tundra_dweller

Agreed 100%. I am working on a project with a walkout basement and I was finally going to try the basement as floor 1 method, but I gave up on that because it has an attached garage with frost footings and I could not figure out a way to make that logically work so that I have all my footings and stemwalls on one foundation plan sheet. Plus, not having my main level subfloor at zero absolute elevation drives me nuts.

Yes you just have to set up your floor structure for that room just like you would a deck. Sloped sleepers / joists / slabs would be great, but at this point I think they're best handled by separate details or CAD over sections.

Yeah you have to deal with the deck structure & support elements of a deck. I think I remember a ceiling finish issue for the room below too. The balcony room worked great for me this time.

I used the Materials > Exterior Wall Surface tab of each railing wall dbx to control that exterior finish layer. In my case it was already set to a white trim material. The main thing I remember was getting an error message about a deck room over a non-deck room or something like that. That was a few versions ago so that may have changed. In either case you should be able to set up the floor structure however you want it.

@GeneDavis Gene, open up the room dbx for the porch and adjust the stem wall top to match the floor elevation.

Yeah I'm not sure because it makes no sense. I'm not even sure how I managed to stumble across figuring this out a couple weeks ago. I think there should just be a dedicated tool button for the living area label that can go on your toolbars.

What works for me in X18 is to select the "exterior room" and then hit the new don't show label button. Seems totally counter-intuitive but it works.

I think the only time I've had this happen before was when I was working with manual roofs and I either didn't union the roof planes together at the peak before framing, or when I selected only one of the two roof planes to frame at a time. Good to hear you got it fixed, and your sig too!

I had the 1st floor done yesterday, and I didn't have to fight the software as much as I figured I would on the 2nd floor with the deck, gambrel roof, and shed dormers. It went surprisingly smooth.

Try going into Preferences > General > Unit Conversions and edit the ' and " units, check the Default Unit box.

Thanks all for the assistance, the balcony room worked good! I'm not going to worry about the slope, this is the existing condition and the new addition will be farther back under the shed dormer area.

Great info, thanks Robert!

Thanks Scott, I'll check it out!

Okay balcony it is, thanks guys! I probably won't worry about the roof slope either. I'll try and remember to report back on how it worked out.

I'm working on an as-built for a cabin that has a 22'x24' deck built on a flat roof over a living room. Before I start on the 2nd floor I'm wondering what the best way to model this "room" is. It's been a while since I've done one of these. I'm hoping I can just build the room with railings, set the room type as whatever with no roof over, set my floor framing to the right depth, and change the flooring to decking. If I remember right, setting the room type to deck doesn't work very well in these situations. The addition won't be attached to this deck so I don't care if the roofing is included or the framing spot on, I just want it to look close on elevation views/renderings. I will probably just use a molding to model the soffits/fascia under the deck.