MBagshaw

Hi Glenn (and/or anyone else who been following my terrain dramas), I think I might finally have stumbled across a simple answer to most of my terrain problems, and I thought I'd share this with anyone who is interested. I took your plan, Glenn, that had solved my problem (the terrain level outside the retaining wall I need to build around virtually all of my property stayed flat at 1.7 m above sea level, and the terrain inside the retaining wall also stayed flat at the correct height of 2.1 m above sea level, were both displaying correctly). I then proceeded to move the retaining walls to align correctly with the original plans by architect produced using something other than CA – I'm not sure what – and the terrain outside the walls went haywire again with all sorts of weird effects, including rising to meet the top of the retaining wall! After several hours more frustrating experimentation I tried playing around with the alignment of the edges of my Terrain Elevation Region in relation to the width of the retaining walls. When I first created the elevation region I wasn't sure whether I should align the edges of the region with the outside edge of the retaining wall, the middle or the inside edge. It turns out none of those options worked correctly. As soon as I tried moving the edge of the region slightly inside the retaining wall, everything lined up perfectly. In all of the reading I have done I haven't seen anything that talks about exactly where a Terrain Elevation Region should line up in relation to a retaining wall, but it seems now I know! If what I've just described is correct, it would seem CA might have some sort of "snap to" function for correctly aligning elevation regions with retaining walls. Thanks to everybody who helped with this. Cheers,

Hi Glenn, That was it! Thanks so much for doing this – I'll take a very close look at what you have done. Cheers,

Hi Glenn, I don't know what's going on with my version of CA x8. I tried loading the file you sent me and I get a message to tell me my version is not up-to-date. I accept the invitation it provides to update to the latest version, and it tells me it already is! The same thing happened with the attachment Greg sent me … oddly I've been able to load other files people have posted elsewhere about other topics. Must be something wrong with my set up. Given that I can't load your file, I tried to make the changes you describe to my own copy of the file, but I can't seem to find the dialogues you describe (I probably need to mention again that I'm not an architect/designer and therefore I am an amateur at this, learning my way as I go). I have attached a couple of screenshots: The Normal Room Defaults dialogue The Room Specification dialogue for the room shown on the plan ...and the result after I had changed each of the retaining wall settings to use the default bottom and top heights. As you can see the terrain surrounding the retaining wall has now become curved and has raised up to the top of the retaining wall. I also changed the Terrain to set the Subfloor Height Above Terrain to use the default (it has changed the value to 3100 mm) which has produced the only positive outcome so far – the room is now displaying at the correct height!

Hi folks – apologies for not replying to your suggestions earlier, several moves, more discussions with architects and planners, family illness, etc all got in the way. I'm still struggling with this – in fact, making no progress! Electromen: I tried downloading the version of the plan you attached above, but I'm being told during the file open process that I have an older version of X8 that doesn't support some features of the file. When I reply "yes" to the question about downloading the latest version, it tells me I already have it! I then set out to do what you said you had done on my own version of the plan, but I can't figure out how to change the height of the Foundation level (in any case, I don't know what I would change it to). Of course I then can't make changes to the First floor either. Full something that would seem to be a fairly simple and anything but unique requirement, this is proving incredibly frustrating! It seems so logical to me – I have created a terrain area inside a retaining wall that is higher than the surrounding terrain outside the retaining wall (3.1 m and 1.9 m above high tide level respectively). I would have thought when I create a structure on top of the higher terrain area I created, CA would put the floor on top of the terrain, not buried into it down to the height of the surrounding terrain! This must be a bug, surely?

Hi folks, Can anyone tell me why my slab foundation seems to ignore the fact that I have placed it on an elevated terrain region? My whole property needs to be raised above the surrounding terrain by 1.4 m as it is beachfront and the local council has specified that all new properties on the beach needs to be raised due to global warming. We will be installing a retaining wall around virtually all of the property and filling it to formal level platform. The slab foundation will sit on that elevated area. As you can see in the attached screenshot, any rooms I add are at the height of the surrounding terrain. How do I fix this? I have attached the plan. 49 Foreshore Drive Salamander Bay – Version 2.plan

Hi Chopsaw, Thanks for taking the time to do that. Whatever you did to my image, you fixed it so it now works perfectly in my plan. What exactly did you do to make it work?

