material calcs gone wrong

[rfcomm2k]

I have a drawing that was provided in response to my problem creating a room within an attic space. I refined it by adding some walls to delineate living space from actual attic space at the eaves. I then generated a material list.
First glaring question is where is 246 linear feet of 25 1/2" wall?
Second question is, where did all my wallboard go? between the "siding" and the "wallboard" sections there are only 25 sheets of 4' x 8' x 1/2" drywall. By my estimate there should be a MINIMUM of 66 sheets of 1/2" drywall, and that is a very conservative estimate.
What I discovered when I created a cross section elevation is that the north and south walls are only measuring 25 1/2" high, even though in the elevation and in perspective view they appear to be approx. 80" high. So I guess that accounts for the substantial amount of missing drywall, although these two walls only account for 75 1/2 feet of the 25.5" walls.
It would appear that in order to design rooms in attics, and possibly other odd shaped rooms (cathedral ceilings, A frame cottages, etc) you need to fool the program into accepting certain designs that don't actually calculate properly.
I know I bought the DIY version of the product, and I have no desire to upgrade to the high end one. But if a product is going to allow you to design a room with a cathedral ceiling you should be able to calculate reasonably well what material is required.
As a test I build a small 1 floor building 12' x 12' x 96" inside dimensions with a hip roof. Using standard 4x8 sheets that is 12 sheets of drywall. So I made a material list from area and set my cursor just outside the room and highlighted everything except the rooflines. I was told 13 sheets of drywall, not 12. So then I made a new list by room and this came up with 12 sheets. Where did the extra sheet come from? Certainly not from the eaves, or the exterior siding.
Well, now that I have vented enough lets get down to my actual question which is:
How do you REALLY build a room in the attic of a house with 1 floor plus the attic. Downstairs measures (rounding) 38' x 26' with 18" eaves and a ridge beam at 12' 3" from top of floor joists to bottom of beam. Gable roof, with no ceiling in attic, just drywall attached to underside of roof. Anyone interested in seeing the actual plan should explain to me how to upload it. I have zipped it down to 588K but the limit apparently is 100K. I will happily email it to you.

[Katalyst777]

I'm having a really hard time following your post to figure out what it is exactly that you're asking.

If I had to guess, based on your statement of, "How do your REALLY build a room in the attic of a house with 1 floor plus the attic" then I would recommend checking out this Help Database article.

Article Number 358: How to build a one and a half story roof automatically

If this doesn't address your question, is there any way you can simplify what you're asking to make it more clear?

[rfcomm2k]

Kat, I followed the tutorial #358 and it looked simple enough. Now I am going to do it the same way using the correct dimensions, etc and see what happens. Thank you for this advice. I have in a spreadsheet (Excel) an estimate of the drywall, just as a reference point. I know that for the amount of wall space I have in these rooms there should be at least 66 sheets of 1/2" 4x8 drywall. I would prefer to use the material estimater in the program instead of my spreadsheet because using the spreadsheet everything needs to be entered manually for each wall section (length, height, finish both sides or 1 side, etc), in addition to all the other materials needed (studs, sheathing, subfloor, etc). And when I am doing all that manually something always gets forgotten, whether it be hardware for doors or joint compound for walls.

I really do like the program. So much so that I upgraded from Architect to Pro within a week.

Unfortunately, I am a bit of a perfectionist, and I am also cheap, which is why I cannot justify the high end products like Chief or Autocad

[rfcomm2k]

OK Kat, I think I see what I need to do to correct this. The actual building is not a "story and a half, it is a single story, but has a tall attic space (12-12 pitch). The 4' high interior walls do not exist at the same location as the first floor walls, these exist approx. 4' in from there. Thus, a first floor 26 feet deep will have the second floor only 18 feet deep. So I am going to try this again and when I specify the second floor temporary ceiling height I will go for 0", or at least only 1". I will let you know how it turns out.

