Also some of up are far away - I an in Australia.
Doug has basically answered most of your specific questions so I will just comment on some general things and features that you may otherwise miss for a while. As Doug said most of your initial questions have been dealt with on the Forum, so a search would probably bring up some references and 'tutorials/image' to illustrate. Terrain and flat roof have certainly been covered in detail so they should come up fairly easily.
As a very general suggestion for someone just getting started I think one of the best things to do is to work through each tab and each entry in the
Settings/Program Settings as this will show you all the things that are changeable to suit how you want to work. Even if you do not change anything initially, you will at least be aware of what can be changed if something comes up later on. There you will find such things as:
- Auto save (turn it on),
Where files are saved,
Tool Bars (turn them all on so you know what they do and mouse over each icon to see what they do too. If you turn the toolbar Tabs off you will see all the tools side by side instead of underneath each other and then only 1 click to select an item instead of two),
Commander Bar, Status Bar (turn them on),
Snap to Grid, Snap angle,
Nudge distance (that is the distance something will move when you use the arrow keys on the keyboard),
If you want a floor automatically (can be a trap if you want different floors in different rooms),
Hardware Acceleration (try turning it off if you have odd things happen. On some PCs this can be a major problem, other accept it OK. Most find that it is OK on for moving around but many have to turn it off for photorealistic rendering as it locks up.),
Terrain size (I changed it to 1.5klm square and it did not complain),
Your exact location in the world, North angle and
Render Settings (quality 3 generally good for most things) - to mention a few!!!
It is good also to get used to is the Settings/
Building Locations. While the plan area does your basic wall layout the Locations control the 3D vertical dimensions - wall height, door/window height / ceiling height etc. Each location works independently of each other so use them when you do not want things to interact. 3D view will put them together.
A few nice things that get missed:
Look out for the
Status Bar with its on/off switches for Snap, Grid, Angle Snap and Collision detection.
Copy/Paste is there too but is a Right Click and
Duplicate - nothing seems to happen s the duplication is in the same place as the original - just drag it away. Shift click to duplicate several items.
Right Click/
Replace is handy too if you change your mind about something - it will even swap a wall for another type without losing Windows etc.
Right click offers a few other nice things too, like
curved walls (Select Curve and just drag the wall),
rotate, elevate and
move (multiple items or the whole plan)
Probably best to have practise on something simple first - 4 walls, floor, ceiling, doors, windows and roof - finished!! Almost that quick anyway! Right click Properties of each and look at all the settings, play with them and you will soon pick it up.
Have fun!!
Allan
