Placing walls beneath floating dormer walls

[modelBuilder]

I have a story-and-a-half design, with a floating dormer on a portion of the roof. I would like to put a wall directly beneath the wall on the face of the dormer, and one directly beneath the wall on one side of the dormer. The other side of the dormer would continue to "float." Home Designer Pro 14 won't let me simply place walls there. The best I've been able to do is put them about a wall thickness outside the dormer area.

Maybe I should have started with an ordinary dormer--that would probably have gotten me a continuous wall down to the floor coincident with the face of the dormer. I would still have a problem with the side walls, though. On one side I'd have to get rid of the wall down to the floor and make it float, and on the other, I'd have to add some wall under the dormer wall. Any suggestions?

[David J. Potter]

This can be done carefully but not with a dormer as an object, rather you explode (break it into its basic parts: three walls, roof planes, hole in the roof poly-line) and then finish up the design manually.

When I started using this software there was no such thing as a "dormer tool", we had to construct them manually, wall by wall etc, as you have already experienced, the dormer objects does not "like" walls intersecting its space, thus the advice, I have tendered as a solution, I admit it is easier said than accomplished but is the only way to do what you want done.

This You Tube video may help your understanding of what I am talking about:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOgyY5Ob_lI

DJP

[modelBuilder]

David,

Thanks very much for your input. Your YouTube tutorial is terrific. I notice that you have many others there, which I'll be looking at in more detail. I see that I need to do something different with my dormer. On the subject of dormers, when one of the side walls comes down all the way into the living space, I find that even in the interior of the house, the wall is covered with siding. Is there a way to get drywall on just the part inside the living space?

[David J. Potter]

For that kind of situation you need to use "Pony Walls" (a single plan view wall that is made up of two, distinct different wall types/materials, who's wall poly-lines can be manually reshaped to match the roof and interior under the roof).

DJP

[modelBuilder]

It appears that there is another way to do this as well. There is an option in the wall specification dialogue under the roof tab that lets you choose "Lower wall type if split by butting roof." Specifying an interior wall type there takes care of the region of the wall in the living space, but the attic wall takes on the properties of the exterior wall. I suppose you can force a manual change on the attic wall to get it right if it's going to be visible.