How to place pocket door vertically in the wall?

[Paladine]

Hello!

 

I have been planning an office room for my new house, and a solution that I don't know how to call it even in my native language, let alone english so I don't know if this is even remotely common or not :)

 

The plan is, that this office room would be located next to living room, just behind the couch, so as I normally work at home, I could watch TV at the same time if I want to (TV is located just across that sofa on the other side of living room). As you can see from the picture, there's a hole in the wall. But there are situations when family is at home and is making noise, and in that situation I need to close the door of my office room AND close this hole in the wall. So I have planned some sort of system that works by pressing a button, and that button pulls up a "pocket door" from the floor and all the way up unti that hole is closed. Another button then lowers the door again to the floor (here in the plan the hole is 80cm high, and there is also 80 cm from the floor to the bottom of that frame, so it should fit inside the wall there).

 

So, I have basically two questions. One is: what an earth this kind of system is called in english? :D So I could google some existing solutions...

 

Second, How can I visualize this in Home Designer Pro 2020? Pocket doors open only horizontally, and I cannot use that solution because the hole is wider than available wall on either side, so when I open the "door", it has to open either above or below the hole. I am thinking it might be safer if it opens below in case something goes wrong, so that the door doesn't just fall down on me if I peek my head through the hole there :)

 

I have tried (just for visualization) to use garage doors with door style as a slab, and it sort of works so that in 3D I can see it either opened or closed, but would be nicer if I could set the percentage as how open it acually is, like with pocket doors.

 

 

[DavidJPotter]

A door such as you describe does not exist in the software and in my thirty years in the Building Business, I have never, until today, heard of such a device. That said, what I WOULD DO  would be to place a pass-through to create the opening and then some (like a custom slab object or reshaped cabinet soffit object) to emulate, look like, represent the door whether it slides up or down.

What language do you commonly speak? A lot of what we do is to make something right, say what it is using text and place that into Construction Documents so Builders and Sub Contractors then know our client's desires and intentions. So an appearance need only look like what it is supposed to be to be graphically useful because we say what it is using text tools. Absolute perfection is not what we create, what we do create is perfect, useful and informative COMMUNICATION. 

 

DJP

[Paladine]

Wow, didn't thought a sort of hatch in the wall that you can open and close is such a rare thing, but apparently it is! I had already thought about having to custom-make it, with whatever suitable piece of wood etc that would go up and down when button is pressed, and thought that I would use linear actuators to push the "door" up and down, you know, the same things that some use with floor hatch to cellar, for example.

 

Hmm, seems like custom slab object or cabinet soffit are not dynamic, so I cannot open and close them in Home Designer 3D view, like I can with drawers and doors for example.

 

My native language is Finnish, but I thought if I knew what that kind of system that I am looking for is in english, then I would probably find pictures etc of real-life solutions with google and then I will get an idea what that is called in Finnish at least by showing that to some local constructor  Or whatever it is called, then it doesn't matter anymore if constructor gets the idea what needs to be built  But of course what you say is right, as I would show pictures of it open, closed and maybe half-open, and that would be enough, but it would just be nice to show to my wife for example in Home Designer how that thing actually works when I show her the house in 3D view

 

EDIT: Oh, I guess I got now what you meant by adding a custom slab object for example. I guess you mean I would place it inside a wall and then while looking at the wall in 3D, I could just drag it larger or smaller, so it looks like the opening is open, closed or half-open depending on how I drag the one side of that slab object?

Edited October 8, 2020 by Paladine
Forgot something

[DavidJPotter]

You can communicate a "Feature Change or Addition" at the Home Designer website but I doubt they would spend a lot of time on an object that is only used in Europe (I could be wrong of course). In all Chief Architect and Home Designer software titles there are NO (none) such animated symbols or objects, you can manually, by way of a door specification dialog - Options Tab, show the door open or closed and that is it my friend.

 

DJP

[Paladine]

Yeah, I don't think a feature change or addition is needed, I was just wondering if there was some hidden option somewhere that I was not aware of, where I could force a pocket door (for example) placed sideways on a wall so that it would open vertically instead of horizontally, as I could have used that to emulate this "in-room window with door". But seems like Home Designer do not allow it as no-one would in real life place a door that way in the wall. It doesn't seem to support out-of-the-box thinking in that sense  Thank you anyway!

[barthmv]

you could use a pass-through, place a soffit into it and then for the visual of partial opening pull down the top of the soffit for appearance.  Not great but it works.

[Paladine]

Yep, that's what DavidJPotter suggested as well and that's pretty easy to do. And it works, although it's pretty difficult to select the soffit again in 3D once I have pulled the soffit down so that the pass-through is open, because clicking mouse either selects the opening or the wall after that, not sure how I can find the soffit in 3D anymore after that. Or, in 2D either for that matter...