Sloping terrain

[Lorelle]

I'm working on designing a home with a sloping landscape. It is level at the top (front) of the property and then slopes down at varying inclines to the back (bottom) of the property. The first floor is actually like a daylight basement and the front is covered with dirt and the ground level is actually at the second floor level and there is another floor above that. The "basement" level features the greatest incline with it covered at the front and totally revealed at the bottom.

I'm having problems trying to tweak the landscape to cover the basement floor and then slope down to reveal it at the back. Do I use hill, raised, lowered, I'm confused.

Is there a way to tweak the landscape in Full View mode? That would help a LOT.

Thanks,

[Kilgore Trout]

For this kind of house, I prefer to use the elevation lines instead of the hill and valley tools because they give you much better control. The elevation lines will let you set the height to what ever you want and the terrain will then go through those lines. One thing to make sure is that you don't have lines crossing each other because this will give you strange results. Also, you can't make the terrain change too quickly (like when trying to model a retaining wall or a cliff) because this just won't work well.

The program will automatically make a flat spot for the house on the terrain. In order to make a walk out basement, you will need to select the terrain and uncheck the "flatten pad" box. This will make the terrain go through your elevation lines and ignore the house. The 6.04 update, which you can get through the web site, has another option in the terrain dialog. You can raise or lower the height of the building which can make it easier to get things right.

You might want to practice using the elevation lines on a blank plan first before you start fooling around with the one that has your house.

[Lorelle]

I have been following your instructions and messing around with the elevation lines much to my frustration. Then I double checked and I have version 6.03 and not 6.04. I just downloaded the update a few days ago and now there is a new one. Well, I thought I had the latest. So I'm downloading it now.

Can you tell me EXACTLY how to access the function to raise and lower the house into the terrain? It is really frustrating to not be able to adjust the terrain through the graphic 3D view like you can cabinets and other features. Working with the landscape feature is really brutal and inefficient. I think I have all the elevations right and set and then it goes to build and I have all kinds of things that I didn't put in that cause little high points amid valleys that aren't supposed to be there. Very frustrating.

Thanks for the help! The rest of the program is fairly easy, it's just the terrain and roofing I'm having troubles with.

Thanks,

Lorelle

[Lorelle]

Just so you should know, I downloaded the 6.04 update twice and the second time ran it with almost everything turned off (but not in safe mode) and it crashed each time.

Any other ideas?

Thanks,

Lorelle