akabuilder Posted October 23, 2020 Share Posted October 23, 2020 i have a 3 story house with a slab floor, full heighth basement, sloped terrain on 2 sides and 4 ft. stem walls on 3 sides. Is the Basement/ First Floor considered a "Foundation"? And since I don't have a "Foundation level" is the slab still editable? i.e. can I lower it so it is the same height as the top of the footers? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joey_martin Posted October 23, 2020 Share Posted October 23, 2020 Floor "0" is the basement/foundation. Easy peasy, and use Anno/Layer Sets (or the new saved plan view sets) to provide a foundation plan and finished basement plan all in the same model. These are all LIVE section view and wall details exactly as the model is built..they are live camera views. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
akabuilder Posted October 23, 2020 Author Share Posted October 23, 2020 Ok, so what should I do since my model is drawn and I don't have a "Floor 0"- my basement is on "Floor 1". I like your section detail - S3 garage detail is exactly what i'm trying to accomplish with 3 sides on my plan....How did you get a slab aligned with a footer? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FreddieAB Posted November 18, 2020 Share Posted November 18, 2020 Hi, Re: 1st floor with a slab inside the stem wall I have the exact same problem, and it's driving me crazy. Our house is concrete with a walkout cellar - see section-view.pdf (drawn with Gimp). Note all measurements are in metres/centimetres. All ceilings in the house are (for the purposes of this post) solid concrete slabs. Floor finish is parquet glued to the concrete. I've drawn the ground floor (1st floor in the USA) in plan view, and generated the Cellar from it; Room Type is set to Open Below. But am utterly stuck trying to create the cellar wall height and the ceiling, plus for the life of me I cannot figure out how to get rid of the auto-generated floor above the Cellar. The Room Specification > Structure dialog shows a Ceiling value of -318mm, and no amount of tinkering will remove the wretched thing without setting the Floor Above value to not-zero. This post here offers some clues, but not enough to help me figure out the problem: chiefarchitect.com/topic/28413 The build foundation dialog that Eric refers to above is less than helpful. It's very depressing to be so utterly bamboozled after only 2 days with CA. I hope someone won't mind explaining this to me in words of (preferably) less than 1 syllable. section_view.pdf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doug_N Posted November 18, 2020 Share Posted November 18, 2020 "It's very depressing to be so utterly bamboozled after only 2 days with CA. I hope someone won't mind explaining this to me in words of (preferably) less than 1 syllable." Less than one syllable? This is a task that is beyond my capability I fear. Not to sound too critical I hope, but all of us that are using CA as a main tool in our house design practice have spent a long time learning how to use this software. Although it has some shortcomings that are being whittled away by the development team, we have found this to be an incredibly useful tool in communicating our design intent to those who actually build or renovate the buildings. Like any tool, it takes time to master the buttons and levers of design using any software. Try designing a house after two days of exposure to Revit or Archicad.for example. You won't be able to I suspect. You will have to invest in time to learn the features and the foibles of the software. You will have to invest lots of time, or trade off some time for money in training. Once you have become proficient, you will be amazed at how good the software is. On top of that the forum here has some truly great mentors who will do there best to assist you. In my opinion CA has one of the best user groups in the architecture field. If you are jammed by a project that you MUST get done, perhaps paying someone here in the forum to help you get over the hurdle is in order. Just a suggestion. It is painful when you start using any software for the first time. Not everything is intuitive or even that logical, but it is still one of the best solutions for designing houses on the market. As one teacher in martial arts told a student, patience grasshopper, patience. You will learn. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dshall Posted November 18, 2020 Share Posted November 18, 2020 On 10/22/2020 at 9:41 PM, akabuilder said: Ok, so what should I do since my model is drawn and I don't have a "Floor 0"- my basement is on "Floor 1". I like your section detail - S3 garage detail is exactly what i'm trying to accomplish with 3 sides on my plan....How did you get a slab aligned with a footer? I would leave as is. You do not have to use the foundation unless you auto build your foundation. