Troubleshooting Why the Terrain Tools are Greyed Out

QUESTION

Whenever I open a new drawing and go to the Terrain menu or try and select any of the Terrain tools on the toolbar, they are grayed out and inaccessible.

Why is this? 

ANSWER

Before you can use the various Terrain tools, you must first create a terrain perimeter, and the floor the terrain perimeter was created on must be the active floor. The terrain perimeter provides Home Designer with an area for terrain objects to be placed within. 

To enable the Terrain tools 

1. On Floor 1, navigate to Terrain> Create Terrain Perimeter  from the menu to create a basic rectangular terrain perimeter, then select Window> Fill Window  to see the terrain perimeter's extents.
   
   If the Create Terrain Perimeter option is grayed out, a terrain perimeter already exists, as plans are restricted to a single terrain perimeter. Use the following tips to try and locate the existing terrain perimeter:
   
   
   • Enable the display of the "Terrain Perimeter" layer by navigating to Tools> Display Options . 
     
     

     To learn more about layers, please see the Related Articles section below. 

     
     
     
   • Navigate between the different floor levels (e.g. Floor 0, Floor 1, Floor 2, etc.) while in a plan view and Zoom Out  to try and locate the perimeter. By default, the perimeter is a 50' x 100' rectangle and looks like the following image.
     
     
     
     
   • If you still aren't able to locate the terrain perimeter and would like to instead delete the undiscoverable perimeter, as well as all of the terrain objects to start anew, navigate to Edit> Delete Objects , change the Delete Scope to All Floors, place a check in the Terrain Objects checkbox, then click the Delete button. Only proceed with this option if you're sure you want to delete the terrain perimeter and all existing terrain objects from the design. 
   
   
   
2. Once you have created or located the terrain perimeter, ensure that the floor level the terrain perimeter exists on is the active floor, then use the Terrain tool(s) of your choice to add terrain objects to the design.