AlvarD

I agree that it's easily fixable by using the manual roof tools, and that's how I've been handling it. My reason for posting is exactly to bring to light the "corner case" that seems to hit this programming limitation in case the developers hadn't seen it. Whether it's an easy thing to support or not, I have no idea. Thanks, Alvar

I have attached a simple plan that duplicates a problem I see with auto roofs that happens ONLY when I choose Trusses AND the Eaves overhang is set to less than 7" (6" in the attached plan). What happens is that a full roof return directive from the wall below is ignored, and I only get a partial roof return for that wall. If I select rafters, instead of trusses, in the roof build dialog, I get a full return. Also, if I choose an eave overhang of 7" or more, the full roof return works as well. Thanks, Alvar Roof return with trusses problem.plan

Eric and Michael, thanks for tip. It's good to see that once you define the pitch with the baseline polyline at 10/12 for that segment, you can then delete the polyline and Chief remembers the pitch for that roof. Great use of the baseline polyline! Thanks, Alvar

I have a simple gable roof that I don't seem to be able to do it with AUTO-ROOFS. I can easily do it with manual roofs, but I'm wondering if there is any way to do it with auto-roofs. I have the default roof pitch set to 8/12, but I want to make the two gables roofs in the front at 10/12. It's easy enough to make the gable that's furthest out of the house at 10/12 by simply changing the pitch in the roof directives on the walls the roofs bear on, but the "other" gable that is created by breaking the front wall by the front door and assigning the left portion as full gable roof and the right portion as hip roof, looks right, but I can't get it to have a 10/12 pitch to match the other gable. The problem is that there's no other wall to select to set that gable over the front door to the desired pitch. I tried with roof baseline polylines, and I can see the 8/12 pitch for that gable that I want to change, but I can't select it to change it. Obviously, if I move the wall where the gable over the front door out by a few inches, then I have a hip wall that I can the pitch for, but that's not the desired effect. Thanks, Alvar Gable roof inline with hip.plan

Eric, thanks for the videos! It's good to see there's a way to get the roof with slight movement of the walls to line them up. The roof group is another interesting solution. I may just report it to tech-support anyways to see what they think. @Greg_NY61 - I don't see what the overall shape of the building should have to do with the roof on the deck. Perhaps when you moved the walls of the bump-out to align the building it aligned the walls of the bump-out to the railing walls and it fixed them the same as just moving the railing walls?

With X11 at the latest version, I have a deck with a hip roof in the front entrance of a house, and with auto-roofs and a pitch set to 7/12 everything is built as I expect. If I then select the three deck railings and change the pitch to say 4/12, the roof over the deck is built skewed, with the roof plan on the left wall still built at a 7/12 pitch even though the wall directive is calling for a 4/12 pitch. I inspect each railing and indeed the roof pitch on each railing DBX is indeed at 4/12. In the photo below, on the right is the proper deck roof at 7/12, and on the left is the skewed roof after applying the change in pitch to 4/12 to the railings. Attached are both plans, before and after changing the pitch on the railings. Thanks for your help! X11-roof-skewed.plan X11-roof-good.plan

I first ran into it on a three-story raised house (two stories on pilings), but have since duplicated it on a single story house. It must have something to do with how the various roof planes are affecting the dormer. Even though I have auto-roofs on, the generated roofs with the current room heights seem to make this problem occur. If you are interested, I have attached the two plans I sent along with the X11 bug report, showing the single story house dormer working on X10 and not working on X11. Also, if in X11 I set the room with the large gable to have a flat ceiling, it works fine, so it's only a problem if you want vaulted ceilings. -Alvar auto float dormer x10 - works.plan auto float dormer x11 - broken.plan

I have proved that this is an X11 bug and submitted it. I pruned the house down to a minimum, and it appears that in this plan, when the gable roof has a room below which doesn't have a flat ceiling, it causes the problem in X11. There is something about the way the roof planes and the ceiling interact in X11 that breaks it. In X10 it behaves properly, and I'm unable to break it.

Yes, I noticed that too. Very strange... I may just submit it as an X11 bug and see if they can figure it out.

