"Ceiling values may not be changed..."

[Keith_K]

"...as the floor above this room has varying heights".

This is the message I get when I try to change the ceiling heights of the rooms on the ground floor of a section of my plan and the fields I want to change are greyed out. I don't understand it.

I have painstakingly checked the values of all the rooms of the first floor in Room Specification > Structure and they are all identical (e.g. Ceiling (B), Floor (C), Rough ceiling, Finished Ceiling, Ceiling below (H) etc).

Why then am I getting this message?

[Katalyst777]

I think this is something where in order to help you'll want to upload the plan to Dropbox and post the link here so we can see the settings.

[Keith_K]

Oh my heavens! Another fancy wotsit that I know nothing about. I have downloaded Dropbox and copied the plan file to it but haven't a clue as to how to post the/a link on here.

[Keith_K]

*Holds breath*

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kqnom7x51v...024.03.13.plan

If the link works I am wanting to change the ground floor ceiling heights in the rooms within the large square part on the left hand side of the plan.

[Katalyst777]

I know you said that you checked, but right now looking at the plan in the trial version of Pro 2014, there are differing settings for the rooms on Floor 2 which are actually preventing you from changing the Ceiling Height on Floor 1 (like with the closet area room in the "Guest Suite" area having a different Floor height value).

If you want to reset these all back to default quickly in Pro, select Edit> Reset to Defaults. Move the Default Scope radio button to All Floors, then check the boxes next to Floor Heights and Ceiling Heights and click OK

[Keith_K]

Thanks for your response, Kat.

Yeah, I did check. I wrote all the heights for each room on a piece of paper and cross checked each one except for the lift shaft (which is what I assume you mean by "closet" but in between the time I posted the Dropbox link and reading your reply I had actually gone back and changed the height for the lift shaft as well.

That, however, didn't solve the problem and further investigation this morning has shown that the chimney flue surround in the bottom corner of the guest bedroom - see attachment - and which I created on a soffit over the cooker range in the kitchen is what is causing the problem. All attempts to change the heights to match those of the other rooms have failed as when I click "OK" on my changes I see them immeditaly go back to what the software decides they should be. So I don't know what to do now.

The problem with setting all the heights back to default is that the ceiling heights are not uniform throughout the plan. For instance I want the ground floor in the main big block to be 2700mm, the firt floor in the same block to be 2500mm. The library/study link between the main block and the bedroom block I want as 2700mm and then both the ground and first floors of the bedroom block to be 2500mm.

If I set everything to default I know that if I then tried to change them to what I want them to be the software will just do it's own thing because yesterday I successfully changed the ceiling heights of the right hand garage block but today, when I went to check them, they had been again changed by the software and I got the message which is to subject line of this thread.

[Katalyst777]

Your Floor Defaults aren't set correctly for what you want, based on your description.

You should go in to your Floor 1 Defaults and set them to the highest Finished Ceiling Height you'll have on the first floor.

Do the same on Floor 2.

Then reset to defaults, and go back through all the rooms on Floor 1 and set their Finished Ceiling heights to be lower, if that's what you need in those particular rooms.

Repeat for Floor 2 and you should be all set.

[Keith_K]

OK, I'll give that a try as I've got a nice bottle of booze in the cupboard to give me strength.

I assume that in order to do this I'll have to name the rooms according to the American list provided by the software drop down list and not what I would actually call them as a UK resident, bring up the plan for the ground floor, go to the Room Default Settings and change them then bring up the plan for the first floor, do the same again and then once the defaults have been set go to each room and manually change them to what I would prefer them to be.

[Katalyst777]

Where did you get that from, I didn't say anything about naming the rooms or room defaults?

[Keith_K]

Where did you get that from?

I don't quite know myself. I must have seen or read something that wasn't there and, judging from other things that happened yesterday, I can only assume that for some odd reason I was still being affected by the anaesthetic I had on Monday.

I spent 90 minuted before going to bed last night and a further 45 minutes this morning going through each and every room changing the ceiling heights where required and doing a "save" after each and every individual change. When last I looked the manoeuvre seems to have been successful and all are now as I want them. O joy! O rapture!

Let's hope that they stay that way.

[chillin24-7]

Do you know Architectural Home Designer 2014? I too am having problems with my floor heights being all wonky. I must have done something wrong when I tried to customize the ceiling heights instead of using the standard defaults. my real ceiling heights should be 10, 9, 8 feet beginning on the first floor of a three story house. I gave up and just decided I would stick with the standard 9 foot defaults...that did not work either. I keep getting the message that ceiling values can't be changed because the floors above have varying heights. I am praying this can be fixed as I don't want to start again from scratch. Any help or advices would be greatly appreciated.

[David J. Potter]

the default setting for the floor height of the first floor is always "zero inches". The other floor heights are set relative to that stable datum for the basement and upper floors.

Explain exactly what you did or tried to do that has resulted in unwanted results please?

You set the majority floor and ceiling height in "Default Settings - Floor - Structure Tab - Ceiling and Floor Heights" per floor, if you do not change those "out of the box" settings the software will ALWAYS tend to try to follow whatever those values are set to in Default Settings and can be counted upon to undo or override any local room dialog box settings. The software follows its Default settings and NOTHING else, ever.

DJP