Hide the yard to focus on the house

Step by step

1. 1

   See what the yard covers

   On a ground floor with a yard, the plan shows the lot (the green ground cover inside your property line), the fence line around it, your zones (lawn, patio, walkway, driveway, garden beds and the rest of the Yard Zones), and every item standing out in the garden: trees, shrubs, a pool, a hot tub, a pergola, outdoor furniture, a fire pit. Zoomed out, the house is only a fraction of the picture. That's the part Show yard hides. The house, its rooms and everything inside it are never touched.

   

2. 2

   Open Layers and untick Show yard

   Open Layers, the first button in the toolbar above the plan (on a phone, the first icon in the toolbar row), and untick Show yard. It sits under Show flooring. The row is only listed when the design has a yard around the house, the one you add from the Floors menu with Add Yard. It's listed on every floor of the design, because the 3D view shows all floors together. Like every Layers row, it starts on and your choice is remembered on this device and browser, for every design you open there.

   

3. 3

   The plan zooms to your house

   With Show yard off, the lot, the fence line, the zones and the outdoor items disappear, and the plan zooms to fit the house: its outline plus any walls drawn past it, so an annex or a shed drawn with walls isn't cut off. It's the only Layers row that moves the view. (In room focus mode the view stays where you put it.) While the yard is hidden, zooming out stops at the house instead of the whole lot, and nothing out in the garden can be tapped, hovered or caught in a box selection, so you can work on the rooms without picking up a tree. Wall measurements that used to dodge the porch furniture are laid out as if it weren't there.

   

4. 4

   What counts as "in the yard"

   An item is in the yard when its centre is outside the outline of the building. It's the same rule Smart Flow Check uses to decide what's outdoors. So: - Hidden: trees, plants and planters in the garden, a pool or hot tub, a pergola and what stands under it, patio and garden furniture, outdoor lights and anything else placed out on the lot, plus all zones (lawns, patios, walkways, driveway, beds). - Kept: everything inside the house, including the cars in an attached garage, and pieces standing on a balcony or deck you built with Balcony / Patio, because a deck is part of the house. - Borderline: a piece pushed against the outside of a wall, such as a planter right by the door, hides when its centre is outside the wall line and stays when its centre is inside. A porch or patio you drew as a zone is part of the yard and hides with it; one built as a balcony or deck stays.

5. 5

   Bring the yard back: the Yard hidden button

   Because the setting is remembered, a garden you hid last week is still hidden when you open the design today. So the plan shows a Yard hidden button (an eye with a line through it), next to the 3D preview button, whenever the yard is hidden on the floor you're looking at. Tap it and the yard is back, exactly where you left it. Ticking Layers → Show yard does the same. The button is shown on the floor that has the yard (the ground floor). On upper floors there's no yard on the plan to miss, so there's no button; the Layers row is still there. Showing the yard again doesn't move the view. Zoom out to see the whole lot.

   

6. 6

   Hide the yard in 3D: the Yard chip

   The 3D view follows the same setting. With the yard hidden, it leaves out the ground, the fences, the zones and every outdoor item, and frames the house on its own, so the rooms fill the screen. The small 3D preview on the plan does the same. In the 3D view itself, the row of switches at the bottom right has a Yard chip next to Ceiling. Untick it to hide the garden while you look around, tick it to bring it back. It's the same switch as Layers → Show yard, so the plan follows whatever you pick there. The chip only appears in designs that have a yard. Walk mode and the AI Render Studio use what the 3D view shows, so a render taken with the yard hidden shows the house without its garden.

   

7. 7

   Things that turn the yard back on by themselves

   So that nothing you add vanishes under your finger, the yard switches itself back on when you work on it: - Add Yard or Edit Yard in the Floors menu (Remove Yard doesn't). - Picking a Yard Zones tool to draw a lawn, patio or other zone. - Anything new landing out in the lot: a piece you place or drop there, items you paste there, a piece you drag out of the house onto the lot, or an outdoor item that Undo brings back. Hiding the yard also lets go of anything selected out in it (a zone or a garden item) and cancels a zone you were halfway through drawing.

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