newbie questions

[TCham]

I have been testing the trial versions of TFP v17 (never used previous versions) and have been frustrated by the results.  Trying to develop of my existing house to design an addition. Among the problems I've encountered are:

1.  my house has four levels: Basement, ground floor, second floor, finished attic.  I see no way to do four floors and wonder if I should have started with the basement as the first floor.
2.  my ground floor is 3'-9" above grade, but can't get it above grade at all in 3D, despite having set the working elevation at 3'-9".
3.  my hip roof flares at a shallower slope from the wall line to the edge of the 3'-10" wide eaves.  Can't see a way to model this.

So far I've spent about 8 hours trying to build the model of my existing house, but still don't have a useful model.  Am I wasting my time on v17?  After reading the forum, I realize that all the tips on v16 are useless to me.

[Patricia G.]

Hi TCham,

First and most important: V17 is a different program, not related with other TFP versions, so, in order to learn TFP V17, forget the tips for older versions.
Regarding your questions

1 - You can create several levels in each floor using a fixed distance and at the end, join the levels.
Check these images in my website
http://www.punchhelpers.com/commercial1.html
http://www.punchhelpers.com/commercial9.html
2 - You wrote "can't get it above grade at all in 3D" => do you mean the elevation of the little man? => double click on the little man and set the desired elevation or if you prefer, use the right button of the mouse to go up and down in liveview
3 - I am not sure if I understand your question: I will be glad to help, but can you post an image or sketch or a more detailed description

TFP 17, as any program, has a learning curve. For this reason, this is my best advice: read and follow the guide (this is important), try to create elements not related with your project, so you will become familiar with the commands and how to develop the different components.. Remember that often the best way to learn is to make a few mistakes.

If you are interested, I wrote 3 e-books that will help you to understand how the program thinks and solve the common issues. One of the e-books is free and all them are 100% compatible with TFP V17.
The links are in my signature (below)

Patricia

[rdeodhar]

Patricia,

In your previous reply, about creating more than three floors, you say: "1 - You can create several levels in each floor using a fixed distance and at the end, join the levels."

Can you elaborate on that? Is it really a practical way to create a plan with say, five floors? How does one work/edit on each floor separately? If two real floors are overlaid on top of each other in the program, distinguished only by the elevation of the walls, how does one change the layout of these logical floors individually?

Thanks,
Rajiv

[Patricia G.]

Hi there,

The main idea is => work with the floors separately and join them at the end. You can access to the elevation of the different levels in Elevation View Mode

Patricia

[rdeodhar]

Patricia,

Suppose I had to use this technique to lay out two floors that are mostly identical, but have a few walls and fixtures different from each other.

Is this how it would be done?
1. Work on the First Floor. Draw the real first floor completely at the default elevation of 0.
2. Then draw what is to be the second floor beside the floor already drawn, but at elevation say, 8'. This yields two entire floors, disjoint, on the same First Floor 2D view.

Now you say "join them at the end". How exactly to do that? And once the two sub-floors have been super-imposed on top of each other, doesn't it become difficult to make any changes on the two floors separately?

I own TurboFloorplan 3D V15 and have drawn a 5-story home plan using it. However, the 3D fly throughs, walk-arounds etc. are very slow.

I've downloaded a Trial version of V17 and using the samples observed that the fly-throughs etc. are fluid and much faster in this program. Hence the thought of moving to V17. But the 3-floor limitation makes me think I will be worse off.

So really the solution I seek is either a) sped-up 3D walk-throughs in V15 or b) a convenient way to work with more than three floors in V17.

Any further tips/suggestions you might offer would be welcome.

Thanks,
Rajiv

[Patricia G.]

Hi there,

Sorry for the fast answers but I am not in my computer

Follow the explanation with the image attached
1 - Create the plan and set the elevation
2 - Select all the plan => Edit => Mirror horizontal => the elements will be selected => don't unselect => Edit => Flip Horizontal => => the elements will be selected => Move => for example in this case, I used 500" (if you prefer, you can use other distance)
3 - Select the plan on the right => set the elevation for the new plan => work on both plans, make changes, etc
4 - When you are done => select the plan on the right => Edit => Move => - 500" => the plans will be stacked

Check these images in my website
http://www.punchhelpers.com/commercial1.html
http://www.punchhelpers.com/commercial9.html

Patricia

[rdeodhar]

Patricia,

OK, I can see how this is done. It appears that the final plan is a one-way street, i.e. once the individual floors are stacked it is not possible to move them apart for separate editing. Or is there a trick for that as well?

