Hi all. Newbie with TFP v16 here. i'm trying to start a plan and can't find answers to a couple of design points i'm trying to do.
Let me describe this in simple terms. main layout of the house will be a square, 45'X45'. This is in a flood prone area, so the first floor will be only garage. Second level will be main living level. the design for front entrance i like (similar to some others around the area) is this: Think of the main entrance as a small entrance room or foyer (say 6X10 with the 10 foot length as an opening into the main house). How do you get up to the second level at the main entrance...the ascent is achieved in 3 stages: one, the ground is backfilled in front of the house to about 3 foot in the center, tapering to normal ground level by the sides of the house. Second, from that elevted ground level, there are concrete steps up about 3 or 4 feet to the small front porch in front of the front door. And thirdly, so once you enter the entrance foyer, you are about 6 or 7 feet above garage slab level, but still 3 or 4 feet short of the main floor level...as you walk from the entrance foyer into main house, you have a last set of steps to climb to get to the main level. these last steps are not like a regular staircase, but will be like 8 or 10 feet wide (got the picture)?
so my questions...just looking for some pointers in the best direction, not necessarily detailed steps.
1. how to best build that front foyer entrance room? should it be built on standard ground level and have its floor elevated up? this would mean contouring the ground up all around it and the rest of the front of the house (this probably mimics the real construction, but i'm not necessary to mimic real construction in my 3d plan.
2. or should the ground contour be elevated immediately in front of the main house walls and the foyer be built on top of the elevated ground?
3. i understand i can cut a big section out of the walls between foyer and main house and out of the floor of main house, but how do i create 'room wide' steps connecting the two?
any insight would be much appreciated...
thanks, David
Tampa, FL
Hi David and welcome to the forum!
The first place you need to go is to Settings > Building Locations - this is where all your verticals are set. You will notice you have three levels already, Foundation (8' below ground level), Ground Floor (1' above ground level) and Second Floor (10' above ground level - allowing for a 1' thick floor for the Ground Floor and Second Floor locations). On each level you have the wall height (all 8' on each level).
Obviously this does not fit your configuration - you need to change the configuration to suit. To make it easier to understand what I am explaining you may first want to change the name of the Second Floor to Main House. Now we will start from the bottom and work up.
To save confusion, change the name of the Foundation level to 'Garage' (for example) and change its floor level to whatever the thickness of the garage floor will be (if it was 6 inches of concrete for example then the Terrain is zero and the Floor Level for the garage is 6"). For this location set the wall height to the distance between the top surface of the Garage Floor and the bottom of the Main House floor (eg 10' for this example).
Next the Ground Floor Location would become the Foyer (which is the next floor level vertically) so you may want to rename Ground Floor to Foyer and change the Floor Level to the distance between the Terrain (zero) and the top surface of the Foyer floor (just calculate how far above the Terrain or underside of the Garage floor, it is to the TOP of the Foyer floor - allow for its thickness). The Wall height for the Foyer will depend on whether its roof is lower than the Main House or not. If it is lower, then the Wall Height would probably be 8' but if the ceiling and walls are higher, (level with the Main House), then the Wall height should be set accordingly, so that the roof will be at the right level. The roof sits at the top of this wall setting - regardless of how high you make the walls themselves. Normally walls should be set to Extend to Roof and they will adjust to whatever the settings are for this Location (floor level)
By making this interin floor level for your Foyer, anything you put on the Foyer level (walls, furniture, stairs etc) will sit the Foyer floor - otherwise they would be 10' below it, if you just elevate the floor itself.
Now back to the Main House level (which started off as the Second Floor). The Floor Level setting probably needs to be changed. This refers to the distance from the Terrain (ground) which is zero (the underside of the Garage floor), to the top surface of the Main House floor ,so it includes the thickness of this floor (eg 1') plus the walls of the garage (eg 10' - even if they are not actually walls - maybe just posts), plus the thickness of the Garage floor (6") - so 1' + 10' + 6" = 11'6".
The Foyer sits 'outside' the main building area so you should not have to worry about the thickness of its floor as it would not affect the height of main building.
As far as the 10' wide stairs are concerned - just choose the stair style you want and change its width to 10'.
The sloping ground up to the Foyer is a separate issue, as you need to use the Terrain toolbar's Plateau tool to create this. If you have questions on this it would probably be better to cover them in a separate question. Before you do however, use the forum Search (for Plateau or Slope for example) first, as it has been described a number of times. If you do not get it then just ask again.