Hi Jon, The fireplace itself (i.e. the flame, the box and the stainless steel frame around it) was imported from sketch up, but the whole chimney and the marble feature were created as poly line solids in CA then converted into solids. I tried to attach the plan itself But it is too large (90 MB). Can anybody give me any guidance on what I should be looking for in the plan that is making the file so big? That would also account for the fact that is now taking forever to rebuild the 3D perspectives. Cheers,

Hi folks, I have struck an odd problem I've never experienced before displaying imported materials correctly using raytrace. I imported a JPEG containing the attachedimage of white marble, and while it shows up fine in all other views (3D camera, for example), in raytrace it shows up as a red/pink colour without any of the marble detail (see attached). In this example I am using the material on a solid that was created using poly line solid then converted to a solid. I have imported lots of other materials including the timber in the background of the attached screenshot and they have always displayed correctly in raytrace until now. It doesn't seem to make any difference how long I leave the raytrace to run (this one was produced after about 90 passes – the advantages of a fast processor!). Any ideas? Cheers,

Hi Matt. Do you mean you are working on properties just near my place?? If that's the case, what an incredible coincidence! Cheers, Mark

Thanks Matt. The requirement to raise the land level is being imposed by Council, although after a meeting with the Council planners last week it's clear there's a disagreement going on between the planners (who would like the levels lowered) and the flood engineers (who have set the height). Indications from our meeting are that we will get at least some relaxation on the height. The planners made no mention of a restriction on the height of retaining walls, and while there haven't been any other properties approved under the recently-revised LDP so far, the previous LDP already contained a requirement to raise the height of new properties along the waterfront by 2 m, so there are several existing properties that are currently raised at that level (including the one next door which was built 15 years ago). Virtually all of the ones that have been raised previously used the retaining wall with sand infill method. Apart from the fact that might make our place look odd along the streetscape (one of the concerns of the planners), I wouldn't actually be overly worried about the height. Apart from anything else, any elevation of the property itself improves the view! My only real concern (apart from the fact that it would make the driveway to the garage very steep) is that I use a wheelchair and we are struggling to get ramps front and back that go even close to code (which of course we don't necessarily need to abide by given this is a private residential development). You can see what I've tried to do with the ramp at the front in the picture and on the plan. I'm no expert at CA, but I'll have a play around with your suggestion on creating the front retaining wall under the building as a 3D polyline. I thought I might just be able to manually edit the automatic retaining wall that was generated along the front to drop its height under the foundation for the slab, then somehow slip it under the slab, but I don't seem to be able to get to do that. Thanks for your help with this – I'm sure we will come up with a reasonable compromise all round. Cheers, Mark

Hi folks, I'm hoping someone can help me understand retaining walls/foundation walls. My wife and I are building our new home on the waterfront in Port Stephens, and the local council as recently changed its requirements for elevations for waterfront properties to take into account predicted rises in tight levels due to global warning. The block currently has an old shack on it and the land itself, and a reserved block next door, are both currently at the original land height which is about 1.8 m above high tide level (the home next door, built 15 years ago, has been raised by about 800 mm with a retaining wall along both side boundaries and the land sloped at the front (roadside) and back (waterside). We have to raise our land to a height 3.1 m above high tide level, and as the block is not huge our plan is to put a retaining wall around the boundary of the property, and have what will be a fairly steep driveway from road level to the garage and stairs and a ramp also from road level. It would seem to me the best way to do this would be to bring the retaining wall at the front of the property in line with the front of the house itself supporting the front of the slab, then have the area from there to the roadside boundary at the original 1.8 m level. I would also want to enclose the stairway from the footpath to the front door and the ramp behind a wall. The attached diagram shows some of that, but I'm having trouble with the retaining wall under the front of the house – I don't seem to be able to get it to go under the slab (in the photo I've left the retaining wall out altogether and brought it to the front of the property where I have lowered it to street height). I'm thinking that, if I could get the retaining wall to go under the roadside of the slab, then perhaps I could put another retaining wall around the ramp/stair area, and another one along the right-hand side of the boundary to the footpath. I've tried many ways to do this, but I get weird affects every time I try to do it, and the retaining wall doesn't seem to want to go under the slab but rather sit in front of it, which is not what I want. I have also attached the current plan. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Cheers, Mark Thoughtspace – single story (3).plan

Okay, I think I'm starting to make a bit of progress here. As you suggested, Chopsaw, I can finally select the attic walls by going up to the attic layer in the floorplan (I'm still baffled why I can't select the attic wall from a 3-D Perspective or cross-section). When I do select one of the "missing" attic walls and open its properties, the "invisible" checkbox is not selected, but the wall itself doesn't appear in the preview panel. If I first tick the invisible box, then un-tick it, it "magically" appears in the preview panel, then shows up correctly on the 3-D perspective. I also get a message to say that the "operation modifies one or more automatically generated walls. The walls will be retained and will not regenerate automatically" – is that normal? And I am still trying to understand why all of this doesn't happen automatically. I can see that the attic walls in any videos I've watched about gable/shed walls generate automatically, and when I create a simple four wall floorplan from scratch in a new plan and make two of the walls gable walls, the attic walls above the main gable walls generate automatically as well. So why am I having to do all of this manually on the plan I'm working on?

Attic wall layout is on. From what I can see it doesn't look like attic walls are being generated at all for gable/shed walls – it seems like there is a blank space in the area from the top of the main wall up to the roof. I certainly don't seem to be able to select anything in that blank area.

