site boundary - insert peg/segment

[jstranger]

I am completely new to TFP and have immediately come to a halt. I have begun my project by drawing the site boundary. I assumed that it would be possible to modify this at any time but I now want to insert a new segment (i.e. break an existing segment into two segments by inserting a 'peg' which I can then drag as required) and can find no way of doing this. Surely this is a pretty fundamental editing function for many types of element (paths, walls, fences, etc.) so I am sure it must exist - but if so it is very well hidden. Could someone enlighten me please - and/or point me at any useful tutorials as I am finding this software far from intuitive and I have been in the software business for 30 years!

Jon

[Allan Chesney]

Hi Jon,

Welcome to the Forum.  I suspect you have found a limitation in the program. Unlike walls, roof etc you can insert a Break using the right mouse click, so I assumed the site boundary would be the same and in this case would allow you to stretch at that point.  There are move, stretch and skew controls but no 'add in an edit point'. Looks like it may have to be requested in the New Feature Request section.

However I just wonder why you are starting with the site boundary anyway since it is only a line.  I have been using FloorPlan for about 10 years or more and have made hundreds of models over the years but I have never yet used the site boundary.  If I have needed to go to the boundary, it has invariably been marked by a fence, wall, path, road, kerb or some other visible feature. 

The main purpose of a 3D visualisation tool is to show things in 3D, plans being just the means to that end, so the site boundary has seems irrevent to me as it does not actually do anything or show in 3D.  Why not just simply start drawing the house.  Draw the basic wall outline, click and drag them to the measurements you want by watching the dimensions on the plan as you drag, add interior walls (if you want - or do it later), add floor (if not set to automatic, which it probably is), add ceiling and roof (all one click), select and add doors, windows - it takes literally minutes once you know which icon is which. You can then switch to 3D and walk around, fly around etc etc. Then you can add the furniture, landscaping etc and start taking "photos".  If you really want a site boundary you can add that at any time.

Having said all that, I agree with you that the site boundary should have the ability to add an in another movable point. Unless someone else knows how to do it and lets us know, otherwise I will add it into the requests.

By the way - some of the things ARE well hidden!! Get into the habit of right clicking and double-clicking things (especially in the Properties box) - you will be amazed at what opens up. If you think you should be able to edit something, you will probably find you can! (but not the edge of a site boundary apparently!)

Allan

[jstranger]

Allan

Many thanks for the speedy reply. You may well be right about the site boundary - but at this stage I am more interested in the exterior garden/landscape design than the house and we have a site boundary that is marked by a variety of features - some visible and some much less so. And what I want to do is replace or modify many of these features - hence the desire for a fixed basis for the drawing. We also have a very oddly shaped site with the house positioned at an odd angle - but I guess I could forget about the boundary for now and concentrate on hard landscaping.

However, I would be grateful if you could forward the new feature request.

Jon

[Allan Chesney]

Jon,

If you just want to mark the boundary why not use the Fill tool (second one on the Landscape toolbar). This will give you a random shape and you can fill it with 'soil' or just a colour.  Put it on another location and it will then fade, so you can use it as a guide while you insert things on the main location. (Settings/Building Locations). It is not editable either (like the site boundary) but you can drag it around and add bits to it if necessary. You can add to the site boundary too but the joining line remains while the fill will just be a shading and a join will not be evident.  You could also use a wall on an other location to make the boundary too (set the wall height to 1mm or franction of an inch so it wont get in the way in 3D) or turn it off using the 'eye' icon.

I will put the request in for modifications to the site boundary.

All the best with your project.
Allan

[bbqboyee]

Aha!  I've been registered for the forum less than five minutes and I've already found a discussion on the topic in which I'm interested!  I hope you don't mind me piggybacking my question onto this thread.

I'm a long time casual user of TurboCAD, but this is my first experience with the FloorPlan product (I'm using TurboFLOORPLAN H&L Pro v12).    Like Jon, I am (perhaps mistakenly) attempting to begin the drawing of my house by starting with the site boundary because I want to prototype the design of an overhanging sun-blocking structure off the back of the house (which faces west-northwest) and it's my understanding that the program uses real-world information about your location, the time of year, and the time of day to determine the position of that Big Light Source In The Sky when rendering the drawing in 3D.  This is important to me because I want to see how well the structure will block the sun when I change the date and time in the Global Settings dialog.  Am I barking up the wrong tree?

Note that I have no problem entering the site boundary information (other than the building setbacks, which I couldn't get to work as expected, so I abandoned them), and the boundary looks just like it does on my survey certificate.  However, the problem I have is that I'm now unable to rotate the plot into a position that's "natural" for the program; I'm unable to insert the building elements (walls, doors, windows, etc.) without manually rotating each of those elements to match the rotation of the lot.  Is there any way around this?

Thanks,
Steve

[Allan Chesney]

Hi Steve,

You can highlight your whole site boundary, right click and select rotate. This will rotate on the corner you select, so will move the whole boundary around that pivot point. You will then have to right click again, select move, and drag it back into place aroung your model.

If you set the Angle Snap to what you need you could draw the whole thing at an angle but it is much esier to draw with the straight edges parallel to the screen edges.  You can rotate the north point to match the site and this will correct your sun angles etc.

Allan

[bbqboyee]

Hi Allan,

Oddly, not long after I posted I finally discovered out how to make that work.  The part that was confusing me was that I was clicking on only one of the boundary edges, which causes the entire boundary to be highlighted.  I mistook that to mean that the entire boundary was selected, when in fact it was only the edge that I'd clicked on (I hadn't noticed the little solid blue "grip" that appeared only on the line that I had clicked).  The "rotate" function had no effect in this situation.  After I had posted here I discovered that I needed to select ALL lines on the boundary; once I did that I was able to rotate the entire site boundary.

[bbqboyee]

Woops; I forgot the most important part...

What I also discovered was that after rotating the site boundary all the angles (as measured from the north or south meridian) were altered from the values I'd so carefully entered from my survey certificate; they were changed to either 0 or 90 degrees.  Not surprising, I suppose, but it's certainly not what I want.  I gave up and just started my drawing without regard to the site boundaries...  I'm not sure I see the utility of even including this feature if this is the way it's going to behave.

Perhaps rotating the "North Direction" angle in the "Global Settings" dialog as you've indicated will at least gain me the ability to correct the sun angles.

[Allan Chesney]

Steve,

That is what I do - move the north point and use a simple pole in a clear area to check the shadow direction. Render from overhead.

In your situation it his the distance between trees and buildings that are critical not lines on a map.

Allan

[Doug.S]

That is what I do - move the north point and use a simple pole in a clear area to check the shadow direction. Render from overhead.

a test I make to check my setup:  sunrise and sunset at equinoxes (approx. March 20 and Sept 22) make shadows that are exactly due East and due West  (at least in nothern hemisphere; maybe in southern too?)