Need some help with split level house

[Madz]

Hi All

Am slowly building up my skills in Home Designer (I have worked through some cheaper ones up to Pro 2012 which seems to be a good fit for what I need).

While the program might be capable, the user is letting it down a bit at the moment! I'm trying to draw up our current house for a garage extension and could really use some advice. The help file has to be the best I've ever seen with any software package, however nothing beats specific advice sometimes. If I can figure out how I'll try to attach a couple of pics.

The house is on a sloping block, with bearers and joists sitting on piers. You walk in at ground level at the front of the house, but by the back you are up essentially at a second story. There is access under the house to the subfloor area - it's a dirt floor and you can walk around all the piers. So far so good. I drew up all the rooms etc as floor 1, now want to represent the sloping ground, piers and subfloor/foundation area. The catch is there is a room downstairs under the back part of the house (where there's room for a second story) - this room is sitting on a slab. There's a door from this room into the subfloor area under the front of the house.

So firstly I'm a bit confused now what should be floor 1 and what should be foundation (floor 0). I think maybe I made a mistake drawing the main house as floor 1 - maybe that should have been the room underneath, so I've now got the main floor as floor 2 and the room downstairs as floor 1, but that has made creating a foundation very hard as it is only auto-created off floor 1, which for me now has a slab. Argh. I have tried to create something following the lines using floor 2 as a reference but really am struggling. Any advice welcome.

To try and get the ground levels right, I've unticked auto calculation elevation and manually set an elevation (under the terrain specification). Not sure if that was the right approach.

I have some other areas I'm struggling with but will leave those to another time.





Thanks
Mick
Home Designer Pro 2012

[David J. Potter]

You have proceeded correctly so far as far as I can tell from what you have written above. Doing the first floor first is the usual operating procedure in this software.
Think of "Floors" in this software merely as levels of creation as opposed to something fixed and strictly defined in place, I mean yes part of your lower floor has a foundation and some of it does not but they coexist together within the same level of the 3D model (plan file) just as they do in the "real" world. The main difference of spaces are those defined by enclosed walls which then provide a "Room Specification Dialog" but that condition merely gives you greater control over that area (when is a room, not a "room" in other words). You use the tools available to create conditions for portrayals some are actual structual rooms and some are merely specialized spaces with a specific appearance.

DJP

[Madz]

Hi David

Many thanks for your reply. So if you were drawing this house, can you give me an indication what you'd have on each "floor". I think I initially tried to have the main house/living area on floor 1 - then generate the foundation off this (so the program created floor 0) then I tried to add the room underneath onto this floor 0 - but I think from memory it wouldn't let me add the slab under it then (i guess it saw that as a foundation under a foundation so to speak?). So that's why I've now tried putting it at floor 1. But now I don't know what to put under the main house (now floor 2) on floor 1? It's not a normal room in the sense that the height changes throughout it's more of a subfloor in that regard. I've seen the tutorial around where you can add a surface to give the dirt floor appearance and the the piers it looks like you have to create just as visual elements as opposed to the program creating them as structural elements - but it's the kind of room structure itself I'm unclear of.

Thanks
Michael

[David J. Potter]

Foundations can be portrayed by way of the Wall Specification Dialog - Foundation Tab in terms of adding the appearance of grade beams and footings (one actually needs to be a State Licensed Structural Engineer for such annotations to be taken seriously by building permit authorities though, no matter how well it might be drawn).
In a virtual house on virtual Earth, one can have things merely hang in the thin air (gravity and physics have no sway in a virtual environment), so appearance is the rule as opposed to "reality". Such things need to emulate reality of course but specifics are better left to those licensed by the State to adjudicate. Get it is close as you can, explain objects with text so that it communicates to builders and engineers as to what you want to achieve and then let the Pros do what the pros are licensed to do.

DJP

[Madz]

Thanks for the quick response - I'm not trying to create engineering drawings so agree appearance is what counts - however I am trying to model my already built house as accurately as possible and I don't want to draw a visual element somewhere (out of my ignorance) that the program provides for a structural one.

Anyway the piers etc are a minor issue - what I'd really like to know is what someone experienced with this software would put on each "floor" in my case, as I've tried several different approaches and so far haven't cracked it.

[David J. Potter]

You put on each floor, what is seen to be there (what is visible above ground and to a degree, what you believe is there below ground).

DJP

[Madz]

Hi David, appreciate you taking the time to reply, unfortunately that's a bit general to be any real help to me in my current state of confusion.

Is there any chance you can spell it out - to my mind there are following components of my building which need to be represented.
A) The main house (all living area is on one level - floor is bearers and joists)
B) Storage room underneath - floor is concrete slab
C) Sub-floor area - underneath the main house, accessed via storage room. Dirt floor, varies in height from probably 2.5m to 200mm !

