Reiter

I have been struggling with the correct way to get this vaulted gable roof over a porch which cuts into the house by 6 feet. After learning about creating the zero floor just for the foundation only I decided to take the same approach with this porch roof. I have made it to the point where I was ready to start trimming and have found that I cannot see the roof planes at the same time so placing intersection points can be done. I can see 3rd floor I created just for the roof with 18" walls and no floors with room dividers for walls so I could build the raised gable on a room of its own. here's the plan and a few screen shots of what I'm seeing. I know this may be a strange way to build this, but my desperate inexperience has me grasping as anything to try and discover a way to get this done. covered porch.zip

I have stepped footings showing up as soon as I add interior walls that snap to my exterior foundation walls. I get the ~S symbol and then the footing ha an unwanted step. foundation help.zip

I have attached the plan in minimum form with all the pitches and roof directives in the walls with the exception of the covered front porch. I have attached images of the plan I was told to scrap due to how butchered up it was. this is what I want it to look like when I'm done for the most part. The real picture is the home as purchased. Its a plain box but it does have a covered rear deck on the top floor so that's been interesting to work around since I want the two elevated gables yet that shed style in the back is built over the original 6/12 across the back, so they all need to blend in. the shed roof has the same facia height as the rest of the house and it meets the 6/12 roof 5'3'' below the ridge. All the decks are covered. small gable left rear, shed roof in the middle and large vaulted gable over right rear deck. that room just inside from the large deck has 18'' higher walls and that room will have a vaulted ceiling. The one funky part is that gable that wraps over the large room with the vaulted ceiling. maybe a faux chimney could hide it but as long as it could even be built that way it only faces the woods and is really never seen much. I few people have wanted to see this plan to get an idea of what's been one of the hardest things I have ever tried to learn. please don't tell me you put it all in place with perfect trusses in five minutes even if you do!! roof 5.zip

I wish to create a cantilevered truss which the bottom board which sits on the top of the wall and runs all the way out to the fascia as the one in the image I have attached. I've just started a new plan after destroying my last plan with bad habits and editing I didn’t know was causing so much chaos. In my quest to not repeat another junk plan I have started over. I'm setting defaults and then testing them in a new plan to see if I can get the results I need. I've gotten to the point I want to add the roof structure and need to duplicate the cantilevered truss in the image below with a 24" overhang on a 6" pitch to match the exiting home I am adding on to. Can X15 create this truss? If it can't is the only option to manually edit a truss once I get the correct heel setting and replicate the trusses across the build or at least edit one for the Layout that the truss company will use?

Thanks in advance for anyone who can steer me in the right direction. The last time I put this up I didnt have my file attached. Solver made me a nice video but my photo he had to work with cut off a Gable end he couldn't see which adds the biggest factor to my problem. Attached is my file. What I am trying to accomplish is covering the entire porch with a gable roof which is raised high enough to ride up the hip roof and can tuck the hip under the soffits of the gable roof on both sides. I want the ceiling of that gable over the porch to have a ceiling which attaches to the bottom of the gable roof planes. The fact that I already have the invisible walls over the porch used to build the existing roof means creating walls to make the other roof a problem as the overlap area can’t have dual roof status (unless there is an ignore overlap feature I’m not privy too). Things I have tried are building a skinny little room on the left side of the porch and giving it hip status to keep that roof from going away. I have taken the invisible walls out and created that portion over the porch with roof bassline polylines. I have created a second floor over that area and made the walls 1/8 high…. And many other experiments. I have been told this can be done with auto built roofs. If it can’t please let me know. The reason I would like it to auto build is I have some other roofs and vaulted ceilings to create and don’t want to lose work however I since have learned how to mark areas as manually edited and keep them I believe. CA11-17.zip

Eric, I'm reading up on roof polylines and hoping this will alow me to possibly build one roof or more such as my issue on different datum planes, I'm not finished reading but wanted you to know Im exploring other options. -Adam

Eric, I followed your instructions however at the 40 second mark in your video you are mentioning how there are no walls inside the room created for generating the porch roof. This is where my plan differs from your video. Since you created your video based off of one of my screen shots it may have been a picture of my house which didn’t show you the gable roof on the end v/s the hip roof your video has. In order to make my plan form the hip side of the roof that cantilevers over the porch I had to draw an invisible wall across the porch and back to the house to make a room out of that area. The first two pictures are of the house and the working plan view with the invisible walls I used to make the roof over the smaller porch which matches my house. The third image is after adding the walls like your video shows but over the top of my existing invisible walls and making each room a porch as well as matching them with the eye dropper. The 4th image was the results. I imagine with the other invisible walls required to build the correct roof I’m starting the system just doesn’t know what to work off of. I tried everything I could think of to try to manipulate the roof by breaking my invisible walls inside the room and making it a gable wall, deleting it from the inside of the room and even though you said the outside wall on the porch was the only one needing the gable setting after the roof failed I tried making the opposite wall inside the home a gable wall also but with no success. Is there any kind of setting that will direct the software to generate both of these roofs or in light of this information a manual build is now the only way. -Adam

Eric, Thank you for making that video and I'm leaving work and looking forward to working on it when I get home. The difference between your example and my project is that the wall to the left of the porch is a gable on the end with the facia being the same on both sides of the porch. It may not make any difference as long as I can make the room. I think what will help the most is that room extending into the house. Without the hip on the left side causing conflict may even allow me to go deep enough to fix the ceiling and those little pie shaped areas may be gone. -Adam