I have a roof plane (auto-roofs ON) where if I place a floating dormer and then just move the dormer one inch in any direction, the window in the dormer disappears. I can add the window back into the dormer manually, and then if I move it again, it disappears again. In the attached pic, the dormer in question is the one that is selected, at the rear of the gable roof. I have another floating dormer in the the front roof plane of the same gable roof, that works normally and I can move it at will without losing the window. BTW, this is happening with X11 beta. Floating dormer problem.plan

No question about it. More user control over stair section breaks and their widths would be great! I haven't tried the 2 (or more) section workaround, but it sounds like in some cases it may be the only way.

In this case I don't think 2 overlapping stairs are needed. The winder option works well here, as suggested in the video below. The jogs in the stairs are fixed by moving/snapping the stair to the walls. To get them to look like the pic below, you have to increase the Winder max tread contraction. I set it to 8". You also had some invisible walls next to and under the stairs which were messing with the stairs, so I removed them. Like Mick said, the one thing you still don't get is molding in the bottom portion of the open railing, so you would have to manually add one there. https://www.chiefarchitect.com/videos/watch/390/stair-wall-options-partial-railing-wall-under-stairs-stairwell.html -Alvar

Please post your plan and fill out your signature so we can better help you!

Glad to help. Other than your pitch preference, the pitch of various roofs will be limited by the pitch and elevations of the roofs they will meet. The way I drew this house (I didn't use the dimensions of your house), the depth of the house with the 12/12 pitch on the main gable, set the Highest ridge elevation such that the front gables had to be less than 12/12. In this case 10/12 worked out, but if your house is deeper, giving you a higher ridge on the main gable roof, you may be able to put a 12/12 on the front gables. Good luck with the house!

You guys have convinced me that in this case, that kind of cricket is definitely not the correct option. Like Michael said, the ridge cricket is good for diverting water away from things like chimneys or other stand-alone obstructions, but it in this scenario, the simple plane is best. Thanks, Alvar

I don't see why it would make things worse. It's no different than any gable intersecting a roof plane, and it's keeping the water flowing down the roof lines. I do agree that your cricket would be simpler to build. In plan it would look like this:

Of course, as others have mentioned, you really need a cricket in the corner when the two valleys meet. Something like this:

From the pics you posted, looks like you have HD Pro. You may be able to do it with auto-roofs, but you certainly do it with manual roofs. Here's a pic of the roof planes that you can try to get what you want. Hope it helps! -Alvar

Thanks Rene! I used to use the Geoplanner website, but recently it stopped working for elevations. It gives "Quota Exceeded" errors, and if you scroll down, there's this message from the site owner explaining why:

Removing the "Use Default" option is certainly an acceptable answer, thus just making it a low-level material assignment. The reason for the support case was that as implemented, the "Use Default" doesn't work, so they should either have it point to some other default that is controllable, or like you suggest, just remove the use of a default for it. I also submitted another case for what I consider another "bug" in the current use of material defaults in X10. If you ever set the Door materials for the Exterior Sliding door to their defaults, you will notice that the Material for the "Door (interior)" is using the default specified in the general materials default for "Door (exterior)". Similarly, the defaults for both Interior and Exterior door materials, in the Bifold door, are picking up their defaults for the general materials default for "Door (exterior)" -Alvar

I reported the problem with the Skylight Frame material and they admit it's an issue. Here's the summary of the case:

Indeed, it is the Exterior Wall default. I just wish Chief was consistent and always showed the source of the default. For example, in the Roof materials DBX (see attached pic), why can't it tells us the source of all the default settings, when using the default. It does for the Moldings, but not for the Flush Eave. It could also tell us that the Skylight Shaft and Soffit/Eave defaults are coming from the Floor Ceiling Platform - Ceiling Finish. It took me a while to decode all that, and I shouldn't have to. It should be as simple as looking in the DBX to find out the source of the default. Another example. For Interior Stairs material defaults, it just shows all the values When in fact, all the default values for the interior stairs are sourced as shown in this pic:

I'll send it to tech support! Thanks for looking into it Mick! -Alvar

I think it's a bug, or just a weird way that Chief works... I tried starting other plans from standard CA templates, and the Skylight Frame is set to a color (which varies from template to template), and when you go to change the material and set it to "use default", it uses whatever default the Plan originally had for the Roof material. However, if you then change the Roof Material, the default for the "Skylight Frame" can't be set any more, as it's not based on some other material default setting in the program that you can control. You can, of course, go and set the Skylight Frame material to anything you want, but the "use default" is not controllable, like it is for everything else in the program.

Oops, there was an error in my last pic showing the source of defaults for roof materials. Here's the correct one