glennw

Can you be a bit more specific about what you want and what is wrong with what you present plan.

I would definitely use Terrain Breaks along with a standard wall (Foundation wall if you want a footing). One Elevation Point on each level.

And if you don't like maths, there is always the Scale button.

A couple of reasons spring to mind immediately. It is easier just to draw objects at their correct real size without worrying about scale. Easier to dimension. It is easier to change the scale in if you need to.

You have been missing something. Best to draw at 1:1 and then scale when sent to layout.

I am not quite understanding your problem. Select the room with the lowered ceiling and check Shelf Ceiling and change the ceiling height for the room.

Assuming you want a mono slab. Select the Patio room and change the Stem Wall Top to -2".

I think this is happening because the external wall of the house is being broken at the retaining wall because the top of the lower pony under the doors is too close to the bottom of the lower pony wall under the triple window. ie, not enough "throat" to make it one contiguous wall. The 2 parts of the external pony wall are joining at the retaining wall. Can you drop the footing under the triple window a little? That would then allow you to make the rear wall of the house one continuous wall and place the step where you want.

Are you aware of all the hatch patterns in the library?

You can't create a fill pattern or export a fill pattern. What pattern are you after?

I originally thought that the best way would be to use 3D plants (2D plants would look pretty dicky) with either the Garden Bed tool or the Distribution tools because both these tools make it easy to automatically distribute objects. The idea would be to then to create a symbol and rotate to vertical. There was just too many surfaces and I gave up because it was taking too long on my machine. Someone else may have more luck with a faster machine. Why do just a boring old flat wall? Or you could crop this if you want to use as a picture.

There are a heap more files in the folders

This is what my help folder looks like:

In the room dbx, uncheck Use Soffit Surface For Ceiling.

Use terrain elevation data to shape the terrain and then sit the driveway on the terrain using a terrain feature.

That's because it is a 3D Symbol Molding. A 3D Symbol Molding repeats a shape along it's length and you see each repeated shape in vector view, but not in a render view. As others have said - use a 2D molding profile instead.

I was only spelling out all the steps, especially that the dbx says Interior Windows>Separate Trim and Materials On Each side.

Do this AND check Separate Trim And Materials On Each Side (even though the dbx says Interior Windows) then specify different materials for interior and exterior trim - works for me.

It reminds me of the time I went to see a specialist doctor. I was sitting across the table from hime and he was explaining some things to me and was writing notes and instructions upside down (facing me). Very impressive and a great talent!

Seriously? Would you ever do the same thing with dimensions (although we can do that with dimensions)?

I am still curious to know under what circumstances you would want the label to be upside down?

Might be a lot easier to do with a 3D Molding Polyline. This will do the mitres automatically and on the whole should will be a lot easier to control. Here is a very quick one just to give you the idea. I have left the moulding away from the roof so you can see what is happening. Or, you could try using a Frieze which would be even more automatic. Having said that, and without going any further, I suspect that this is one of those situations where even a compound mitre will not give a clean junction between horizontal eaves and raking eaves. Similar to this....maybe?

Scott, I think he wants to rotate the label another 90deg (180deg in total) so that it is upside down. Why, I don't know.

You assign a window level (Vertical Stacking) in the Options Panel in the window dbx. So you might assign the lower windows as Level 0 and the higher level windows as Level 1. You can then control which vertical stacking level displays in plan view by changing the Vertical Stacking Level in the Window Defaults dbx - the non default windows will appear light grey. A search in the help file for Window Levels should give you more details.

Michael beat me by a couple of seconds.