[rfcomm2k]

Well Kat, my idea worked fine until I wanted to build stairs. Could you try this for me and see if you can understand what I am doing wrong?
Start by following the instructions in the link you gave me about 1 1/2 story roof. But when you specify the ceiling height make it 1" and do not change it back. Then build two interior walls about 4' in from the outside walls at top and bottom of drawing.
Now:
1. Build a14' wide (east-west) x 10' long room within floor 2 in the northwest corner using interior full height walls. Directions assume top of screen is north.
2. Open a Perspective view of this new room on the second floor looking to the south (should be a blank wall)
3. Go to floor 1 and turn on reference floor.
4. Construct a set of stairs using the southern wall of the room you just built as the north wall of the stairwell.
5. Click in the stairs and then click the automatic stairwell tool.
6. Go back to floor 2 and observe how this stairwell has mangled the full height southern wall of the 2nd floor room.

WHAT AM I DOING WRONG??!!?!??

[Lamina]

Can you attach a picture of what you are getting?

I tried to follow your instructions but you mention that you make the ceiling height 1” and don’t change it. The programming of standard walls have them continuing until they hit the ceiling height or a roof plane. If you have the ceiling height set to 1 inch your walls will only be 1 inch high because your ceiling plane will cut them at that height.

So I turned off auto rebuild roof and raised the ceiling height to the default 95 5/8” and finished the steps you mention. This is what I get:





Is this not what you are getting?

[rfcomm2k]

@ Lamina, your drawing is close to what I am looking for, but my stairs are a straight run. Also, my roof plane is the ceiling all the way to the peak.
I am curious to see what the full height wall next to the stairs looks like, because every time I tried to build stairs next to a full height wall the stairwell mangled the appearance of the wall.
I am not sure why I chose 1" for ceiling height, other than to be sure there was no ceiling appearing in my space. I will re-draw it again and see what happens when I choose a default height. I suspect it will look like your drawing, but that is not what we want.

[Lamina]

If you don't want a ceiling plane, remove the checkmark from "Ceiling over this room" on the structure tab of the room specification dialog.

can you attach a screen shot of how the stairwell is mangling the appearance of the wall?

[rfcomm2k]

Well, I tried it again and set the ceiling to default then unchecked the box for ceiling over this room for the two rooms. And I am sad to say that it apparently worked! Sad because this implies that I made a mistake, and that would be the second mistake already this year! LOL.

I also stuck a stairwell in there and for some strange reason it did not mangle up the wall as it had previously.

I ran a material list and compared it to my manual estimate. Manually (measured length & height of walls, adjusted for partial angles, etc) I has 45 sheets of 1/2" drywall. The program estimates 42 sheets. Good to know this.

Is there any way to assign additional properties to an object that will show up in the material list? For example, can I assign Joint compound to a wall style so that for every square foot I need x amount of compound? I realize that for a normal wall this is negligible, but factor in 2000 sq ft of wall and that number creeps up. And if I am applying a faux finish to a wall to mimic limestone for example, that makes the joint compound number jump dramatically.

I would like to know how David Potter creates his little videos. I think it would be useful for me (and others) to be able to share that way exactly what they are doing so that smart people like yourself can spot the errors and tell us about them.

Thank you both for your input. It has been helpful.

[Lamina]

The best resource for learning the materials list is going to be the reference manual. Luckily for us it has a variety of search options.

Click on the little blue “?” on the top toolbar in Home Designer, this opens the Home designer pro Help and on the Index tab type in ‘materials list’ in the keyword search box. In the resulting list, click on ‘Editing’ and then click Display.

This will give you information on adding/changing items.

I also recommend running a search for ‘Components’ and ‘Master List’ as these items contribute to the materials list in a significant way.

[rfcomm2k]

I have been into the Master material list and it is empty. So I went to the Library browser and found all the various items there. But how do I get these into the master list so that I can apply pricing, etc without having to do this for every plan I make?

[Lamina]

it's a bit of a project setting up your first master list. you have to use the update to master on every material. If you run a search in the Help for Master List and read up on the Update to Master section it will tell you how to start creating your own master list.

[Katalyst777]

I don't think Architectural has a "Master List" unless this was something new added in the 2012 software programs and they got it wrong on the Comparison Matrix?

*Master List allows you to store and manage commonly-used material prices

That feature only shows with a dot in the "Pro" column.

[rfcomm2k]

@ Kat, I updated my Signature, I have HD Pro now also.