ladycoralie

I second that!

A big thanks to Glenn who Skyped with me earlier in the week and gave me some one on one with the roof issues I was having. So nice of him to do that. It really helped and I understand a whole lot more than I did before. Thanks to everyone else who helped here too. I think I'm on my way now with the roofs for this place. Fingers crossed.

Hi Glenn, Yep that is me. I haven't used that account in years and I must confess I'm not sure how to use Skype anymore. I'm sure I'll figure it out though. Don't you just love that Koala eh? The epitome of a drop bear. Now I must apologise as I won't be able to Skype with as planned because my friend Susan from Brisbane just dropped in unexpectedly on her way down to Byron Bay and she may delay her trip a bit because of the weather. It is raining cats and dogs up here. If we could do it possibly later this afternoon or tomorrow sometime that would be great. I'm really sorry, but I wasn't expecting visitors today, and she just dropped in out of the blue. We also have the electrician here installing a new fan right now, and believe it or not, we just had the guys from Multi Cool install a whole new system for air conditioning this morning as our old one had the Richard, so today is just full on. I thought I might be free in the afternoon to Skype with you as my Dad was supposed to be handling all of the technical stuff while I escaped to Bingo this morning with my Mum and sister - we won - Woo Hoo, but the electrician was late and now Susan's turned up, and my parents just took off to Harvey Norman, so now is a bit hectic. I'm really sorry to put you out like this. Is later this afternoon or early in the evening out of the question or even tomorrow maybe? The house is just crazy right now. Sorry, Coralie

Hi Glenn, Tuesday is good. I'm in QLD so an hour behind you. Would sometime after lunch be okay? I have to go out this morning. I've just set up an account and my screen name is Coralie Allan. Cheers and talk to you soon, Coralie

Wow Glenn! A Skype session with you would be awesome mate. I'll have to go and download it so we can do this. Let me know when it is convenient for you to Skype. I can't believe that you think this roof is easy, and then again I can - because I'm not an architect! LOL. I would also really like to know how to make those window shed roof thingys as well if you have the time. Thanks so much and cheers Coralie. P.S. Can you also post the plan, because I'd like to see what you did too.

Hi Lewis and thanks. Okay, so I'll try to reverse the order in which I did it. I just haven't had any success doing it that way so far, but I'm willing to try again. I was following the Chief Tutorial because I have a lot of trouble with the auto rebuild and wanted to make some of the roofs he was making on the house I'm working on. I wanted to try to make the back of the house with those shed roof windows on either side and that tutorial showed how to do that, but I got stuck at just building the roof. I really like the look of the log cabins and mountain homes that you guys have in the States and Canada. They are awesome and not the norm down here in Oz at all. So I guess when I'm trying to make one of those styles of houses, I experience all the troubles I do with roofs as a lot of new houses down here are built with simple hip roofs or shed style roofs and roofs with the pitches, shapes and angles of those log cabins are just so unusual - and of course difficult for me to do with my lack of experience. Anyway, I'm giving it a go and have attached my plan if anyone wants to look over it for me. I can't even begin to tell you how many times I've adjusted these roof planes over the past 2 weeks. Yikes - a lot. I am trying to design one of those arrow front homes. I have never seen one of those down here. Glenn might have as he is a real architect, but in all my travels around Australia I haven't seen one, so they wouldn't be the norm. It isn't necessary to have such high pitched roofs because it doesn't snow generally, except in the Snowy Mountains. I just love the high windows, walls and the great gable roof entries with all those wonderful logs and trusses. It would be really great if Chief made a tutorial someday on how to build a mountain/log style home with all the wonderful decorative features because they may be familiar to Americans and Canadians, but to us Antipodeans, they are like 'Wow!' I'll put some screenshots in, so you can see what I'm trying to achieve. I should probably just stick to a plain rectangle, but by golly I do like the look of these homes. Some of these shots have that arrow front, Others have those shed windows on either side. I thought about a dormer window, but I wasn't sure if that was the right way to go as the tutorial does it differently by using the room divider tool. wanted to make a really long one to give more headroom and space upstairs. If anyone wants to give me some advice about this, I'd really appreciate it. Cheers and thanks Coralie Untitled 2.plan

I probably made the mistake of drawing the roof planes manually to begin with. I wanted to rebuild on some of the walls to make a high end gable wall but when I check the auto rebuild roof, the retain manually drawn roof planes is greyed out. When I check build roof and check retain manual roof planes, I get the error message. If I start with auto build roof, before drawing roof planes myself, I get this horrible wonky looking roof and I end up having to delete those roof planes and start again which is why I went the route of drawing the roof planes first. There's probably a lot I'm doing wrong, but I don't know how to resolve this one.

Hi Glenn, not sure if I'm doing this right or not. I tried to check the retain manually drawn roof planes, but this error message came up. When I checked the knowledge base, they didn't have any information regarding this error. If I check the automatic build roof option, the check boxes for retaining the manual roof planes gets greyed out and I lose the check mark. Would you mind taking a look at the screenshot of what I'm doing? Thanks Coralie

Thanks Glenn, I'll give it a go. Cheers Coralie

Hope everyone had a lovely holiday. I've been away at the beach and such as it is the middle of summer down here. Happy New Year everyone!