Hope that all helps,
Allan
Hi David,
If you decide you want to create a terrain that closely represents your site conditions, you should consider using the Deck tool to do the raised front entry. You can leave the railings off and just get the raise 'floor' you need. The nice thing about Decks is that you can then click on one side of the Deck and add a stair automatically.
That stair can be set to go down to the terrain, which makes it easier to match the stair with the terrian height.
Jack
Hi David, first of all Happy New Year! I look at the Tampa area on Google Earth and what I can see is it a rater flat terrain area, if I understand you right in front of the house have the ground backfilled so the highest point is 3 feet over the ground level, will it flowing apropos:
I have following some of Allan's step, but I deleted the foundation location and change the number
ground location to number 1 and renamed it to Garage i let the settings be as in original locations then I renamed second level to main level nothing more to that level. Now you have to levels with number 1 and 3.
Click on the Garage location and ad a location, it will get the number 4 by default, renumber it to 2 and named Foyer and now you have to some math, the floor level shall be 6' above the garage floor so you have to set the floor level to 7' and if you will have the wall height at the same level as the main floor, you need to increasing the height of both ceiling as wall height it will be 7'+3'+1'=11'. This way have I don it. The porch have I use a Low level Cedar deck but you can use a slab if you will have a solid but the connect different to the locations hight slab bye the ground level 0 and deck by floor level.
From TFP14
Hi David,
Robert's option to delete the original Foundation location and add another one for the Foyer and thereby probably keep the original settings for the other locations, may be easier than changing all of the settings. However, if you do this, make sure when you Add the new Location (4), to click into the Framing Options, double click each of the settings that show [None] and select an option - at least "Default".
I am currently still testing this but it appears that if they are left as 'None' it can cause wall corruptions and can also cause the model to shrink into the distance when using 'Zoom to Extents', as if there is some object in 'outer space' that it is trying to include in the display. If you are not particulatly interested in setting some specific framing options, just choosing Default seems to solve the problem.
You do not need to worry about this if you use the three existing Locations, as they already have a setting in Framing Options - it is only newly added locations that need this change.
Allan
Hi Allan Happy New Year to you!
Thanks for you comment I forget to look at the framing options so I hope not mess it up for David. I shall look into that and load up a new bld-file, if the settings is wrong.
Robert
New Image of the staircase and updated bld-file correction of Frame option in Location manager.
Hey guys....this is most cool. thanks for all the suggestions and mock ups. i followed Alan's original steps to try to understand all that. it helped me understand the locations wonderfully.
Robert W, thanks for those designs. that's the idea. i'm having a bit of some issues understanding the cutouts i need to do...but mostly having issues because work is so busy and i only get a couple minutes late each evening to try to play with this...but thanks so much folks...
Dave S. - Tampa, FL
Hi Dave,
Glad to hear you are getting it sorted out (time permtting!).
What is the issue you are having with Openings?
Some points on Openings that might help:
Openings cannot be right up against another wall - you will always end up with a fraction of an inch of wall each side to "hold' the Opening.
If the Opening between your Foyer and the Main House is a full wall height (right up to the ceiling) and you have the Foyer and Main House on different Locations, then use the Wall Divide tool across the open area. This is in effect an invisible wall. It will join the other walls so they form a complete exterior even though open on one side on the different locations.
Allan
Hi Alan, the issue i'm having with openings is this. so i'm trying to create an opening between my foyer room and the main house (remember the foyer floor is a couple feet lower than the main house level floor.) this means that the opening is in effect, the whole height of the main level wall, and is also the top couple feet of the garage level wall.
if i make the openings and then try to make them large enough to remove that whole section of wall, they simply disappear at some size when i try to make them larger.
i've tried to look for the wall divide tool and cannot find that. that maybe would be the way to go, just to completly knock out the wall there. Is that a wall "break" you are talking about?
thanks, David
Hi David,
You will recall earlier that the Opening must be at least a 1 mm smaller - it cannot open the whole space between two side walls. There has to be some wall there for it to open even if it is only a fraction of an inch. You need to use a smaller opening, centred on the wall and keep enlarging it until it dissappears, undo and your last entry was the max. Obviousy do it in very small steps at the end.
The Room Divide tool is the next one on the toolbar to the Openings tool (Right hand side). Looks like a room with the floor half tiles. It should do what you want.
Allan