Full Height Foundation Wall Under Porch

[madcowscarnival]

Hello all,

 

I'm have been recently introduced to the Chief Architect world, and am full aware I have a LOT to learn.  I am using a clients house sketch (pencil and crayon type) to create a house plan.  I know CA will perform many functions automatically, but I find myself all too often resorting to CAD tools to simply get CA to do what I need to see.  Which leads to:

 

The house is fairly basic.  At first, the foundation automatically built just fine.  However, there is a porch on the front of the house which must have a frost depth footing of 36" below grade (probably around 50" total wall height).  At first I attempted to use the wall DBX (<- I assume this is dialogue box) and check the "Foundation" under general.  All this does is create a grade beam which only displays on the main floor plan, not on the foundation plan. 

 

Next I re-drew the porch using an exterior wall with the thinking that a wall defined through that method would cause a full foundation wall to be automatically built below.  No dice, and with that alteration, the auto-build now creates a negative height floor in the basement and squirrels around with the foundation walls throughout the rest of the drawing, and creates a 16" wide wall below the exterior wall at the porch (default settings are still for a 96" wall). 

 

Last try was to attempt to draw the porch walls and a foundation wall below separately, however I could not get them to align with each other with dimensions or get the foundation to even display on the 1 floor.  I have had no luck for this specific problem either on these forums (or archives) or the internet in general.

 

Any help would be appreciated.  I attempted to upload the file, however, it keeps erroring out; I suspect it is due to this being a first post.

 

 

[lbuttery]

Hi:

 

if the plan is too big to post you need to use Dropbox or something like it

 

Lew

[desertstorm]

Just wondered if anyone had a solution to members problem with creating a basement below a porch. Need to have a slab on the top and a full foundation with floor and 9 foot ceilings.

 

Automatic foundation build does not seem to recognize the porch walls even though your define them with a foundation and a bearing wall. 

 

Any help would be appreciated.

[DRAWZILLA]

I have done Safe rooms under a porch within the basement, can be done, but would need to see exactly what your conditions are to help. Not automatic though, at least the ones I have done

[javatom]

Room definitions tell CA your intent.  Defining a room as a porch will in part determine how the foundation is built.  There are many ways to do what you want.  A quick one would be to call it some other type of room like a bath or kitchen.  The foundation will build under it.  You can then open the dbx for that room and manually change the name to "porch" and set the structure to be a 4" slab.