Dormer Help ASAP!

[Jarenand]

I am trying to get the middle dormer on my plan to look somewhat like the picture attached. I cant seem to figure out to allow a dormer to be placed on the front of the roof. I keep getting error messages and it wont let me manually draw one either. Any help or tips would be appreciated. 

roof.pdf

[GeneDavis]

I won't download your .pdf.  Just post it as a picture.

 

Did you break that second floor front wall at the large dormer extents and make it a gable wall in the roof tab?  Do that.  It'll auto-build at your main roof pitch, probably not the 14/12 of that dormer (looks about like that) but you can edit the planes and rejoin them to the main.

[Jarenand]

 

[Jarenand]

Here is the picture of where im at now. 

 

[TeaTime]

A few questions regarding the dormer tools - are you using Auto Dormer or Auto Floating Dormer?

 

1 hour ago, Jarenand said:

I keep getting error messages

What's the error? There are several possible so just knowing that it's generating "an error" unfortunately doesn't tell anyone much - need the details.

 

1 hour ago, Jarenand said:

and it wont let me manually draw one either.

Again, need details. what's happening when you do?

 

Just now, Jarenand said:

Here is the picture of where im at now.

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but whoever said that wasn't talking about Chief Architect -- post the plan and we can see what's happening. instead of guessing.

 

What I'd probably suggest is to use an Auto Floating dormer, even if it errors you can open the Dormer box that appears and modify wall height, pitch, etc. So if it's erroring because it doesn't fit, then you can shrink it down - but they normally shrink to fit. Just need more details to know why it's failing.

[Jarenand]

Sorry im new to this lol. here is the error message when i try to put the auto dormer on that lower half of the roof. 

[Jarenand]

im using the auto floating dormer tool.

 

[Jarenand]

 

[TeaTime]

No worries. Yeah that message means that it just doesn't fit.

Though it's usually something like this 

But even then, a dormer totally CAN fit within that space, if it's shorter/smaller.

 

Open it and decrease the wall height - that's how you'll achieve that style of dormer anyway.

[Jarenand]

thank you! Okay so i got it to put a smaller dormer on that roof over the porch. Is there anyway to make it taller to look like the picture above? if i make it any taller than 12'' i get the same error message as before. 

[Jarenand]

[TeaTime]

Of course. All roof heights are a product of width and height. in the dormer dialog, on the Walls panel you can set the width of that front wall, and on the Roof panel you can set the pitch.

[Jarenand]

 I have tried editing in the dormer dialog, but continue to get the error message as before. Is there another way to make it wider and taller or am I missing something? The max height it will let me go is 13''. 

[TeaTime]

Then it's hitting something else - it's hard to tell in that screenshot if there's two roof planes in that space? Dormers can't span across two planes. If there is, then that's the problem.

If you attach the .plan file itself then we can see it and not play whack-a-mole on a forum all day  

[Jarenand]

okay ill attach it here. Thank you for the help! 

Kirkham Draft.plan

[TeaTime]

Sure enough - that break between two roof planes won't allow the dormer any higher.

 

This gets more complicated but you'll need to manually cut those two roof planes.

Select and Explode that dormer, you can re-use it's roof planes, but the Hole it made needs to go. Dormers are on Floor A, hole is on Floor 1.

You'll need to manually break and shape out an area from both planes. It's gonna get complicated though because having two pitches means it can't be a straight V shape, it'll have to be broken into a pentagonal shape.

Something like 

[Jarenand]

okay good to know i will do some playing around and see what I can come up with! Thank you for all the help. 

[GeneDavis]

All 3 dormers appear in the first image, to have their face walls at the house wall location, stacked directly over.  Not way out over the porch's railing wall.

 

Are you drawing an as-built of this house?

 

Are you instead wanting to recreate a plan using a stock plan offered at a website?  If so, the upper floor plan should show where the dormer walls are.

 

[Jarenand]

I was going off of a floor plan I made but wanting to recreate the roof style and dormers like the plan from the internet.

 

[SNestor]

On 8/7/2023 at 11:27 AM, Jarenand said:

I was going off of a floor plan I made but wanting to recreate the roof style and dormers like the plan from the internet.

 

I made you a video to show you how. I'd say doing something like this is somewhat of an advanced roof topic. 

Custom Dormers for Jarenand on Chief Talk - Watch Video

 

 

[GeneDavis]

The pic posted by the OP in post 1 has the three dormers with their shingled front faces all in the same plane, and it looks like the same plane as the wall in which the entry door is under the porch.  The dormers poke out from a steeply pitched roof (I drew my mockup as an 11-pitch) and the porch roof is quite shallow, more like a 2/12.  Look at the pic closely and you can see the gabled overhangs of the large central dormer resolving down onto that 2/12 porch roof.  

 

The spaces inside behind those dormers don't make sense, in the mockup I did, which leads me to think those dormers are purely deco.  False dormers.  Done all the time.  Expensive.

[DG1949]

15 hours ago, SNestor said:

I made you a video

Thank you Steve. Very informative. 

[SNestor]

28 minutes ago, DG1949 said:

Thank you Steve. Very informative. 

 

Glad it helped!  Dormers seem to be the bane of all who dive into Chief.