Hello,
Because the building codes require an attached garage to be 12" below the main floor level I have read up on "dropping the Garage" and tried it several times.
I have read the many posts about the following process:
1. First, I drew the garage on the Ground Level so that the Roof Tool works well - and it did!
2. Then I Select and Duplicate the entire garage and place it on a "Garage Location" which I set up to be 1'-0" lower than the Ground Floor Height. I was prompted to delete it from the Ground Floor so I want ahead and did.
Results:
1. Even though I have specified 9'-0 walls for the Garage Location the above procedure still produced 8' walls so I am short of lining up with the rest of the house. I was hoping there would be an automatic switch to 9' walls especially since in the "wall properties dialog box" I have the "auto extend" box checked. I cant seem to get the walls to be 9' - short of just redrawing them
and re-inserting the doors, windows etc. which negates the whole duplicate thing
2. Now my main ground floor plan shows the garage walls "extremely faded". I imagine if I set the "transparency" dialog in settings to near "0" - that would be the way to make sure they show
for printing purposes.
3. Odd - I now have casing and baseboard showing on the new exterior walls in 3D view. Before I changed it the finish appeared to be drywall rather than Stucco. The exterior became interior finishes. Whats up with that?
Thank you for any suggestions as to what I may be doing wrong.
Hi Randy,
I am having little difficulty actually following what you have done in places but there are a number of points I will mention that I think will answer your questions.
First: Wall heights will automatically assume the height that is set for them in Building Locations for any wall inserted on that location AFTER the setting is made. Walls already inserted will not change if you change the setting later and walls duplicated to a location will always maintain their original setting. If you select the duplicated walls you can change their height to what ever it needs to be. This will not affect windows and doors.
Because the garage has been moved to another location it will automatically be 'dimmed' if you are on a different Location. You can change the dimming level in Settings. Printing should be OK if you have the print option set to print everything black.
If you have deleted the original walls when duplicating them, it has probably 'broken' the Exterior wall. Walls will only display the Exterior surface if they enclose a space (4 walls joined will get an Exterior appearance IF they join. If there is a break they will all be Interior walls). Deleting the garage walls would probably have broken the exterior wall on the original location and caused the Interior wall appearance. The 'open end' can be joined by using the Room Divide tool (effectively an invisible wall) or you can tick the appropriate box in Wall Properties to Force the correct side of the wall to be Exterior. The duplicated garage wall is also probably only 3 walls so it would also have become all interior walls.
I hope those general comments cover your situation.
Allan
Allen. I tried your technique of first drawing the garage on the "Ground Level" so that the roof would be easy to draw and then duplicating it to the "Garage Level". Even using the Room Divider tool so that I had 4 walls enclosed I still couldnt quite get what I wanted.
What I (the contractor) wants is to build a 4 foot solid pour wall for the entire house including the garage where the top of the concrete wall is level or the same everywhere. The house gets a sill plate and Floor Joist but the garage would only get a sill plate and 9' walls to match the top of the house walls. We will pour a 4" thick concrete garage floor another 6" lower than the top of the foundation wall with knock-outs for the 16' garage door and the exterior door. I want the top of the floor to be even with the actual ground. A 4" thick driveway will butt up to the garage floor and its top surface would be even with the ground. I guess what I need is just help with getting the Locations Dialog Box filled out correctly. I think I am pretty close to having it right but I'm not sure how I got it to this point anymore and for some reason now that I have redone my Garage, the gable end on the Dutch Hip above is missing - even though I have the "show gable" box checked in the Roof Dialogs. I have attached my actual model since I have posted several questions. Thank you for any help - I very much appreciate it!
P.S. Allen. Could you please send me your email address so I can correspond outside of this forum? Thanks!
[email protected]