Chief Architect is a fantastic program but it seems more than anything the roofs give people a hard time. Once you understanding how roofs work in Chief Architect you’ll be able to save a ton if time while producing a more accurate and detailed 2D and 3D building model.
Like many software programs it can be frustrating you don’t understand the right steps to take to accomplish a specific task.
One area in the program that seems to frustrate a lot of people is understanding how the roof tools in Chief Architect really work.
I can still remember working with version 3 of Chief. It was in Beta and I had to add roofs to 20 sample plans. At the time there was no documentation and the program crashed if I moved my mouse the wrong way. It was a huge challenge but my efforts really paid off. I persisted and managed to figure it out and I haven’t looked back since. Now I truly understand how roofs work in Chief Architect. Give me any plan and I’ll show you how to add a roof to it. The tougher the better.
So what is it about roofs that makes them so tough for so many?
The first obstacle to overcome doesn’t have anything to do with Chief. It has to do with the level of experience someone has in understanding how a roof should work on a project. If you have no experience with roofs it’s much harder to understand how all of the elements should fit together. It’s something that can’t be taught in a few classes. It takes some experience!
Just because you have a skill saw and know how to cut boards, doesn’t mean you’ll understand how to frame a house. The same is true with designing roofs no matter if done on a drawing board or with a CAD program – Experience really pays off!
The second obstacle to overcome is understanding how the roof tools work in Chief Architect. What happens when you add roof planes to your model? What’s going on when you click the build roofs button? Amazingly not at much as you think.
At first it really seems like magic when you click the build roofs button.
A roof appears on your model and you think you’ve found the answer to your design needs. But you soon find you’re enthusiasm dashed when you try to add a roof that is more custom. After spending hours and hours fighting the program you raise up your hands and want to give up.
So what’s the deal? Why are roofs sometimes so hard and how can you learn how roofs work in Chief Architect?
The first thing to understand is that the Automatic Roof tool is wonderful at what it does but it’s totally overrated. The training materials that come with the program attempt to teach you all the ways the auto roof tools will get your entire roof correct. What they don’t teach you is how roofs work in Chief Architect in the real world.
As an experienced Chief user and trainer I can tell you with the utmost confidence and from 15 years of experience that the main purpose for the automatic roof tool is to get your roof started. And depending on your plan the Automatic Roof Tool will get anywhere from 0% to 100% of your roof correct. That’s a big swing and when you’re closer to 0% you need to know what to do next.
In many cases when I ask my students what the Automatic Roof tools does they’ll say it puts hip roofs on the model. That’s the wrong answer. That’s not what it does, that’s the end result of what it does.
Here’s how roofs work In Chief Architect when you push the automatic roof button.
- Chief looks for all of the exterior walls of your plan that have room definition.
- It looks at the setting you’ve added to each wall, if any.
- It puts a baseline (the green dotted line) on top of the main layer of each wall.
- The baseline height is set above each wall based on the room height next to the wall.
- Chief starts building an angled CAD box with the roof plane elements from the baseline at the default pitch or the pitch defined in the wall dialog.
- Chief then attempts to join all of the edges of the roof planes together.
As I mentioned before, the automatic roof tool will get somewhere between 0% and 100% of your roof correct!
All roofs start with a baseline and the height is set based on the default or room ceiling height
A hip roof is the end result of what the roof tools do in Chief Architect
Here’s the key to how roofs work In Chief Architect.
Use the Automatic Roof tool to get the roofs started – Then use the Manual Roof Tools to add, modify, adjust and complete the roof for your plan exactly the way you want it to be.
That’s it!
Sounds simple doesn’t it? Once you know how it is.
The Manual Roof Tools allow you do just about anything you want with roof planes. I’ve been amazed how well these tools work ever since I learned how to use them.
So what can be accomplished with these tools? What are the steps to take?
Here’s the short list:
- Use the Automatic Roof Tools to get your roof started.
- Make a commitment to stop using the Automatic Roof Tool.
- Add your own roof planes using the Manual Roof Tools. (All roof tools start with a roof baseline – learn how they work!)
- Adjust roof plane heights and angles using the roof plane dialog.
- Learn how to connect roof edges with the join tool. (the number 3 key)
Roofs have 4 main part - Fascia Height, Baseline Height (all roofs start with a baseline) Pitch and Ridge Height
Since all roof planes start with a “Baseline” and it’s height is initially set by the ceiling height of an individual room or the ceiling height defaults it’s important to understand how to adjust the height of the baseline and the other 3 elements that each roof plane has in common. The Fascia Height, Ridge Height and Pitch.
Once you adjust the heights of the roof planes the next step is to connect the edges of each roof plane.
If the following rules are followed it’s easy to add roofs:
- The Roof Join tool (#3 key) will join the roof edges 100% of the time.
- If they don’t join then the wrong edges are being selected or the edges are not meant to be connected.
- Join Hips to Hips
- Join Ridge to Ridge
- Join Hip to Ridge
- Join Valley to Valley
- Join Valley to Gable, Fascia or Gable End
- Join Ridge to Fascia
Follow these rules and they work every time.
Using the Join TOol you can join Hips to Hips
Using the Join Tool you can join Ridge to Ridge
Useing the Join Tool you can join Ridge to Hip
Using the Join Tool you can join Valley to Valley
Using the Join Tool you can join valley to Fascia or Gable End
To learn more and discover how to add any kind of roof to your plan join me at ChiefExperts.com where I’ll teach you everything you need to know to do it efficiently.
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Thank you a lot for sharing this with all of us you actually understand what you’re talking about! Bookmarked. Please also consult with my site =). We could have a hyperlink alternate arrangement between us
Hi there, You’ve done a fantastic job. I will definitely digg it and for my part recommend to my friends. I am confident they’ll be benefited from this website.