Hi Chopsaw, How did you select the Attic walls? Maybe I really need to go back to basics and revisit how to select, because I just don't seem to be able to find anything in that space to select. The other thing that I really don't understand is why it is doing this in the first place. Surely there must be some setting I have inadvertently changed to specify that the attic wall is invisible? I was expecting that all I would do is specify a wall as Gable/Shed and the space above the wall up to the roof would automatically be filled in – to try this out I created a new plan with a very simple for wall structure with the two when all specified as gable walls, and it did automatically fill in the area of the gable above the wall itself.

Thanks Jerry. I'm not quite sure how I did it, but it seems I have fixed one of the walls that had the missing side (the one that the left-hand side of the wall was okay, but most of it was empty) – I edited that small piece of attic wall, and when I went back to the plan the whole wall was filled in to the roof. The walls on the side of that room (lounge/dining/kitchen) still have gaps between the top of the wall and the roof. As you can see in the screen capture below, I added another manual roof plane over the study, but the same problem has occurred there – the gable is missing from all of the walls (I have raised the roof by 600 mm, hence even the wall under the lowest part of the roof is also missing the gable). I'm confused about the way this works. With a gable/shed roof, is the program meant to automatically generate an attic wall that sits on top of the main wall to take that wall from the ceiling to the roof, or does it just extend the main wall up to the roof? Whatever it is intended to do, clearly I've done something to stop it doing so. I just can't see anything either in the roof settings or the wall settings that are obviously wrong.

I have saved it again and reuploaded it ... https://www.dropbox.com/s/yb8jwxfaj088qv3/49%20Foreshore%20Drive%20Salamander%20Bay%20%E2%80%93%20single-storey.plan?dl=0

CA X8? Is there anything else it might need to open?

Plan on Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/s/xrtn1n5fq2jjuea/49%20Foreshore%20Drive%20Salamander%20Bay%20%E2%80%93%20single-storey.plan?dl=0

Plan attached. Thanks guys. ... file too big? Will ul to dropbox

Can anyone tell me why my gable ends aren't automatically building up to the roof height? The attached screenshot shows a typical example, in this case it's a shed roof but I have the same problem with gables. Every CA video I have watched shows the wall at a gable end automatically filling in up to the roof, which is what I'd expect, and I created a new plan with a simple structure with gable ends and it also worked as I would expect. But I must have done something in this plan to mess that up, and none of the options I have tried to change seem to fix it. The attached example is particularly odd as a small section of the wall on the left-hand side has gone up to the right height, and I can't see anything about the wall itself that shows that section of the wall being different to the rest (it is a single stretch of wall). I'm using CA X8. By the way, I have put up a couple of other posts asking what must seem like inane questions (I'm new to this and using CA just to design my own home), but you guys have been fantastic responding – thanks for taking the time to do so!

I am quite new to CA and really only intend to use it to design my own home. I'm hoping somebody can explain how I colour/paint objects but keep their basic structure the same. Using a simple timber door as an example (the default one will do – the default material for internal doors is timber/alder(blonde) in my version of CA), I want the door to remain a timber door so it is accurately recorded in the material list, but I want to paint it white. If I change the materials definition of the inside or outside of the door to be Colour/White, it seems to lose the definition specifying it's a timber door. I have attached a screenshot. Mark

I have a two level design for my home, with ceiling dimensions (structure and finish) the same on each floor, but anything I place on the ceiling on the ground floor (lights, fans, etc) seem to attach to the underside of the floor above and I need to manually drop the light/fans/etc by the height of the ceiling structureby specifying the ceiling offset on the object itself, otherwise the (flush mounted) lights don't appear at all, and the fans look like they disappear through the ceiling. I don't need to lower ceiling mounted items on the second floor. I'm an amateur at this, but I have been using CA for a while now and I don't recall it doing this previously. I have attached screenshots of the room structures for the ground and second floors. Mark

It is common, here in Australia at least, for large bifold door openings to be configured with a broad range of door units per opening. In my case, for example, I will be using external aluminium bifold doors in an opening of 2640 mm wide, but the configuration will include three door units in that opening and all three units will fold against each other, with either the left or right-most unit opening first and containing the lock and door handle (it will be something like the attached photo). How do I show this in CA? Mark.

I'm hoping to keep the floor framing for the second floor of my home to a single layer (i.e. the ceiling of the floor below and the flooring of the floor above both attached to the same joists). My open plan lounge/dining/kitchen area seems to be too big for timber joist spans, and I want to add a steel I-beam joist at 90° for extra support. When I manually add the I-beam joist (and specify it as a steel I-beam), CA hangs the timber joists under the steel beam, lowering the ceiling of that room (see the attached screenshot). I'm hoping I can keep the timber joists at the same height as the steel joist by slotting the ends of the timber joists into the open area either side of the "I" on the i-beam. Would that work, and if so how do I do that in CA?