cannot connect patio walls to a lowered floor

I am at the stage of making a drawing of my house before I show my architect the changes I want to have made, using a second drawing. I have Home Designer Pro 9.0.

My house has a lounge area with a lowered floor (a 1 foot drop). Outside of the lounge is a concrete floored patio with a low wall around it. I have created the lowered floor in the lounge, no problem, just specified a lowered floor in a room that I made using an invisible wall in one place.

I am totally stuck on the next part of the representation. To make the patio I have specified a slab lowered to the level of the lower floor in the lounge, that is there fine. The 3-D views show that. I can no way represent the low wall properly. I have tried using railing and can successfully put a brick rendered face on it, but absolutely no way can I find out how to lower the railing so that it lands on the slab. Everything I have tried leaves the low wall floating with its base at the higher floor level. I have spent about three hours on this now and cannot see what to do next. As a bye the bye, I haven't been able to find a way of specifying the height of the railing either.

If it would help to post some sort of view of where I have got to, I will do that. I have tried putting invisible walls round the patio, but it does not seem to want to make a room (because I believe that if I had been able to make room I could have specified the lowered floor height). I have tried making a separate drawing of a lowered slab and putting exterior walls round it and interior walls inside those, but none of this seems to make a room either. Is there something about slabs that I don't know?

I really do need help to get past this logjam. Any help will be most welcome.

Jon Duke

You'll need to change your approach toward getting the walls to touch the floor. Rather than use a lowered slab, enclose the area with either invisible walls or visible walls/rails which will allow you to define a room. In the Structures tab of the Room Specification dialog, you can turn off the roof and ceiling options. You should then be able to lower the floor elevation of the room to where you want it. If you poke around a bit more in the Room Specification dialog, you should be able to find where to change the floor type to a slab.

To change railing heights, open the Railing Specification dialog and on the Newels/Balusters tab you can quickly see where to change the Railing Height.

Good luck. Hope this helps. :)

Dear Elovia,

Many thanks for your speedy help. It worked straight away. I was hooked on thinking that the slab was the thing to start with.

Jon Duke :D