How to create a gabled shed dormer

[avbiii]

Here is a link to the plan of my existing house (image shown below): https://www.dropbox.com/s/9eikpjqguk6y2qm/house.plan



I'd like to create a plan for an attic build-out involving some dormers. On the front of the house, I'd like to consider a gabled shed dormer, as in the two examples shown below:





It will need to be fairly large. The gabled sections will be set in only about 2 feet from the sides of the house and will be about 12 feet wide, and their front walls will need to align with the front exterior wall of the house (with the middle shed section of the dormer set back about a foot).

I can't quite figure out how to do this. Is it possible in HD Suite 2014? If not, how about using Architectural or Pro?

Thank you.

Anthony

[Kbird]

I know Pro has Manual roof Planes and you can specify different roof pitches so it would be do-able but not sure about Arch. might be better to ask Customer/tech support on Monday.

did you try building the 2 dormers and then put a wall between them on the attic level after ?

M.

[David J. Potter]

Is it possible in HD Suite 2014?

No, it is not, you will need to upgrade to Home Designer Pro and then learn how to use the offered manual tools to create such constructs.

DJP

[avbiii]

Thank you. I may try it with the free trial.

[JoAnn]

I did this in HDA10 using auto roof build, so it should be do-able in Suite, also.
The shed roof setting is critical to getting things to blend.
Lower shed pitch is shallow (2 - 4).
Upper pitch is whatever your main roof pitch is.
The upper 'start from baseline (or height)' is the critical setting. Start out in 'feet' to get close,
then increase/decrease inch by inch (while watching changes in 3d view) until you get a perfect blend on the top area of the roof.
When you no longer need to rebuild the roof for ANY reason, you can turn off 'auto rebuild roof' and raise the finished ceiling height in the back room (on the other side of the roof).

[avbiii]

This is great. Thanks a lot. Would you mind detailing the steps just a bit? Did you simply build the walls manually first (I've seen instructions for manual dormer building) and then just tell it to auto build the roof? Does it build the roof for the entire structure at once, or do you have to separately build the two gable roofs and then the shed roof?

Would you mind attaching the file you created?

Thank you.

[JoAnn]

You should work in a practice plan to be able to see how things are affected and change, with a full overview tiled vertically in your plan.
Auto roof only auto rebuilds if the box in the roof tool is checked 'auto rebuild'. Leave it 'checked' as you work so that you can see how things interact and change.
Build the basic four walls of the house,first. Left and right walls need to be designated as 'gable'. You should set the main house roof pitch in the roof tool box.
Next, draw the dormer walls shown in the picture, to the size that you need them to be.
Open the room spec dbx for the large back room and set the finished ceiling' to 0. Open the narrow surrounding front room and do the same. Leave the dormer room at your default height.
Select each front dormer wall that you want to be a gable and designate it as that in the wall/roof tab.
Open the front shed wall/roof tab and start playing with those settings (as I described) until it looks correct in the 3d view. Somewhat of a trial and error hassle, but it's what is necessary.

EASY PEASY DONE!

Be sure to post a pic of your results!