In Home Designer, creating different ceiling styles can be very quick and easy.
In this video, I'll show you how to create a cathedral ceiling, a tray ceiling,
and a coffered ceiling using this simple plan with a gable roof.
Creating a cathedral ceiling simply involves removing the ceiling platform from
a room. To do this,
select a room and open it for specification by clicking on the open object
button on the edit toolbar. On the structure panel,
uncheck the flat ceiling over this room checkbox and click OK. When you do this,
Home Designer removes a ceiling platform and draws the ceiling finish on the
bottom of the roof planes. If I want to change the pitch of the ceiling,
I need to change the pitch of my roof. To do this, I can go to the build menu,
roof, and click on build roof.
I'll change my pitch from 8 and 12 to 6 and 12.
Since they have auto rebuild roofs checked,
the roof will automatically update once I click OK and since Home Designer puts
the ceiling finish on the bottom of the roof planes, as I adjust my roof pitch,
the ceiling will adjust to match the same pitch as well.
You can create a tray ceiling very simply by using soffits.
The soffit tool can be found under the cabinets' parent tool.
Once you have the soffit tool active,
you can move your mouse around to where you want the soffit to be placed.
In this case, I'll move it against this wall. Notice as I do this,
the little arrow points away from the wall.
This arrow is the face indicator for this soffit indicating which face is the
front face of the soffit. With a soffit facing the correct direction,
I will simply click to place the soffit in the plan.
I can then click on the edit handle in the middle of each edge of the soffit and
drag it out until the soffit snaps to the wall.
I can also grab the edit handle in 3D views and adjust the depth of the soffit
to my desired depth as well.
Notice that the soffit takes on the molding properties for the room once it
connects to the wall.
Now that I've placed one soffit that is the exact size I want it to be,
instead of placing a new soffit and resizing it,
I'll make a copy of the existing soffit and move it into a new position.
I'll select the soffit, click on the copy paste button on the edit toolbar,
and then drag a copy from one side of the room to the other.
Notice when I did that,
the face indicator is facing into the wall and not into the room. While,
not necessary in this application of soffits,
it's sometimes necessary in other situations to have the soffit facing into the
room,
so it's a good practice to have the soffit front always facing into the room.
So,
I will use the rotate edit handle to rotate the soffit front to be facing into
the room.
I'll make another copy of the soffit and click to place it in the plan.
I'll then use the middle edit handles on the edges to resize the soffit until it
snaps to the inside edge of the wall.
I'll use the move edit handle to move it into position and as I did previously,
I'll make a copy of this soffit, drag it to the other side of the room,
and then rotate it so the front is facing into the room.
Once my soffits are placed, I can use the material,
eye dropper to have the color of my soffits match the color of my walls.
I'll click on the material eyedropper in my toolbar and click on the wall to
load that material into the material painter. Once I've done that,
I'll change the scope of the material painter from component mode to room mode.
This will make it so all of the drywall in the room will change all at once
instead of having to click on each soffit individually.
Now that I've changed the scope,
I'll simply click on one soffit and all of the soffits will update at the same
time. To make a coffered ceiling,
I'll do a similar process as the tray ceiling. However,
instead of editing the soffit after I've placed it,
I'll use my plan defaults to set different values for my soffits before I place
them in the plan. Before I adjust my defaults,
I'll open the room for specification and change the ceiling height value to 114
inches.
I'll want to pay special attention to the finished ceiling value. In this case,
it's 112 and a half inches.
We'll use that value when we're setting our soffit defaults.
Now that I've adjusted the ceiling height for this room,
I'll go to the wrench icon in my toolbar to open my default settings.
I'll expand cabinets, select soffits, and click the edit button.
We're going to use four by four boards to make our coffers for our ceiling.
I'll set the height to be three and a half inches and the depth to be three and
a half inches.
I want to place my soffits right against the surface of the ceiling,
so I'll change the floor to top value to 112 and a half inches to match the
finished ceiling value of our room. On the materials panel,
I'll change the material to the same color as the ceiling in our room.
I'll do a search for color dash white,
select it, and click OK.
Now that all of my soffit defaults have been set,
I'll click OK and then I'll click done.
I'll select my soffit tool and click to place it in the plan.
I'll click on the middle edit handle,
on one of the edges and drag it out to the wall.
I'll do the same thing on the opposite edge.
Now that I have my soffit running for the length of the room,
I want to place it exactly four feet from the wall. With the soffit selected,
I'll click on the temporary dimension running between the wall and the soffit.
I'll change the value to exactly four feet and press enter on my keyboard.
When I do that, the soffit will move to exactly four feet from the wall.
Since I've got this soffit exactly as I want it,
just as with the tray ceiling previously,
I'll click on the copy paste button and drag a copy of this soffit to the other
side of the room. Again, using temporary dimensions with the soffit selected,
I'll click on the number and set it to exactly four feet from the wall,
I'll then place another soffit and rotate it 90 degrees.
To create the full coffered ceiling,
I'll stretch it out to meet the walls and then use the temporary dimension to
set it to be six feet from the wall.
I'll repeat the copy and drag process.
I'll also set the soffit to be six feet in from the wall.
As you can see,
Home Designer has many tools to create a variety of different ceiling styles.