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dshall Posted November 18, 2020 Share Posted November 18, 2020 13 hours ago, FreddieAB said: Hi, Re: 1st floor with a slab inside the stem wall I have the exact same problem, and it's driving me crazy....... Joey does a great job with his plans. However I have a different approach. A walkout basement is on level 1 which leaves level zero for any concrete slab footings. If I don't use level zero, so what. You only need to use level zero if you auto build foundation. I manually build all foundations, it is faster and easier for me. I do mostly remodels... too much trouble to keep the auto foundation rebuild valid. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joey_martin Posted November 18, 2020 Share Posted November 18, 2020 10 minutes ago, dshall said: I do mostly remodels... The bane of my existence.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chrisb222 Posted November 18, 2020 Share Posted November 18, 2020 Two DAYS?!? I've been using this software for 7 years and I'm still bamboozled. But I love it. It's a love-hate thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rosco2017 Posted November 18, 2020 Share Posted November 18, 2020 21 minutes ago, joey_martin said: The bane of my existence.... SAME!!!!! I'm about to stick to new construction only. Remodels don't pay as much and they are about twice the work for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ridge_Runner Posted November 18, 2020 Share Posted November 18, 2020 4 hours ago, Rosco2017 said: Remodels don't pay as much and they are about twice the work for me. My thoughts exactly! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doug_N Posted November 18, 2020 Share Posted November 18, 2020 In my neck of the woods, if you don't do remods or additions, you're going to do nothing. There are no building lots owned that are not owned by developers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FreddieAB Posted November 22, 2020 Share Posted November 22, 2020 On 11/18/2020 at 4:05 PM, Doug_N said: Not to sound too critical I hope, but all of us that are using CA as a main tool in our house design practice have spent a long time learning how to use this software. Although it has some shortcomings that are being whittled away by the development team, we have found this to be an incredibly useful tool in communicating our design intent to those who actually build or renovate the buildings. Thank you for your response. I am well aware CA is non-trivial software which requires a serious time investment to learn how to use. However, it is built for the USA market, and we live in Europe. The defaults are almost 100% non-applicable over here, and require extensive customising. Whilst I appreciate your comments, I was asking for help wrt _one_ thing: the auto-generated Floor Structure. This problem affects all floors. Since I posted my original msg, I found a review on Amazon which shed light - to wit, the ability to edit the Floor Structure is disabled in the Home Designer edition. This one piece of info was the lacking piece of the puzzle, ie. it cannot be done without an upgrade. No wonder I couldn't figure out how to do it. Chief Architect: you should put popup notes on disabled features telling people exactly wtf is going on so they aren't driven nuts. Another criticism: every single manual, video, etc uses inches - who else does that outside the USA? Updated manuals are defo called for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FreddieAB Posted November 22, 2020 Share Posted November 22, 2020 On 11/18/2020 at 4:30 PM, dshall said: A walkout basement is on level 1 which leaves level zero for any concrete slab footings.If I don't use level zero, so what. You only need to use level zero if you auto build foundation. I manually build all foundations, it is faster and easier for me. I do mostly remodels... too much trouble to keep the auto foundation rebuild valid. Thanks dshall - I tried your suggestion, but alas, there is a 3-floor limit in Home Designer, and it wouldn't allow me to keep Floors 0-2 *and* build another one Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FreddieAB Posted November 29, 2020 Share Posted November 29, 2020 On 11/22/2020 at 5:36 PM, solver said: You have found the forum for the Chief Architect branded products. Home Designer users have their own forum, HomeTalk, where you will find suggestions based on your software. https://hometalk.chiefarchitect.com/ Thanks Solver, I didn't realise. Off to there now. –-- Home Designer Suite 2021 V. 22.3.0.55OSX MacOS Mojave 10.14.6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lbuttery Posted November 29, 2020 Share Posted November 29, 2020 there are two schools of users: 1. floor 0 is for foundation and basement 2. floor 0 is for foundation only CA follows school 1 for the most part either method works in fact, foundation could be on floor 1 and basement on floor 2 it would be unorthodox but it would work since the terrain can be placed on any floor Lew Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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