Dormer style with outside wall the same plane with the house outside wall (pic)

[matt.luthi]

Hi, I am very new to the software (Pro 2014) and have a particular style of dormer I want to achieve. I went through the user guide and looked at posts and examples but have not found the answer so far. I am hoping for someone to point me in the right direction... Please have a look at the attached image for an example. I cant work out how to have the outside wall of the dormer at the same plane as the first floor. Note that the first floor (above ground floor) has a wall which is only about 2/3 of the height of a standard wall in order to increase the available space.

Cheers,
Matt

[JoAnn]

Do a full overview & tile vertically, so that you can see how the changes you make affect your house.
Lower the 2nd floor finished ceiling height to about 72" and notice how that creates your 2/3's wall height.
Draw 3 walls against the front wall of the house, to create a small room,(dormer) & give it a finished ceiling height of about 86".
Use the break-wall tool and place a break where each side wall (of the small room) intersects the front house wall.
Select & open that front section of wall (between the 2 breaks) and designate it as a gable roof.
When you've got your entire roof looking exactly the way you want it, you then turn off "auto rebuild roof".
Now you can raise your finished ceiling heights to normal height, and your roof will stay put.

I hope this solution is what you are looking for. Good Luck!

[matt.luthi]

Whow JoAnn - you're a legend! Thank you so much for the reply I'll give this a try. I am glad knowing that the limitation is just me, not the software

Regards,
Matt

[matt.luthi]

Hi JoAnn, it worked, the dormer looks great.

I may strech your goodwill a bit here but now that I have the dormer I would like to have a "normal" room behind the dormer ... That existing one is a bit small even for our cat.. I have managed to make the roof below in a single plane without the hips and on a lower pitch, just not with that square bay window sticking out. How can I do that?

Regards,
Matt

[Elovia]

Matt,

Select the interior walls that you created to make the dormer and open their Wall Specification dialogs. On the General tab, put a check in the "Invisible" box; this will turn the walls invisible and keep the roof structure while allowing you to see through them for interior camera views - that is, if you're still working on the roof lines. However, as JoAnn suggested that once you're finished creating your roof, turn off the Auto Rebuild Roof option in the Build Roof dialog, and then you can simply delete those walls. If you find that you'll need to change something about your roof, or rebuild it, then you have several options because you're using Pro. You can either manually create new roof planes, or modify existing ones, or you can make sure the walls are in place (invisible or not) and have the auto roof generator take care of it.

Good luck.

[JoAnn]

This is how I did it.

Oops. Correction. I found out that if a foundation or terrain perimeter is added, it raises the roof over the bay.
Sooooo....I lowered the finished ceiling in the little bay room, and REMOVED the "extend slope downward" in the front bay wall dialog box. Remember, you can raise all the lowered ceilings AFTER you have turned off the "auto rebuild roof" feature. Make sure the entire roof structure is what you want before that feature is turned off!

[matt.luthi]

Hi Elovia and JoAnn, thanks for both your replies, it's greatly appreciated. I still have a great deal to learn here and the learning curve seems steep at the moment....

Matt