Dan has a way of teaching CA like no other and here it is. Can it get much easier? All of my knowledge with CA is directly attributed to Dan. His in-depth approach to CA is unparalleled and his patience to teach is invaluable. If you want to know Chief inside and out he is your Man! Keep up the good work Dan. Many others including myself greatly appreciate what you impart to us concerning CA and your experience as a contractor for many years.
Good article. I almost never use the automatic roof tool unless I am drawing a very generic house to show something other than the roof. I don’t draw everyday so the use of Chief Experts training lessons has enabled me to refresh my brain on how to do simple to complex things with the program. This particular article on how to handle roofs is very well done and a “keeper” for refreshing memory.
Dan, nice artical. Complex roofs can be very difficult even when you understand roof constuction, figuring water flow, room height,sofit height and so on can be daunting. Thanks for all your great classes over the years, you have made CA more user friendly. I noticed you refer to the #3 key as join roof tool, have always used #2 key to join roof plans. I figure this is a typo.
Rick
Dan, Your old Seminar on CD for 6.0 got me over the hump on manual roofs.
I look forward to seing what’s new.
In your Tuesday webinar, Mistakes/Tricks, would you have a moment to suggest an organizational approach to the Layers – User tab ?
I find myself needing to too often re-group items that I want to show/hide on different Layout pages.
It’s tedious to select them individually and change the Layer number.
Yes, roofs have been a challenge over the years. If you let the program generate your roof, it does a great job, but if you want something very specific, you got a fight on your hands. LOL Still producing on ver. 6 and training on X3. Ver. 6 doesn’t have a roof join tool that I’m aware of. What I do is save the floor plan as a roof plan, then gut the interior. I then specify clg. hts., pitches, etc and make it “painfully obvious” to the program what I want it to do, then let the auto. roof builder do its thing. I can usually get the roof about 95%-100% because I’ve learned to manipulate the program and make it obvious what I want it to do. Since I don’t have a join roof tool, if I build it manually, I don’t know what the angle of join will be if the adjacent pitches are different which w/ the french acadian style, they usually are. If I have trouble w/ an area, I’ll manually tweak it until I get it right. The 3-D helps so much. After getting the roof built, I’ll tile the plans and copy and paste the roof from the roof plan to the floor plan getting it in the right position. I zoom in tight, toggle all over group selecting the whole roof, then get the baselines lined up where they need to be. If there are changes to the floor plan, I’ll tweak the roof. If it’s changed a whole lot, then I’ll overwrite the roof plan, gut it and re-generate the roof, then copy/paste. I haven’t tried the manual roof editor in X3 yet, I’m looking forward to your free webinar, I’m signed up for the morning one. Thanks so much for doing this!
I find what Dan is discussing is pretty easy, but i have been trying to create a complex mansard roof starting with a reverse curve (36″ radius) from the fascia the that straightens out to a 24/12 pitch and at the break becomes a 3/12 pitch to the peak of the roof. i was told to group the first two sections (the reverse curve and the 24/12 sections) but this does not seem to work.
No matter how good I think I am getting on some portion of CA, I read or watch a video from Dan and I always pick up a little tidbit and some times a great Aha moment that helps me be more productive. I appreciatr the tips, keep them comming.
Thanks Dan for all of the informative articles Yor are a true professional
Ralph plancarte
Vista del Valle Inc
New Mexico
Save time by not using Auto Roof. It takes < 2 min to manually place the roof on a Saltbox with an addition on the back and a Bevely Bump on the side. I have never used Auto Roof for this application but do not like to think about what it would do.
In defence of Auto Roof it does a better job than Auto Roof Framing. When possible use trusses. I usually run Roof Framing just to get a few items I will use and, delete everything else. Place the first rafter where it should be, then use multi-copy.
Timber Frames have their own problem. I use beams, posts and polyline solids. If details are required I end up using ProE as I use pre-defined joints which I have been creating as needed.
I plan to us Chief for proposals and for most traditional designs.
Non-related suggestion: Exterior SIP walls (layers starting at the outside)
5/8" Fiber-Cement
1/2" Air Space (hardware)
Membrane
SIP: here I define it as a single item using a blue cross hatch at 1" spacing
1/2" Dry Wall
As always Dan cuts to the chase with useful insights and his great knowledge base of the CA design world. Set at his knee and learn!
For more than 18 years…
Thank you Dan for sharing your knowledge and for always finding cutting edge tools that allow access to your talent.
You are a one-of-a-kind Professional -”Chief Expert” in every way…
Regards
Warren J. Elmer
New Orleans, La
Another great thing about the roof tool, when you understand it, is thinking outside of the box and using roofs as other elements in your model. It is a great way to great sloped slabs. Also use it to create a hip, mansard, or gable section of a screen enclosure over a pool area. Just cut holes in the plain leaving the solid sections to be your aluminum frame. All this is possible if you follow Dan’s tips and learn hot to use the manual roof tools.
If the following rules are followed it’s easy to add roofs:
1. The Roof Join tool (#3 key) will join the roof edges 100% of the time.
2. If they don’t join then the wrong edges are being selected or the edges are not meant to be connected.
The first statement is not supported by the second statement. There are a number of errors that will cause two roof sections not to join and it is important to know what to do when this happens.
Hi Michael
You’re right – There is one more reason – If there is a break in one or more of the edges they will not join.
I know the statements sound weird but what I’m really getting at and what I always show in my training is that the join tool works 100% of the time on all roof edges if they are meant to join together.. I’ve seen many users try to pull roofs into place and that is not necessary if you join the right edges.
Here are clear and concise written instructions on how to expand your ability to use Chief Architect. These directions will give you a clear understanding of the basic workings of manual roof editing. From there its a matter of learning more about roofing and practice.