Window cuts roof plane

[BenjaminZ]

I'm not sure what this type of roof is called, but I have a client who saw this entry and wants their porch entry to look similar.  It looks like it would be a floating dormer because they want a false window and this is only a single story home they are building, not the 2 stories seen in this picture.   I can not get the dormer to work due to not having enough roof real estate to place it and I am not sure if a dormer is even the correct way to tell Chief what I want.   I am totally flustered on this one and would appreciate any ideas on how I would go about doing something like this where a window cuts a roof plane.

 

Thank you in advance for any ideas.

[DzinEye]

56 minutes ago, BenjaminZ said:

I'm not sure what this type of roof is called

 

That is a shed roof dormer.  Chief will auto-build that style of dormer if you set up that way.  

You're saying there's not enough 'real-estate' to fit the auto-dormer, so what you need to do is place an auto-dormer somewhere on the roof where it will fit, double click it to open the floating dormer dbx and change the roof type to shed... make the pitch low, say 3:12 and under the walls part of the dbx set it to be quite narrow... you can adjust it bigger after you place it.  Now you can erase the dormer you randomly placed and you should now be able to place a tiny dormer where you want it.  Now you can gradually enlarge it as you watch how it's fitting.  Once you get a message that it doesn't fit, undo and you'll know you've maximized the size.

 

BTW... The picture you attached almost looks like there's no thickness to the walls of the dormer, so if you need that specific look you'll have to create a thin wall type to assign to your dormer.  

 

[DzinEye]

1 hour ago, BenjaminZ said:

I am totally flustered on this one and would appreciate any ideas on how I would go about doing something like this where a window cuts a roof plane.

I should've added;  Once you get the auto-dormer set,  you can explode it then modify the main roof it's placed in so it doesn't pass in front of the dormer, and then you can stretch the dormer window down into the lower wall. 

[BenjaminZ]

Thank you for the suggestions.  I will give this a try and see how it goes.   I have auto-built the roof and I was manually trying to add the floating dormer to it.  My problem was the area I was trying to fit the dormer was too small to fit the dormer I was attempting to place there.  I will try placing it on a larger plane and shrinking it down as you suggested. 

 

Thank you.

[BenjaminZ]

I would just like to heartily thank all of you for the guidance and for helping me figure this out.  I really appreciate it and I think it turned out pretty nice.

[BenjaminZ]

I started by trying to put the dormer there and adjusting the roof around it and found that the brick was automatically filling into the roof plane and it was blocking the front of the dormer so I then deleted the dormer front wall and adjusted the height of the shed roof until I got it where I needed it allowing the brick to fill in space.   I'm not sure if I explained that clearly, I hope so.