G'Day all. I've been watching some roofing videos and naturally I'm having a devil of a time with building a roof on a house I'm working on. LOL. Anyway, the one I'm watching at the moment - Chief Architect Roof Design Tips (48 seconds in)- demonstrates building a roof with some of the roof already built - but the tutor uses the auto build function. When he does this, the roof he has already built stays the same. However, when I do it, I lose all the roof planes I've built and the whole thing is built over again and I lose my work. Can anyone tell me how to use the auto roof build option and not lose my work as this tutor has done? Thanks, Coralie

Merry Christmas Perry and Happy Holidays RL-inc. Hope the Christmas shopping goes well Perry and thanks for all the help Guys (Blokes)

Ha Ha! Sorry about that. In Australia we tend to say Guys for everyone. Don't ask me why. It is slang that has crept in. How about this as it is true Aussie slang - You Sheilas and Blokes are the best! Cheers. And the very same to you chief58. Have a good one.

'Tis almost the night before Christmas in Oz, so I thought I would wish everyone on here a very Merry Christmas and Seasons Greetings for the Holidays from Down Under. Thank you everyone for all the time and effort you have put in to helping me with my questions about Chief Architect. You guys are the best. Cheers and Happy Holidays to all, Coralie

Hi Perry and Keith. Yes I'm still trying to figure things out. Not to worry though, I'm sure I will get it in the end. Just takes me a bit of a while to absorb it all. I find I have to go over and over things to truly get it. So I did end up resolving the gap problem, just wasn't sure how to change the finish on the outer porch slab. Thanks for your help. I do appreciate it very much.

Okay, s Thanks Drawzilla. Do I click on the bottom of the porch to bring it up or on the post or beam?

Hi DRAWZILLA, I know this is going to sound silly, but I don't know how to find the post and beam wall to change it to a fence. I'm also unsure of how to move the slab without making the whole porch move or what a p-solid slab is. Sorry. I'm still at the tutorial stage. Thanks for the help. I'll keep working on it. Cheers and thanks Coralie

Hi Keithhe, I will have to give this a go and see how it works. For the moment, I have resolved this from rlackore and dshall's advice. I've been following the Cottage Chic Building Project to design this and learning as I go. I'm going to have a look at the pony wall issue too. I want the upper walls to be icf stucco on the top floors. I haven't really got to the part where I design the top floor rooms yet and what to put up there. It may change because, when I get to that part in the Cottage Chic Building Project it will no doubt include this. Not sure how to realign the porch and deck other than what the program does at the moment. I'm still working on fine tuning stuff. Cheers and thanks Coralie

Hi rlackore. Thanks for the help. I made this work for me by defining the invisible wall between porch and deck as a room divider, because it was showing up on the plan as icf stucco, then made it 1/16". I dragged it down to meet the deck and with a bit of fiddling around it worked. Thanks mate. That's another way to do it as well as dshall's. Good to know all these various methods for the future. Cheers and thanks Coralie

Hi dshall, and thanks for the vid. I eventually got it to work after a couple of goes. I'll tell you what I did, because I could not make it work exactly as you. I followed you up to making the interior wall a 'Copy Thin', then tried to reduce it by removing the layers as you did to 1/16". I couldn't do it exactly as you with deleting - maybe because I have x7? Perhaps, but not sure why. I then deleted the copy in the dialogue box twice, and it turned into a room divider! Then I was able to drag the room divider to the deck and Voila - The porch and deck aligned beautifully. For the other side, I followed the same steps (in retrospect, I probably could have just copied and pasted the room divider I just made over to the other side) but as I couldn't change the 'Interior Wall Thin' by deleting twice again as I got an error message telling me that it was already being used in my plan. So I copied that wall again and called it 'Interior 4 Copy Thin Copy", then deleted twice and it changed to a room divider. I was then able to drag it into position and form the deck and porch together. I've attached some pics to show you how I went about it. Thanks again. You've been a great help mate. Cheers and thanks Coralie.

Hey it worked this time. Yay. King Parrot.plan

Thanks Guys. I tried to post the plan yesterday without any success. I've tried both the basic uploader as well as the flash 9 one. I've got Windows 10 and Flash has been updated. Sometimes I've had success with it and sometimes not. It seems to be hit or miss with me when I try to upload. I'll give it another go and cross my fingers.

Hi all, For people who have helped me before, a big thank you and I hope that you can see that I have made some progress with my plans, I've even built a roof. I know it's not perfect, but at least I am getting there. Well, the problem I am currently experiencing is a gap in the floor between the deck and the porch that are adjoining. Is this to be expected in a 3D view or is there something I can do to resolve this please? Cheers Coralie

Thank you so much for that video and your tips. I've been practicing it, and I'm a lot further along than I was before. So thanks again for your help and thankyou to everyone on here who offered me advice. It all helped in the end. Cheers!

Thanks so much HamlinBC. That really helped. I'm going to have a go with another model and try to replicate and practice what you did. I noticed that you changed the fascia on the garage to 12" and the main house to 14". Can you tell me why the roofs are different and how this works? Was the problem that I had them all the same? I didn't know about the tool to break the planes. I will keep practicing. Cheers Coralie