Change Interior Door to Exterior

[Chrisb222]

Hi, did a search couldn't find this topic.

 

I'm finishing plans on a house that has a very large garage with a center wall dividing it in two. The homeowner wants a garage and a separate woodshop, that will be made from what is essentially one large garage with one slab but with a wall separating it into two rooms. There will be an insulated, sealed exterior grade door in the wall between the two rooms. When I place a door in this wall, CA automatically labels it an interior door since both rooms are specified as "garage."

 

I couldn't find any way to override the automatic "Interior" designation. Is there any way to change this to an exterior door? I can change something about the garage or the woodshop to force the program to see it as an exterior door, but then the door going into the house becomes "interior" which is just as wrong. It's messing up my separate exterior and interior door schedules and callouts.

 

Sample plan in CA-X9 attached showing the problem.

 

Thanks

 

DOOR-PROBLEM.plan

[Alaskan_Son]

Not sure I’ve run into that particular problem before and I’m away from my computer now but here are the first things that come to mind...

 

1.  Maybe change the second garage room type to an exterior room of some kind.  A porch or court maybe.

2.  If the above causes some other problems maybe use a room divider set to be .01” thick and draw walls to enclose a very small room just outside the door in question and make that room an exterior room.  Make the room SUPER SMALL so you can’t even see it without zooming way in.

 

 

I’m actually not totally sure if either of those options would work but they might be worth a shot. 

[Chrisb222]

55 minutes ago, Alaskan_Son said:

Not sure I’ve run into that particular problem before and I’m away from my computer now but here are the first things that come to mind...

 

1.  Maybe change the second garage room type to an exterior room of some kind.  A porch or court maybe.

2.  If the above causes some other problems maybe use a room divider set to be .01” thick and draw walls to enclose a very small room just outside the door in question and make that room an exterior room.  Make the room SUPER SMALL so you can’t even see it without zooming way in.

 

 

I’m actually not totally sure if either of those options would work but they might be worth a shot. 

 

Thanks Michael. "Porch" worked but it screwed up the room structure / foundation.

 

Your other suggestion worked but I had to manually delete the small room's foundation. I would prefer to have more logical control over the door designation, instead of a work-around. See Eric's Suggestion submission.

 

Thanks again.

[keilrd]

While long having dealt with the same issue, and always having to make a room either a balcony or porch or some other exterior type room (and re-define it's structure to be like an interior room, so that I can have alternative casings and materials on either side of a door, just moments ago I ran into a little check off box that seems to solve the issue for me and may for you, too.

 

I'm using X7 and on the General tab of the Door dbx, there is a checkoff at that bottom, at "Interior Doors," where you can select to have "Separate Trim and Materials on Each Side."

 

Hope this helps. If you or anyone else has some idea of how to get the drywall to show at the jambs, that'd be terrific to know.

 

Mark

[Kbird1]

7 hours ago, Chrisb222 said:

Hi, did a search couldn't find this topic.

 

I'm finishing plans on a house that has a very large garage with a center wall dividing it in two. The homeowner wants a garage and a separate woodshop, that will be made from what is essentially one large garage with one slab but with a wall separating it into two rooms. There will be an insulated, sealed exterior grade door in the wall between the two rooms. When I place a door in this wall, CA automatically labels it an interior door since both rooms are specified as "garage."

 

I couldn't find any way to override the automatic "Interior" designation. Is there any way to change this to an exterior door? I can change something about the garage or the woodshop to force the program to see it as an exterior door, but then the door going into the house becomes "interior" which is just as wrong. It's messing up my separate exterior and interior door schedules and callouts.

 

Sample plan in CA-X9 attached showing the problem.

 

Thanks

 

DOOR-PROBLEM.plan

 

 

The Easiest Fix is to place the Door in an EXTERIOR Wall Type so it remains an Exterior Door .  You can do this easily by Copying your Exterior Wall Type and Changing the Exterior Finish to Drywall and the Fill to match the Interior Walls if needed..... I have not tried this on a Monolithic Slab Foundation build , but I imagine a Footing is needed at that wall anyway in a lot of cases ( loadbearing?) , worth trying anyway to see if it helps in your particular situation.

 

M.

 

[Chrisb222]

14 hours ago, Kbird1 said:

 

 

The Easiest Fix is to place the Door in an EXTERIOR Wall Type so it remains an Exterior Door .  You can do this easily by Copying your Exterior Wall Type and Changing the Exterior Finish to Drywall and the Fill to match the Interior Walls if needed..... I have not tried this on a Monolithic Slab Foundation build , but I imagine a Footing is needed at that wall anyway in a lot of cases ( loadbearing?) , worth trying anyway to see if it helps in your particular situation.

 

M.

 

 

Didn't work, Chief still thinks it's an interior door even though it's in an exterior wall type.

 

No footing is necessary, it's just a partition wall, not loadbearing.

[CJSpud]

Can I safely assume that the living room part of the structure will have a crawlspace since you have an I-joist floor system in the structure dbx for this room?  Since you haven't built the foundation I thought I would ask.  Please clarify.

[Kbird1]

3 hours ago, Chrisb222 said:

 

Didn't work, Chief still thinks it's an interior door even though it's in an exterior wall type.

 

No footing is necessary, it's just a partition wall, not loadbearing.

 

I did say it may not work in your Particular Situation, but what that trick actually does is the Key here , as Eric said sometimes Chief is "Too Smart" , so we need to be smarter....

 

 

*Hint* : To be an Exterior Door, it must have Exterior Space one side and Interior Space on the Other.

 

Once again will "this Trick" work in all Situations I don't know? AND do everything for you automatically? likely NO, as some manual cleanup maybe needed eg deleting the auto Slab footing , and since Chief doesn't like MonoSlabs against a StemWall Foundation , you'll need to do some manual Foundation work anyway. ( A very old issue and still quirky )

 

Would a Checkbox in the Door DBX for Type be be nice ? sure .. but a single Room Divider line will get you there now... 

 

 

and cleaned up..

 

M.

[Chrisb222]

4 hours ago, CJSpud said:

Can I safely assume that the living room part of the structure will have a crawlspace since you have an I-joist floor system in the structure dbx for this room?  Since you haven't built the foundation I thought I would ask.  Please clarify.

 

Thanks. The plan I attached was a quick sample plan, not the actual plan in question. Alaskan Son's #2 suggestion worked, with a few tweaks.

 

[Chrisb222]

18 minutes ago, Kbird1 said:

I did say it may not work in your Particular Situation, but what that trick actually does is the Key here , as Eric said sometimes Chief is "Too Smart" , so we need to be smarter....

 

Yep, that's basically what I wound up doing. When I tried it in the sample plan it created some footer clean-up, but when I applied the "trick" to my actual plan it didn't disturb my foundation at all. Because I was already way past "Auto Rebuild Foundations."  

 

Thanks.