gambrel roof with dormers

[repete]

I am a newbie and I am working on redesigning two different houses. I have questions for both, but for now I'll just go for one.

I have a two story dutch colonial. I am trying to recreate it in Home Designer 8.0. I have looked at pub 359 that explains how to create a gambrel roof, however, when I edit the "horizontal" walls to change the pitch and baseline, no matter what I do, the lower pitch always snaps to the upper pitch. Is it me?

[repete]

I wasn't clear. I got sidetracked because I haven't been able to even get just the gambrel roof.

The house has a gambrel roof with two dormers in the front and a shed dormer across the back of the house. Unfortunately, I currently do not have the capacity to attach photos of the house. I'll try the 359 instructions again and get back to you. If you have any other tips or suggestions they would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[Elovia]

I am trying to recreate it in Home Designer 8.0. I have looked at pub 359 that explains how to create a gambrel roof, however, when I edit the "horizontal" walls to change the pitch and baseline, no matter what I do, the lower pitch always snaps to the upper pitch. Is it me?

This behavior sounds to me like you might have changed the pitch number but did not remove the (D) after it. The (D) stands for "Default" and if left, the software will ignore the numerical setting that precedes it and build the roof plane at the default setting.

Just something to verify.

[repete]

OK, I followed "359" to the letter and the lower pitch continually snaps to the upper upon entering the upper pitch. So, as I hit build roof, I see pitch is 6 in 12. That's the pitch the lower keeps snapping back to. So I change it to 18 in 12 and low and behold, I get the roof I want. Cool.
But, the attached garage on the house has a gable roof and you should see that. It's about three stories high in order to accomodate an 18/12. "Sigh"

Using HD 8.0

[Elovia]

You should be able to open the wall specification dialog box for the garage walls (i.e., non-gable ends) and set the pitch for the gable there.

Hope this helps.

[repete]

Tried that and it snaps back to 18/12. It appears that the build roof setting is the master that controls the lower pitch. I must be missing something, but I'll be darned if I can figure it out.

[Elovia]

The roof pitch setting in the Build Roof dialog is where you can change the default. You then modify individual roof planes by adjusting the roof pitch setting in the Roof tab of the desired wall's Wall Specification dialog. If you have the Auto-Rebuild Roof option turned on, you shouldn't have to tell the software to rebuild the roof planes, and changes to roof plane pitches will appear as you accept changes to the individual Wall Specifications.

Can you give us a before snapshot of your roof plane, followed by your Wall Specification dialog box (so we can see your settings), and then a snapshot of the resulting roof plane?

(Edit in the following afterthought ...) You may be encountering an instance where the software is trying to do what you're telling it, but the surrounding walls and roof planes conflict with the software's pre-programmed means ... which is to say, it won't let you do what you want. So, if this is the case, we'd really need to see the bigger picture of why the roof planes are not acting as they normally would if they were built in isolation of neighboring planes.