I'm new to TFP. I've spent some time with it and have perused the forums, but have not found answers to a few issues I'm having. We're adding an addition onto our house, I'm trying to get the existing house into TFP with reasonable accuracy. We're doing some modifications to the existing floor plan as well as the addition.
The basement, which is walk-out and is more at grade than below grade, has three different exterior wall types: block with brick exterior, block with brick interior and brick exterior, and block with brick exterior and stud interior. I've managed to get the shell into the program and it appears to be more or less OK. I used the appearance of the internal and exterior surfaces to get it to look right when you render it for a walk through. However, there is one spot where a stud wall goes into the exterior wall and the program will not join the walls to create separate rooms. In addition, I can not get the floors by picking points to work. I've also tried room division, no luck. I've tried everything I can think of, but it doesn't seem to work.
My furnace room has a decorative block wall on a diagonal. The door to the room is from the outside and I have not put it on the plans yet. This is another room that I can not get to have a different floor type, it is not carpeted, just a slab.
Another problem I'm having with walls is trim. I've put two windows in on the lower level. The interior trim is OK, the exterior trim is not. They are aluminum clad windows, tan in color. There is no wood visible on the outside. I did figure out how to make tan casing, but it really goes on the inside of the opening and not on the outside. This can be seen on the window facing the front, or bottom, of the drawing.
I've attached a file with these issues. Any guidance in how I can take care of these issues will be greatly appreciated.
No time to open and play/look around your .bld file now but here are a few comments/answers to try...
Floor by picking points should work; does not require a room...what seems wrong with it? Sometimes you can add an "extra" wall and the place an opening into it or make that wall height extremely small to make it "disappear" as a work around.
Furnace room; suggest add floor via points and elevate it a very small amount to be above the carpet...like .1" Height usually causes no problems and not noticed.
If outside window trim cannot be made to look right from all options, show no trim then add individual members manually placed and textured...start with a "cube" and size/elevate/rotate etc. to get what you want.
Hi Dave R!
I have look at your drawing and I'm is little puzzled, why you have drawing double walls I hope you knew that you can have different materials outside and inside, left and right side of the wall.
First of all you must clean up your other wall-connections, I will point out some of them, if you not have correct connections you can't use floor and ceilings by room. A wall will connect to the center core of the wall.
To join two different walls can be a little tricky, but it can be done, but you must think outside the frame.
Look at the small images numbered 1 to 5.
1 This is the original wall connection
2 Delete the 2 small walls
3 Drag the brick-wall to the left as the image
4 This step is the tricky step, if you don't do it he firs time do it again! Drag the wood wall down as the image, now is all walls connected and the rooms is also separated.
Now shall we only trim the walls so it looks as the original. First you need to convert the blue marked part to 4" wood wall, that will you do with right-click on the wall and select replace, as default the wall will center to the other wall, adjust the wall to aligned to the inner wall, delete the part of wall that is purple. The walls shall now look as the last step 5.
I notice that you had automatic floor on turn it unchecked it in Program Settings/building Aids Automatic Elements.
Hope this will help you to come forward.
/Kajvin
Hi Dave,
You have a number of problems in this model and Robert seems to have covered most of the ones with the walls - if you follow his comments on the plan you should be able to fix those.
The double walls you have will cause problems. As Robert said all walls have two sides (you can set a different texture on each) and if walls join to enclose a space then the Exterior surface is added (eg the whole outside of the house would then become brick - if that was your chosen exterior material). You can tell which is the right or left side of the wall by selecting it and noting the coloured markers: Green is where you started to draw it and Red where you finished (Blue is the centre). Left and right are determined by the direction in which you drew the wall (from Green to Red). If you want the plan to show some walls as stud and some a block etc., then select the wall you want to change, right click, choose Replace and then select the different wall type. Delete the extra double walls you have before you do this.
If an interior wall is brick on one side and stud on the other then you need to tick the box in Wall Properties to "force it to be Exterior" which will add the exterir veneer. This will only work if you use a Veneer wall. If there are not any in your catalogue, see the following posts and import the BIM files (File / Catalogues / Import BIM), which will add these type of walls to your catalogue: http://forums.turbofloorplan.com/index.php/topic,1202.0.html (http://forums.turbofloorplan.com/index.php/topic,1202.0.html) and http://forums.turbofloorplan.com/index.php/topic,1206.msg5878.html#msg5878 (http://forums.turbofloorplan.com/index.php/topic,1206.msg5878.html#msg5878).
You also have a considerable floors problem. Some rooms (eg the one on the left) have a dozen or more floors in them. What you need to do is switch to 2D Designers View, select the floor (you will see a blue line marking its edge) and delete it. Now repeat the "select and delete" untill all the floors are gone (should just be a white background). Now you will be able to insert the different floor you want in each room. If you click a floor into a room you will have another floor with every click, so only do it once in each room. Once you have a separate floor in each room you can change the surface 'Appearance' to whatever you want (Carpet, Tile, Concrete etc). If the added floors leave a gap in the door openings, then go to 2D Designers View, select the floor in the room concerned and drag the blue maker to move the edge of the floor to the centre of the wall where the door is. Do the same in the adjoining room so that the two floors meet in the centre of the wall.