Eric, Sorry to have not responded sooner. What usually happens is I go to apply something new that's been suggested and end up running into other problems that lead me down another path. It's been one step forward and 3 steps back. I've encountered so many problems with this whole plan that I've had to scrap them and start over. On the FB page the reply's come in so fast that I end up losing track of the answers and even have trouble going back and finding them. I'm already starting to feel like the little boy who cried wolf. I don't want to frustrate the people who can help me by feeling like your help has fallen on deaf ears. I had another user who told me about this page and said if I'm lucky Solver will answer my questions, so I can't afford to blow it getting help from you. In your solution above I'm guessing the inset wall has to be marked as a gable. Since my plan is at a corner and not walled on both sides like this example would I be correct to say I need to build a wall on that non-corner side and make it invisible? Also how did you get the roof to extend out over the porch with no walls under that area or is this a case where there is a wall for the build but that it has been broken and made invisible. If I have assumed correctly that the roof was generated from what I have described in my assumptions how did the two planes of the roof get connected? Did auto-build do it or did you have to utilize the connect plane feature. It's my hope that once I figure out how to get this drawn the framing build will be correct. As for slowing down, did I mention I probably have at least 100 hours in trying to learn this. Does this software have a progressive training portion that brings a newbie along or is it only the videos on different subject and written word. Not to drone on but I have suffered my whole life with reading comprehension. If you don't suffer from it your blessed and sometimes it gets me down. Thats why I tend to gravitate to the videos. It's not because I'm lazy. One last thing that has me working with some urgency. I designed on 3D Home Architect and built single handedly my first home and it was spectacular and where my talents shine. I sold that home and have moved my wife and I into this house which needs all the changes I am drawing with this software. I fist drew the existing home and now working on the changes and additions. My wife asks me every time she walks by " So how is it going?" and in the beginning I got things drawn with decent progress. Then in my collision repair business our area was struck with a county wide softball sized hailstorm which damaged my business and home as well. After 27 straight 16hour days with not a single day off we finally are back to normal-ish workdays. After a month away from drawing I had become rusty. These roofs have given trouble. The biggest problem is you don't know what you don't know. I could be spending hours trying to make the system do something that it can't but haven't a clue. The program I used years ago didn't do roofs at all so there's not any carryover experience. Sorry, that was so long but I help a lot of people within my career choice and serve on several technical college boards and I always like to know some background on whom I'm helping. -Adam

This is a screen shot of my problem. I have modified it with different colors in my attempt to show you what I am up against. So far, I have had lots of people try to help and suggest videos (all of which I have watched but watched again when recommended). I have yet to find one that addresses my situation. The roof overbuild video is only for covering an exterior room and not one that cuts into my existing roof. I have done that exercise and it’s easy to do. What I’m trying to draw is a gable roof which will cover the porch. The hip roof currently covers half of the porch and is represented by the pink line. It is the room divider I placed so the hip roof would be generated when I selected auto-build roof over that area. The blue lines represent the roof plane over the house and the front is the hip side and the left side is the gable side. The current roof is open underneath where it is over the porch which is why I had to use the room dividers to force the software to build the roof plane. What I am trying to do and have invested in over 100 hours trying to draw/learn, is how to build a gable roof to cover this entire porch. This roof will have a higher facia elevation and will allow the existing hip roof to tuck under the new gable. I have attached a screenshot of what I want it to look like. #Ryan Gardner says it can easily be done and even have the software auto-build it. As I type this from my day job I’m wondering if maybe I need to create breaks on the hip wall and label the area where the exterior wall (red line) only where the porch is and give it gable status? I challenge anyone, (ok really at this point I’m just begging) to explain if this can be done with settings to build this roof with auto build when I generate roofs or if this is a mandatory manual build. I NEED to learn how to do this as I have another area of deck on the back of the house on one end of the plan and another covered deck which will be an extension of the vaulted ceiling over a living room which also will be meeting up with another roof in a similar manner. (I’m dreading that one at this point too) Either way can you please point me in the right direction for the training that will allow me to learn how to do this or explain it to me. Please bear in mind most of you have forgotten how good you are at working with this software and assume I know what you know. Most of you have a 40-gig hard drive brain and I have one floppy disk. I've done a lot of building, and I could have gotten my tools out and built this thing faster than I can draw it.

After trying to build roof as an over build and many other methods I failed. I have now found a video that I thought would be my eureka moment only to find that 59 seconds into this video Locating Roof Plane Intersections - Video | Chief Architect he clicks on an icon I do NOT have. As you will see in the two images I have attached the first on is a screen shot at 59 seconds where he can be seen clicking on an icon that looks almost identical to the one to the left of it which is a coplaner icon on my screen. the picture on the right is of my screen. See no " create roof intersection icon". Is this a feature that has been done away with and maybe this video was made with an older version. I am using 15. I have 12 hours inveted in trying to complete this task I'm sure most of you can do in seconds.

I have been trying for over two days to put a roof over a porch. I have even removed the porch and created a room and called it a bedroom with all the roof directives entered and build roof over this room turned on and turned on the build roof. The system will not build a roof over this room. the room does turn shaded when I click on it so I know it is seeing it as a room. I have watched the roof over build video and many other roof training videos. The rendering below is of some manual roof planes just placed to give you an idea of what I'm trying to create. The trouble with the manual building is many things are not lining up and so far I havent found any of the fixes for those problems either. I'm a rookie so any explanations will need to be entry level. please dont assume I know where anything is because I clearly do not.