Square Footage Calculation Issue


Toolman11k
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There seems to be an issue calculating the square footage of this home I designed, I have spent quite a bit of time on this learning the software, I am sure I have done a few things incorrectly, I think the issue lies in how I tried to create the stairway, it seems there is some duplication. Also if anyone has a suggestion on how to get a listing of the rooms without calculating them all manually I would love some input. Also as hard as I have tried there seems to be some issue with the way the porch roof renders (not a huge deal). Thank you for any help  

Home Designer Pro 2021

The plan calculates 2092 Living Space, I know this includes wall thickness etc, however it is still more then the actual footprint when you add it all up 

 

Koen_5-5-20_2.plan

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Also I have started to redraw the plans just to keep an eye on sq' here is a rough outline. I wanted to clean up some mistakes I made the first time, however I am thinking I am heading down the same path when I add the 2nd floor for the bonus room over the right side of the house and add the stairs in. The only way I found to easily add the bonus area is the add the 2nd floor and set the ceiling height low when I do this there seems to be an issue with the kick-out in the master, it seems I need to extend the wall on the 2nd floor and delete the space to make that work without messing up the roof lines, any input is appreciated. 

_Koen 5-9-20_2.plan

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It sounds like you have Home Designer Pro vs Chief Architect Premier ( or Interiors ) so it maybe better to ask on the HomeTalk Forum instead of the Chief Talk forum.  

 

https://hometalk.chiefarchitect.com/forum/5-qa/

 

Many aspects ( basics of CA ) are the same in Pro to Premier but there are many more things that are not available to do in HDP.  I would reccomend searching there.  Some of our power users such as @solver & @DavidJPotter frequent that forum and hopefully will be able to be more helpful.

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users of HD PRO can benefit from following Chieftalk

as they have many of the manual tools that Premier uses

 

but understand the limits of PRO as not everything will apply to you

also be sure to state you are using PRO if you ask questions

so any replies will take the limits into consideration

 

Lew

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How you name rooms and other spaces closed by walls directly effect the "Living Area" display, name any closed space and miss-label it and you then get an inaccurate display. The room names and how they directly effect Living Area is fully covered in your Reference Manual, found under the "Help" menu, take a look.

 

DJP

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7 hours ago, Toolman11k said:

The plan calculates 2092 Living Space, I know this includes wall thickness etc, however it is still more then the actual footprint when you add it all up 

 

The updated plan you posted has the interior room areas listed (Rooms, Interior Area), I think what you want is to turn on Rooms, Standard Area - those square footages should add up.

 

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Thanks for all the replies, I will re-post in the other location. I have checked all the rooms and the labels to ensure if they are listed as included / excluded. There is still an issue, if I look at the foundation footprint and add the living and garage areas together it exceeds the sq'. I am at a critical point of starting my build, but I am afraid I am getting inaccurate quotes based on the incorrect sq'. for today I will make a chart and add up all the internal and external sq' manually to ensure it is accurate

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Click just outside your exterior walls and form an exterior polyline. That should give you the square footage you are asking for.

 

BTW..Chief/HD Pro don't know how to lie or to be inaccurate. They simply report to you the information in the model. The square footage, when turning on the LIVING AREA label is accurate to the way Chief reports it, which should be to exterior of the framing layer, minus garages, stairwells on floors above, and open to below spaces unless you tell Chief to report those items. You are overthinking the process and getting yourself flustered.

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One of the features that Premier has that HD Pro does not is a tool for evaluating living area calculations.  Basically, you select the exterior room of the building you want to evaluate and use the Make Living Area Polyline tool to generate a polyline that shows all areas included in the living area calculations.  You could download the Premier trial version and try it out if you are interested. 

 

The picture below shows the polyline generated and it has at least two areas that are questionable.  The first is the utility room next to the garage which is included in the living area.  This is easily correctable by changing the room type or marking the room so that it is not included.  The second is the hole created by the double wall in the living room.  In theory, that should be included in the living area and the easy way to correct this was to just delete it.  You could model this area by using a single thicker wall or by using a soffit for the bumpout.  I did not spend much time looking at the other floors but it looks like the second floor does not have well defined rooms yet.

 

 

living area poly.png

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