PMMully

"Roof creation is based upon strenuous study followed by practice where you fail-fail-succeed. There is no other workable way to obtain your own competence." @DavidJPotter taking it to heart... 100% manual version.... study and experimentation...

Point, counterpoint,... I went back to the plan, deleted the roof, and started from scratch via auto-gen. The trick I learned just today for the settings was setting the exterior two walls on the porch to "High Shed", and then clicking "Expand Downward" right after. It then generated an excellent rendition of a "modern flat roof", which actually has a small pitch via foam boards under EPDM per our new code. It generated just a slight hip, which is exactly how it would be built. Since this was an old flat roof, I had to lose the hip and went manual. But it was a snap and turned out well. These old roofs typically have the shingles overlap the EPDM, so I played around with the planes a bit with some success, or may just use a polyline solid to make that connection look better. Why CA wants two radio buttons, which are normally mutually exclusive to be selected in sequence, to control this is beyond me. But without that sequence the other autogen options were way off outside of starting with hips. @DavidJPotter so in this instance your motto held :-)

Sorry @glennw, I meant "Roof Height, Raise/Lower From Ceiling Height". I had a small project of a very old building, where I was trying to mimic the existing condition as best I could. Only one room had a roof that was raised over the ceiling for some reason, so I could not just use the room ceiling height. I got by it by changing the roof structure for that roof plane. Always looking for any shortcuts to allow the auto-generation to work as best it can.

Sometimes the doorway in the wall works very well, others not. I found that it works very well in smooth/stucco applications. When I had the siding, I cut to a post2beam and removed the start/end and it worked well. Seems like every condition is different and rendering engine can not interpret every situation as we want it.

I understand the point, sometimes you just gotta cut and run, but you need to know the core well in order to do that. In this case, it was a partial roof-gen, which I used just to see how well the automagical stuff will do and testing the boundaries. It's my way of doing what David preached... fail-fail-succeed. I do the same thing with my golf swing One thing I "think" I learned, is the autogen will rarely, if ever, work on these old Florida 50-70's homes that were pre-truss. The ridges and valleys are always completely off. I imagine it was due to what lumber was readily available back then (does anyone balloon frame these days?). When I model the exact specs of this project as-built, I believe I will wind up deleting or modifying every roof plane. To David's point, I might gain a small amount or productivity just by the fact the planes were there in the first place.

I started watching that 1hr+ roof seminar video. Need to get some quality time together to watch that one, chock full of info.

Would that auto-generate the roof plane? Will give it a shot shortly.

That and the false gable video, will check that out as well.

@Hammer7 I just watched a series of videos by Scott on Truss Framing. I would suggest watching the series. There is a lot more truss capability in CA than at least I thought. I just never dove in due to the way I work with the truss companies. As the video claims, it is not an engineered product, but on complex jobs may be valuable to the build crews to visualize the end game, and info to the truss designer as to the need. But I have to admit, it is powerful. The series also answers a lot of questions I have seen on this forum on my time here on how to do stuff. @ShaneK smokin' hot stuff.

Hi all, in my area I have a lot of odd roof designs with hips, gables, and both, mixed with flat roofs. Most of these are covered porches with all sorts of oddities, that want to become fully closed in rooms, or have additions put on top of them. These were all conventionally framed houses back then. I have a plan here that is very close to a real job. I got it all to work pretty well overall. It was actually harder to do than the real job because I used the original CA generated roof to start with and it did not have favorable ridges in comparison to the real job. I wound up making custom roof planes for the flat roof and others to tie it all in. Couple of questions: I tried to get this to generate using many combinations of wall types on the porch, roof groups, etc., is where any chance this could ever be autogenerated? Update: I did not try baseline manipulations however. I got stumped on trying to create roof planes for the gable end of the main ridge. I was thinking of some sort of hip planes to form a ridge, or a (nearly) vertical roof section to form a gable. I had too much trouble with the thickness, facia, etc. The area is outlined in the attached pics and plan. I wound up using a polyline solid that I left as concrete to make it easily visible. Any advice is appreciated in advance. Update: I guess it is really a reverse cricket, or a reverse hip? I have done crickets, not sure why my brain can not process this one. ManualFlatRoofGames.plan

Hi all, Can these two settings, "Ceiling Height" and "Birdsmouth off Plate" adjustments be applied to selected roof planes, or just in the roof build? So far all I can find is the later, am I missing anything?

Perfect Generic stuff in Rich Text blocks, Notes schedule for plan specific stuff (repeatable across the plan) - less clutter, save time. Leaders only for very specific stuff to a page.

Being fairly new in comparison to many of you on this forum, many times I test CA, or myself... because I am learning the boundaries.. Once I learn a boundary, I figure out how to navigate around it. This is why I ask a lot of "best practice" questions. I am also exploring how far I can push the CA schedules and material take off tools. I never would have even thought to set the newels to zero inches. That is a great tip!

