wtstreetglow Posted February 27, 2016 Share Posted February 27, 2016 Hello all, I would like to say thank you in advance for everyone's help. I have recently attempted to put my current house into chief architect and have done pretty well up until this point. I am really struggling with getting a 4 pitch on the front porch, a 12 pitch over the house, a 6 pitch over the garage on slab next to the house. The part I am having a difficult time with is getting the house to accept dormers on the exterior wall. When I measure the interior of my house when you are standing in the dormer it is 88.5" tall. When you are standing in the center of the room, it is 96.5". My plans were to fix the 8" height difference in the dormer with a 8" cabinet soffit just for looks and then manually frame the area within the framing area of chief architect. I guess what I would really like is for someone to walk me through getting the pitches correct in the 3 areas and possibly helping me figure out why the second floor won't accept the auto dormers. (I'm am essentially trying to build my house in chief architect so I should be able to get any measurements if someone needs one) My .plan file is in my google drive which I have set up for public sharing at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BymwM52lyoY1Q2haSmdZeDIxZWc/view?usp=sharing Thank you all so much!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wtstreetglow Posted February 27, 2016 Author Share Posted February 27, 2016 I have attempted to use the auto roof feature to get the pitches all correct and have done so with success, however when using the auto roof feature it seems as if the second floor will not accept dormers on the exterior walls. I have also had success with manually roof planing all areas of the house. However the dormer issues seem to persist and then the auto framing also looks pretty horrible on the face of the dormer and in the areas where the porch pitch intercepts the main roof pitch. I Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnny Posted February 27, 2016 Share Posted February 27, 2016 I may be pointing out the obvious, but when you "auto-build" your roofs you dont have the required clearance for floor 2 - regardless of the dormers. If I was you, I would review the process for manually creating roofs. Yes, you could setup auto-roof to probably build a lot of this, but i've not seen a auto-roof process work fully with this sort of complexity. I mean your roof looks simple, but its really not that simple the way you are handling the pitches. Do you have SSA? If not, try ChiefTutor youtube channel. The website looks down right now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wtstreetglow Posted February 28, 2016 Author Share Posted February 28, 2016 Thank you both for your replies. As requested solver, please see at the link below. https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0BymwM52lyoY1YVNTVmhZdFJLSTg&usp=sharing The plan file has been updated and can be gotten at the new link below (Dormer ceiling is around 88.5" and the second floor ceiling is around 96.5"- by looking at the dormer in the picture, you will be able to see the difference in height of the main room and dormer ceiling): https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0BymwM52lyoY1YVNTVmhZdFJLSTg&usp=sharing I now have the dormers in place and I feel the are acceptable. At this point I am working on getting the porch roof to properly tie-in with house roof. The framing tends to look really horrid in this instance so I am still really set on trying to get the auto roof to work with the 4 pitch from the roof to the 12 pitch of the house in hopes that it will make the framing look better between the two roof structures. Thank you both, I am up for any constructive criticism on my file or things that I can do better/ or things that don't look quite right. Johnny, the clearance is off because as you said I was trying to complete alot of my roofs with the autoroof feature. (Set a low ceiling height, auto build the roof, change rough ceiling back to 96.5" to show where ceiling planes intersect roof planes, then place auto dormers) I have learned alot about chief in a short amount of time I feel, but I'm trying to approach work smarter, not harder... maybe I'm trying to hard to do this when I could build it from scratch faster? Sadly I do not have SSA, I have been watching alot from ChiefTutor but haven't really gained alot of knowledge on what is causing my issue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DMDesigns Posted February 28, 2016 Share Posted February 28, 2016 You did a great job getting your roof on as it is, not to mention the fine looking steaks on the grill.. Why can't you just manually draw in the 4:12 porch? Its always better working in manual mode. (i know - I know) That's what She Said..!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wtstreetglow Posted February 28, 2016 Author Share Posted February 28, 2016 .pr 1.jpg Thank you solver. I will give that area a try. It just seemed like everytime I tried to use that area, it was giving me a difficult time. I will try it again tonight and report back what happens. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wtstreetglow Posted February 28, 2016 Author Share Posted February 28, 2016 You did a great job getting your roof on as it is, not to mention the fine looking steaks on the grill.. Why can't you just manually draw in the 4:12 porch? Its always better working in manual mode. (i know - I know) That's what She Said..!! Thank you DMDesigns! Yeah, those steaks on the grill are thanks to 3dwarehouse from Trimble's sketchup community. It is looking like I could manually draw the the 4:12 porch, I was just trying to get the auto roofing to work in hopes that it would make the auto framing look good and correct without much headache when I get to that point. Could you guys/ girls tell me, do people really use the framing portion of the program? (to help contractors etc.?) with the layout of the house or is the framing portion more of a "gimmick" than useful?