouble specifying the exact location and orientation of the house since the dimension tool wasn’t working as described to move the terrain perimeter.  (You can actually see the house footprint in the terrain data.)  I also couldn’t get my terrain to lay flat up to and under the house pad properly.  How do I do this?  

 

 

 

Marc

 

1898 Lemon Hghts survey.dwg

[Jo_Ann]

The first pic of your terrain looks kind of unrealistic, and the plan file you posted leaves the terrain flat.

Maybe if you specified what the top slope of the terrain is supposed to be  (assuming the bottom slope is 0" and the house is supposed to be 135' up), someone could offer more solutions.  Too much guessing.  NO dwg please.

My guess:

[mgianzero]

Perhaps I should repost my question another way as I don't think I'm making myself clear here and, therefore, not getting my questions answered. 

 

I have a house that is already built (we are just remodeling it) that I am trying to place it on existing terrain because we are redesigning outside as well as inside.  So I can't just move things around (make garage at a certain level, etc. in relation to plan).  It needs to be what the plans say. 

 

I have survey data in a DWG file (which I want to use and NOT ignore) which actually displays contour lines with depth data if you simply open the file inside of HDP as I have done in my attached file.  But when I import this data as elevation data, the house not only gets moved off of the terrain, but I am having trouble specifying exactly the location of the house compared to the terrain perimeter laterally using the dimension tool "point-to-point" or "end-to-end" settings so that I can move the home to exactly where I want it.

 

I've included another plan (more simplified plan than before but same footprint) showing the terrain imported and offset.  I've also included another plan which shows all the elevations and contour lines (same file as before) so there's no guessing on what it's supposed to look like.

 

See my problem now?  How do I correct for this?

Remodel (terrain w: basic building only).plan

1898 Lemon Hghts survey.dwg

Imported survey (all data, no TP or elevation interpreted).plan

[solver]

Once your terrain is in place, you will want to group select it and all its features and rotate them so the house remains drawn square with the screen.

 

Group select the house -- this is easier if you draw the terrain and house so they do not overlap, then move it on to the terrain.

 

You can place a Point on the terrain and use Point-to-point move. read about Edit Area for use in selecting the house.

 

Once the house is in place, open the terrain and adjust the Z position of the terrain relative to the house.

[Jo_Ann]

Maybe this is simpler?  Try it and see if it works for you.
Is the plan "Remodel (terrain w basic building only)"  have the correct terrain elevations that you want to use and the house is in the correct position on the terrain, but sitting at the wrong elevation?
If you want it to look like the pic, then...

FIRST you need to fix the house.
#1. Reset floor 1 (C) value to "0" (ceiling at 95 5/8?).
#2. Delete level 0 foundation, then rebuild the monolithic slab.
#3. Now open the terrain perimeter and set the "subfloor height above terrain" to 1620".
#4. The house will be floating above the terrain.  You need to place a "flat terrain region" around the house footprint.  Set it's elevation to 1615".

Beyond that, you need to shape the flat region around the house, particularly at the back of the house up against the retaining wall.

 

 

[mgianzero]

21 hours ago, Jo_Ann said:

Maybe this is simpler?  Try it and see if it works for you.
Is the plan "Remodel (terrain w basic building only)"  have the correct terrain elevations that you want to use and the house is in the correct position on the terrain, but sitting at the wrong elevation?
If you want it to look like the pic, then...

FIRST you need to fix the house.
#1. Reset floor 1 (C) value to "0" (ceiling at 95 5/8?).
#2. Delete level 0 foundation, then rebuild the monolithic slab.
#3. Now open the terrain perimeter and set the "subfloor height above terrain" to 1620".
#4. The house will be floating above the terrain.  You need to place a "flat terrain region" around the house footprint.  Set it's elevation to 1615".

Beyond that, you need to shape the flat region around the house, particularly at the back of the house up against the retaining wall.

 

 

 

Okay, this is much more helpful, thank you.  Now I can at least get the home at the correct elevation.

 

However, now I'm struggling with "you need to shape the flat region around the house, particularly at the back of the house up against the retaining wall." 

This is one area where I think the survey data is not exactly correct. 