I am not sure why you cannot get Floor By Picking Points to work. All you do is select the floor you want from the Catalogue, right click and select Floor by Picking Points, then left click on each corner of the floor you want to draw. Draw the 3 edges but right click and choose Finish so the program draws the fourth edge. If you do this in 2 D Designers View you will see the floor as it is being drawn, although some of the walls are hard to see in this view as they are the same colour as the background.
If you are not getting trim on some walls you probably have not set them in the wall properties. It get the window trim on the Exterior for example, you must go to the Trim tab on the Wall Properties and choose a Opening trim type. It is set to None by default so will not show unless you choose one. The windows themselves also need to have the 'Include Opening Trim' box ticked.
Hopefully you can follow all of this - if not just ask again for more detail or clarification.
Allan
Thanks for the very helpful advice. I went back and made all walls single layer and got them to join properly. It can certainly be tricky, but it seems that if you join walls that butt together first then do the walls that come in at an angle it works reasonably reliably.
As for the floors, I know how the multiple floors got put into rooms and spaces. It didn't work and I kept trying. I don't know why there were multiple overall floors specified. I had to delete at least two floors that were the entire perimeter of the basement.
How does one make tile that is not square? I tried to edit and create tile, but didn't see anything that would allow me to set the dimensions.
I have not had time to play with windows and getting the correct finish on the outside, hopefully tomorrow.
I don't see any way to make pony walls, brick on the bottom and siding on the top. Two sides of my second floor, which is actually the main floor in my case, have pony walls. The only thing I could come up with is a brick wall that is the height of the brick section and a siding wall on top of that. I haven't tried it, but I suspect it is not the way to do it.
Hi Allan and Dave R!
Dave, one thing that them who is new to TFP, is think it is a regular cad-program and that is wrong.
TFP is first 3-d visualizations program for house and surroundings.
The drawings that you can do in the program is not good enough to submit for building permits, they can be good enough as a sketch to leave, an architect who do the real drawings which you then submit.
Then it come to make 3-d visualizations is it a great program, to make 2D/3D images showing how the house fits into the surroundings, and to show how it will look indoors with or without furniture.
/Kajvin
Hi Dave,
Quote from: Dave R on March 10, 2013, 05:26:48 PM
How does one make tile that is not square? I tried to edit and create tile, but didn't see anything that would allow me to set the dimensions.
Two options:
1. If an existing tile is suitable but the wrong shape, Select the tile on the Appearance tab, click the Mapping button and "Override the tile size" (see first image) . Bear in mind if you make one side twice the length of the other, then the grouting will also be twice as thick so it may not look right.
2. Take a photo of the tile you want to use and import that into TFP (See second image).
Quote from: Dave R on March 10, 2013, 05:26:48 PM
I don't see any way to make pony walls, brick on the bottom and siding on the top. Two sides of my second floor, which is actually the main floor in my case, have pony walls. The only thing I could come up with is a brick wall that is the height of the brick section and a siding wall on top of that. I haven't tried it, but I suspect it is not the way to do it.
Re Pony Walls (actually I have never heard that term before but obviously you are referring to two textures on a wall)
The following post and attached images should answer that question for you: http://forums.turbofloorplan.com/index.php/topic,1028.msg4938.html#msg4938 (http://forums.turbofloorplan.com/index.php/topic,1028.msg4938.html#msg4938)
Hi Robert,
While I agree that TFP is optimised for 3D visualisation, I personally think that TFP is capable of producing plans that are good enough to submit for building permits. They have been used many times for this purpose. The plan system used in TFP is identical with that in Envisioneer which of course is used by professional architects and builders and produces full construction drawings. TFP can do exactly the same detail and precision, so there is no reason why it could not be used for building permit purposes if the 3D model is correctly created. This certainly applies to the main floor plan and site plan. The main advantage with Envisioneer is that multiple elevations, sections etc can be arranged on a single page, while TFP can only print single elevations on a page (unless it is done as explained in the PDF in this post: http://forums.turbofloorplan.com/index.php/topic,877.0.html (http://forums.turbofloorplan.com/index.php/topic,877.0.html) which also then allows for adding dimensions and notes etc to the elevations). TFP is certainly not optimised for plan printing but it is definately capable of producing the necessary detail and accuracy for building permit purposes even if plan layout for printing is not as simple as Envisioneer.
Allan
Thanks again for the help. I'll try these in the next few hours and let you know how I make out.
Pony wall was what Chief Architect called the wall with two finishes on it. I had never heard that term before trying that software either.
Dave
Hi Dave,
Similarly I had not heard the term Wainscott before I saw it in TFP either.
Allan
Quote from: Dave R on March 11, 2013, 02:31:38 PM
Thanks again for the help. I'll try these in the next few hours and let you know how I make out.
Pony wall was what Chief Architect called the wall with two finishes on it. I had never heard that term before trying that software either.
Dave
I think the Chief Architect get it a little wrong. A pony-walls is a half height wall that you can use to divide a room in two, like as a pony-door.
look her at Chief Architect forum http://www.chieftalk.com/showthread.php?58328-Terminology-(Pony-Wall)