-- The reason I ask is when I autoframed the house a few hours ago, it did really unusually things where the two roofs meet (from the porch to the roof pitch.) Everyone here seems so nice and helpful! Thank you all for your helpful responses and the help I am getting on my first attempt with chief. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wtstreetglow Posted February 28, 2016 Author Share Posted February 28, 2016 One other question I developed is about an odd situation I am having in the second floor of the plan where the dormers frame into the main roof line. In my house the dormer forms an interior wall that closes off the upstairs closet on both sides. (One of the walls of the upstairs closet is created by one of the 4' dormer walls and the other wall of the closet is formed by the 8'6" dormer wall. However when I place a floor camera upstairs and look at that area, there is a opening that lets you look through the closet as if there are walls in the space. Could you all tell me what is causing that issue? Thank you all again for helping walk through this first design and troublehooting the issues with me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wtstreetglow Posted February 29, 2016 Author Share Posted February 29, 2016 .pr 1.jpg Solver, I made the changes to the front railing specification (made up of 3 railing pieces) but the result did not throw in the additional pitch that I am looking for on the porch section (the 4 pitch). I sent the forward house pitch down to the first level (not physically but using the "view on lower level" button) so that I could see the roof plane in relation to my porch railings and the file is at the link below if you would like to view my modifications. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BymwM52lyoY1Z3FFSm9FbkhaTkU/view?usp=sharing Is there something I need to do to get the roof to regenerate based on the modifications made to the railing (wall) specification? Thank you all again for everything! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wtstreetglow Posted February 29, 2016 Author Share Posted February 29, 2016 How is this? Check Ignore Top (2nd) Floor wtstreetglow 1.jpg After just trying this also. I noticed all generated as in your screenshot. However, I noticed that the top of the roof was shifted towards the front of the house and is not centered on the house anymore (I know this can more than likely be fixed by turning off auto rebuild and shifting the roof planes around slightly) however the bigger issue I am having after using this method is that the auto dormers can't find anything to attach themselves to.(my measurements here in the house show the ceiling in the main rooms upstairs to be 96.5" approximate and 88.5" approximate while standing in the dormers.) Solver, thank you for helping me work through this. (I believe I may have tried this method on my own a few days ago and kept running into the the dormers not attaching themselves anymore so I gave up on this method) What could be causing the dormers to not find an attachment point after rebuilding the roof in this manner? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wtstreetglow Posted February 29, 2016 Author Share Posted February 29, 2016 Also, I am hesitant to use the 'ignore top floor' because I believe this causes the rafters to set on the first floor walls from what I have read. I believe the roof of the the physical house sets either on the second floor subfloor or a set of small knee walls that run around the near and far side of the second floor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chief58 Posted February 29, 2016 Share Posted February 29, 2016 You might want to build a second floor and set your ceiling height to 1 1/2" this way the rafters would sit on top of the second floor jst and on an 1 1/2" plate, or if you want them to sit on a knee wall make the second floor clg the height of the knee wall you want the rafters to sit on, no ignore second floor Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wtstreetglow Posted February 29, 2016 Author Share Posted February 29, 2016 You might want to build a second floor and set your ceiling height to 1 1/2" this way the rafters would sit on top of the second floor jst and on an 1 1/2" plate, or if you want them to sit on a knee wall make the second floor clg the height of the knee wall you want the rafters to sit on, no ignore second floor Yes, this is what my original attempts were. Using this method, I was unable to get the program to build the 4 pitch over the porch and a 12 pitch over the house using the auto roof feature. Also, so far using the auto roof feature when including the porch it seems that the high point of the roof gets shifted towards the front of the house by a few inches and isn't centered on the house. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Solution wtstreetglow Posted February 29, 2016 Author Solution Share Posted February 29, 2016 Solver, thank you for your help! Thank you all for your help! I believe all of the problems I was concerned about have been fixed. Thank you all again!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wtstreetglow Posted March 1, 2016 Author Share Posted March 1, 2016 Auto dormers cannot cross multiple roof planes. Your porch roof runs over the front wall of the house, so a dormer will not locate itself over that wall. Solver, Have you been able to look at the upstairs closet on the right side of the house? The dormer create the walls for that closet but when looking at my 3d floor view for the upstairs looking in that direction, it seems as if there is no wall there at all. (I can see through the closet from the study room right into the right bedroom. How do I go about fixing that area?- I believe this should be my last question on my house. Thank you again for your patience with me... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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