 

If you look at my survey data without displaying the topography in my file called "Imported survey (all data, no TP or elevation interpreted).plan" that I included previously, you will notice that the entire area around the home (specifically where there is a designated brick wall in pink) should be flat.  And the rounded plantars areas behind the home that I attempted to draw in other plans should be true retaining walls (roughly 4 feet tall) that comes right up to the flat area around the home. 

 

But I can't seem to get that to work.  Can you show me how to place this house on the terrain that is flat adjacent to the home and up to the retaining walls in the back?  Here's a pic of the same survey data.

[Jo_Ann]

You shape a terrain region polyline the same way you shaped your terrain perimeter.

[mgianzero]

31 minutes ago, Jo_Ann said:

You shape a terrain region polyline the same way you shaped your terrain perimeter.

 

 

And what about drawing the retaining walls?  They draw on top of the terrain, but I don't want that.  I want a flat terrain around the house where the walls are and a true retaining wall in the backyard.

 

This is becoming very frustrating.  Perhaps I should just hire someone to do what I ask.

[Jo_Ann]

Draw the terrain retaining walls.  THEN, shape the flat terrain region (that you already placed) up against and conforming to the house-side surface of the terrain retaining wall. If you have drawn the retaining wall in the correct place, it should show to be about 4' tall.

 

It looks like a curb retaining wall could be used on the front yard.  Curb walls can be height edited.

 

[LawB10]

How about uploading pictures of the house, the front, rear and both sides, that way it can be seen how it is.

 

It's really a guessing game right now.

[mgianzero]

8 hours ago, Jo_Ann said:

Draw the terrain retaining walls.  THEN, shape the flat terrain region (that you already placed) up against and conforming to the house-side surface of the terrain retaining wall. If you have drawn the retaining wall in the correct place, it should show to be about 4' tall.

 

It looks like a curb retaining wall could be used on the front yard.  Curb walls can be height edited.

 

 

YES  ....   that looks more like my terrain, along with the "curb walls" you use in the front yard!  Although I was going to use the terrain wall (non-retaining) type instead.  What's the difference?

 

Any ways, I've designed and even remodeling a portion of the inside of the house with HDP - kinda quirky but not that bad.  However, I've been spending way too much time on the terrain without much progress.  There's got to be an easier way!

I didn't think the terrain was that complicated - just a slope on the frontside, flat all around the house and a retaining wall (with some curved plantars) in the back.  But trying to flatten the terrain up to and including the curved retaining walls seems unnecessarily complicated.  Why do I need to flatten an area if I just set two adjacent elevation lines to the same elevation?

 

If someone like to take this plan and help clean it up, that would be terrific! - perhaps even show me a screencast on how you do it even.

 

I'm thinking I really need to take a class or need some sort of direction here.  I find the documentation on terrain design to be minimal.

Remodel_11_(backyard_ret._walls_w_terrain).plan.zip

[Jo_Ann]

You are getting closer.

The flat region should look like this after you have shaped it.

 

[mgianzero]

14 hours ago, Jo_Ann said:

You are getting closer.

The flat region should look like this after you have shaped it.

 

So I need to draw the lines for the walls as well as the flat region to the identical shape?  Why can't the retaining walls just be retaining walls and literally retain from the position on the hill they are placed?  Why do I have to explicitly specify a flat region when I have the same elevation lines adjacent to each other?  What's the point of this?

 

And does the flat region need to be set to the outer, inner or middle of the walls?  Or does it matter?

 

Sorry but I'm not a big fan of how HDP does their terrain interface.  I take it that Chief Architect is the same way, huh?

 

And how can I screen cast to show my difficulties?  Is this part of HDP or separate software?

[Vintagehotdog]

I'm new, but I had the same problem as shown in pic 2 of the original post. My house below the terrain. I had drawn the house first then added terrain points at actual heights. In my case starting at 800' above sea level. Took care to add points around the house. So my house showed up 800' below the terrain!

While Jo-Ann showed how to fix it and maybe mgianzero had to do that I found I simply had to follow step 3. Open Terrain Specification... and add (in inches) 800' to the existing number (48" in my case)  to Subfloor Height Above Terrain (9648" in my case) and BOOM my house was at the correct elevation!

Thank you