I currently have (A) on floor 2, (B) on floor 1 and (C) not represented at all. I have no foundation (floor 0) in my plan at the moment.
Visually B and C are "seen to be" on the same level as you say - but in my head (C) seems more like a foundation room than a normal room - so if I was to try and draw it next to (B) I don't know whether B and C should then be floor 0 or floor 1? I think I had problems with the slab putting (B) as an enclosed part of the foundation on floor 0 even if I suspect that's how it's been built - an area underneath the house closed in and slab floor poured). If I put (C) next to (B) on floor 1 though, I don't know what special features I'd need to give (C) so it doesn't look like a normal room with fixed floor to ceiling heights - untick the floor I guess and just draw piers up through it.

I don't know what the normal way to represent this sort of thing in Home Designer is - I really just want to check specifically what I'm doing with someone who understands the software well. That's what brought me to the forum rather than the help file which has lots of good general information.

[David J. Potter]

Is there any chance you can spell it out

Not really, because you would have to understand the words I use to spell with. When you close a space with walls that space then has a "Room Specification Dialog".

If you will carefully look at the data on the "Structure Tab" of any Room Specification Dialog you will see that the sub floor and ceiling structures are already part of that construct by default (set as defaults in Edit-Default Settings), so creating all those levels is taken care of in one place per floor.

Each floor is divided into room dialogs that each have sub floor and ceiling structure inputs and settings.

I think once you understand how the software works, you will be better off, start with some of these videos on this page:

http://video.homedesigner.chiefarchi...?search=floors


DJP

[Madz]

Thanks David. I'm trying to learn all I can about the software in the time I have to spend on it - it's not something I do for a living.

If anyone else is able to offer a more direct answer to my fairly specific question around how to best lay out my floors, that would be appreciated.

[JoAnn]

Are you trying to model something like this???
All I see (in your real house pic) is a single story house (floor 1) with a walk-out basement (floor 0).

You have indicated that some of the basement is partial(?) with a sloping dirt floor?

[Kbird]

yes looking at the real world photo I would have thought the Tutorial on walkout basements might help.... or the daylight basement one ?

http://www.homedesignersoftware.com/...icle/KB-00718/

http://www.homedesignersoftware.com/...-Basement.html

this might help with the crawlspace too

http://www.homedesignersoftware.com/...awl-Space.html

[Madz]

Are you trying to model something like this???

Wow, my gosh that's excellent JoAnn - I'm really impressed. That's very close considering you had 1 photo to work from!!

Okay so I'll scrap my floor 1 and look at the walk out basement some more - thanks for those links Kbird, will have a look at them now. I know i tried to draw that room on floor 0 before and got stuck somehow trying to do the slab floor but I know a bit more now so will have another crack at it and hopefully those tutorials will help.

JoAnn is there any chance at all of being able to send me your plan file so I can see how you did it? It's no worries if you'd rather not. I'm interested how you did the block texture too as I couldn't find something when I looked - lots of irregular shaped sandstone block patterns, but no normal concrete blocks I could find. Is that a particular third party library or am I just missing something obvious.

Thanks to everyone for the help so far, much appreciated.

[JoAnn]

The zipped plan file still exceeded the 100kb limit, so it could not be uploaded.

After building floor 0, put a 'flat region' UNDER the usable room, then select the entire terrain and uncheck 'hide terrain intersected by building'. This should give you a concrete floor in the walkout room, and show the sloping terrain in the remaining dirt room. Select the dirt room, and add 'soil' or 'loam' as the floor material.
The blocks are listed under 'Materials/masonry & stone/blocks/cinder blocks/blocks running bond'
You can change the color and size of the blocks with the rainbow tool (adjust material definition). This tool will appear in the tool bar when your 3d window is active.

[Madz]

Oh that's a good tip on the rainbow!! - I've used it to paint before, but only interior walls - never realised you could set the brick sizes - that's excellent!!
I'll try your trick on the basement floor. At the moment I've got a slab half way up the room! (I've stretched the foundation walls down as they started at the minimum height) so need to fiddle with it a bit more... but that's ok. I remember reading there are some things that automatically happen based on ceiling height, assuming that is why the slab will appear under that room and not the rest.

The other thing I'm really struggling with at the moment, that I'd just like to check my approach on - I've got some curved retaining walls - pic attached - I know what the elevations should be - I want to gain 800mm with each wall and 400mm in slope on the garden in between, so I'm running a terrain line tight against the top and bottom of each wall trying to force things to the heights I want - but it's quite tedious to keep it lined up exactly along the length of the wall and even then I still find the terrain is up and down all over the place along the wall - you can see it in a couple of spots in the picture. Is this the correct thing to do? or am I missing something easy? I've recently found I can set the retaining wall height in 3d/section view - but not sure if that's what I should be doing either.

All the examples of retaining walls I can find are much simpler.... and the walls cut completely across the plan so the terrain seems to end up in natural tiers....where mine are just in the middle and the terrain needs to be battered/blended either side and for some reason the wall doesn't seem to fully break the terrain - the terrain just changes elevation sharply where the wall is but it can be up and down it's not a smooth transition hidden by the wall... I'm probably not explaining it very well, I hope you know what I mean....




Thanks so much for your help - my email is 00madz at gmail.com if that makes it easier to send me anything

Cheers
Mick