@mtldesignsthis is s a few "short ones"....

Just got to be smarter than what you are working with,... some good advice here!

Interesting use case. I switched all my notes over to Rich Text Blocks to take advantage of the touted formatting/editing as in my area there are many CYA notes required for PE sign-off. I tried your method and it looks great, but limited in formatting. What am I missing?

Update: It appears to be the column. I selected one out of the library that was similar to the video, and it cleaned up.

I have done some "illustrative truss work" and found the copy function to work well only in certain situations. I had good luck manually placing them however. It gets a bit more involved with girder trusses, etc, had to play with the bottom chords, etc. Pretty much not worth the hassle unless you really have a need to look cool on the concept phases. I just overlay the truss company output given its the same scale, that works well. I hit that error in the KB several times, I just manually draw it in as it is all just show anyway.

Hi all, I have a test plan where I am trying out the various ways to make gable/hip entry roof mixtures on porches. I have two questions: 1) I have made gable entries using the gable tool with a single room, as well as multiple rooms via invisible walls, so far both ways are successful overall using come custom ceiling planes. Wondering if there are any far reaching pros/cons of either method? 2) I have also made one version that is single room, and follows a pattern in a video done by@SNestoron X11, so I know it works. I just can not get the Post2Beam roof soffit/wall section to generate correctly. I looked at many settings and videos but I can not put my finger on the fix. I believe there is a setting that controls this (I tried the roof returns also)? I realize his full video has other compoents like attic walls, custom ceiling planes to finish it, but his plan generates the soffits just fine. Not sure what I am missing. GableEntryGames.plan

@SNestor I use that way all the time... you are the one who taught it to me . It works great 9 our of 10 times except in the following conditions.... 1) When the wall intersects a window or doorway. I have not been able to get the doorway to not interfere with the window or door. So I cut to Post2Beam railing and remove the end newels. 2) Sometimes, I get bleed through on the 3D, and no matter how hard I try, I can not seem to get it right in all plans, so I again, cut to Post2Beam railing and remove the newels. 3) Sometimes I have gotten some odd generation and roof connections seem to be problematic, and changing to Post2Beam railing seems to solve it. I have a case into support and no answers yet. Support initially came back and said it was related to the doorway meeting the other walls. I quickly disproved that by eliminating the doorways, still the same odd roof/wall connections. I am pushing to get them to tell me what works and what does not. I have made my own wall type that represents a CMU/stucco "Post2Beam Header" wall with all the right definition for reality, and then put in the doorways if that works out per number 1/2/3 above, and the wall schedule is correct that way also. All peachy. If not, I change the same wall to Post2Beam Railing (it still shows up as the right wall type as an object), it solves the problems with 1/2/3, but it screws up the wall schedule. Support has accepted it as a bug. I get around it by using my own CMU/stucco "Post2Beam Header" legend that I overlay on the schedule. Another BIG advantage of the method you taught me, is you can custom place your newels, or posts, as well as control the length of the post. Versus the Post2Beam railing wall method that only allows the spacing.

I just had to deliver a plan that had an recessed wet bar in a wall. I searched around and actually found an old post from Rene on using a window in the wall with all the components turned off. Worked slick. Then I tried a doorway, that worked also. The framing reveals a heavier header/lintel on the door method. In this case, there is a cripple wall up to the main top plate, and given this is load bearing wall overall, I used the doorway. I guess the other way is just frame in the recessed niche, make it a nook room type, and just set the ceiling height (like I did for the window and doorway method), probably better in the long run for other objects maybe? Just wondering if yall had any preference and why if so. Update: I guess the wall niche tool could be just as appropriate? Nah,,, just checked it, seems it limits the depth to the depth of the wall.

Yeah, I have employed that technique in the past, putting custom materials on etc.. 98% of the time here in FL, it is just CBU and stucco, so it would be most useful. Thanks.

Ok, the define material dialog control.... got it. Thanks.

Using a post to beam wall, need to set the beam to a siding material like Hardie. All good but I need to change the direction of the siding on the beam from vertical to horizontal. I tried the vertical/horizontal profile setting, etc., but no results. I imaging I might have to use the surface builder stuff, I need to rotate it 45 degrees.

I have to use Post to Beam wall many times in my area for porches under truss. That process works well overall. There is a checkbox to set the newel width to match the wall width which works. That results in a square post/newel. In reality, these newels are constructed of CBU, and hence are not square but are rectangle. Any way to do this? I have not found anything anywhere. Sometimes I get around this by using a CBU wall type with doorways. That works well, but not when the wall lands on a window or door , and sometimes it is hard to get the doorway to land well on the wall.