First,
I know some of the pitfalls to trying to do this, and I know I can bring in separates as symbols.
The plan I'm doing involves a steep, lake front lot and owners wish to see what views will look like with house plans' position and orientation on lot. I happened to have worked on the neighbor's house a few years ago, so will bring that in as a symbol, stripped of the interior. I will also do a quick symbol for other side lot house, as I have all those plats plotted.
Here though is the problem: They want the house and a separate garage, which will have a small guest room over it, and ask for a variety of locations to be shown to see views, and impacts of neighboring property. Is there a realistic way to have two separate live structures in one plan? The problem, as I experiment, is some of the global commands, like add floor, or roof change everything for both, among other issues. One possible design has the house and garage, connected via a small bridge over a breezeway, and to add to the issue, elevation pad differences. I could do this if both were live or even flat terrain, I suspect, but how to connect a symbol and a live structure?
Slightly related, what is the best way to manipulate a plan around a plot without wrecking everything? The frequent requests to move orientations keeps screwing things up. IE: house moves, foundation stays. You get the point. I have not bothered with the walkout "basement foundation" layouts yet for this reason. I can remove it, move and rebuild it, but that brings me back to my earlier problem. Now the separate structure takes the command.
Would be nice, where needed, to have the ability to tell CA make this change just to this, or that, rather than forced global like some are. Can't imagine that would be that hard?
Hopefully someone has a best strategy for dealing with this. The only one I can think of, is separate plans, than import in, and hope it's in right place.
Thanks