Otherwise, maintaining separate plans for editing purposes and combining them for only for walk throughs and rendering would be the way to go. Right?

Thanks,
Rajiv

[Patricia G.]

Hi there,

You can use the Elevation View or the 3D selection to select and edit the elements in 3D, but as a general concept, yes, you can keep the levels separated and stack them at the end.

Patricia

[rdeodhar]

Patricia,

Thanks for all the info.

I think I'm going to stay with v15 for now. While you've shown how to deal with the limit of three floors, the workaround is quite clumsy and inconvenient.

Built-in support for multiple floors like the older versions would persuade me to upgrade. In my situation the limit of three floors is a significant loss in functionality.

Regards,
Rajiv

[rdeodhar]

well, I gave in and bought V17 when IMSI offered a good sale price for Mother's Day.

So far I find that in some ways this version (program) is better but in many ways it is worse. The wall drawing tools are really much worse. Some of the problems I'm having are:
1. Walls don't merge together seamlessly like they did in V15. Weird joints appear between them.
2. A long wall with several perpendicular walls abutting it is not split into individual wall segments as in V15. The wall remains the size it was originally draw. This makes it inconvenient to move the perpendicular walls to resize rooms.
3. When a wall is selected and the mouse hovered over it, weird annotations such as "up", "midpoint" etc. appear that don't seem to be explained anywhere.
4. If a particular wall is selected and its thickness changed, adjoining walls are also resized with no explanation or confirmation dialog. I expect only the selected wall to be resized.
5. When a wall of a selected length is drawn perpendicular to the end of an existing wall it appears impossible to predict which length is assumed, end-to-end, middle-to-end or middle-to middle. It is sheer trial and error and each wall has to be manually resized after drawing.

- Rajiv

[Patricia G.]

Hi Rajiv,

Sorry for the delay, I was traveling.

First of all, is important to clarify that V15 and V17 are two different programs, based on different codes, therefore they can't be compared. I never used V15 so I can't help you with that.
In addition, TFP 17, as any program, has a learning curve. For this reason, this is my best advice: read and follow the guide (this is important), try to create elements not related with your project, so you will become familiar with the commands and how to develop the different components, including walls. Remember that often the best way to learn is to make a few mistakes.
I am mentioning these topics because the issues that you labeled as "worst" are features well described in the guide. I will try to give you some tips for additional help:

1. Walls don't merge together seamlessly like they did in V15. Weird joints appear between them.

Again, I am not comparing with V15 (I never used that program) => in TFP V17, if you use the mouse to join the walls, they will be fused. If you use the keyboard arrows, they will be together, but not merged

2. A long wall with several perpendicular walls abutting it is not split into individual wall segments as in V15. The wall remains the size it was originally draw. This makes it inconvenient to move the perpendicular walls to resize rooms.

Again, I am not comparing with V15 (I never used that program) => again, in TFP V17 use the mouse to reach the walls and create the wall breaks. Alternatively, you can use the manual wall breaks (Floor tab)

3. When a wall is selected and the mouse hovered over it, weird annotations such as "up", "midpoint" etc. appear that don't seem to be explained anywhere.

What you call "weird annotations" are, as a matter of fact, a very useful feature called "Auto Snap Options" that helps you to set a new wall in the exact point (the Midpoint for example). Of course, if you don't want this feature, please go to 2D => AutoSnap Options => Deactivate the undesired features.
Regarding your comment: yes, they are explained in the guide.

4. If a particular wall is selected and its thickness changed, adjoining walls are also resized with no explanation or confirmation dialog. I expect only the selected wall to be resized.

Exterior walls have uniform thickness. You can customize the thickness for interior walls

5. When a wall of a selected length is drawn perpendicular to the end of an existing wall it appears impossible to predict which length is assumed, end-to-end, middle-to-end or middle-to middle. It is sheer trial and error and each wall has to be manually resized after drawing.

Select the wall => Tool Options (right bar) => set the wall Auto- Dim as centers or surfaces as necessary. The exterior walls reference is always "surfaces"

If you wish to solve any specific issue, is always a good idea to post a screenshot so we can visualize the problem and save us time with the answer.

If you are interested, I wrote 4 e-books that will help you to understand how the program thinks and solve the common issues. One of the e-books is free and all them are 100% compatible with TFP V17.

Hope this helps

Patricia