Auto Dormers in Pro 2012

[rkern]

Good Morning -

I need to start over with my question and try to get answers to using the auto dormer tools correctly. My name is Bob and I am using HD Pro 2012 on a PC with XP.

My basic problem is that I would like to place 4 small dormers on a 12" pitch roof in one room on the second floor of a house. I would like to use the auto dormer tool because that style better fits the house than the auto dormer float tool. The roof on the second floor is sitting on 4' high walls and I would like to place the dormers directly over those walls or slightly on the eave side of the wall. That will provide a good height for the windows inside the room.

Attached are four images of the house / room. I placed one wall in the rom to use with the auto dormer tool and it can be moved. See attached for ortho view of house and three plan views of the room with various attempts to place dormers. I keep getting the warnings about placement and bing parallel to roof plane. I have checked that everything is parallel so it must be something else.

Any assistance is appreciated.

Bob

[Elovia]

Bob,
I know you said that you checked to make sure the dormers were parallel with the lower walls, but your image "dormer 4" shows evidence to the contrary. Now, I'm not picking on you but I think there must be something more amiss than you've not disclosed ... probably unintentionally. So what do I mean? Take a look at the outline of the left-most grey box that is the intended dormer. See how the line is jagged on the horizontal and vertical boundary lines? Now look at the walls and notice that the vertical lines are smooth and not jagged. The jagged line indicates that the dormer is out of square with your monitor's horizontal and vertical, but your walls are in square with them. I also tend to think something is out of square due to the way the roof planes are drawn and mate up as shown near the lower portion of the "dormer 4" image. Also note the ceiling lines are jagged (and dashed, but they're supposed to be dashed ).

Have you selected the dormer and used the "make parallel/perpendicular" tool to straighten it to the wall? Is it possible that you've constructed your model with angle snaps turned off or accidentally bumped or moved your wall out of square?

Can you post the plan? You would probably need to make a copy of it and remove all unnecessary items, then close the plan and zip it into a file before uploading here. Perhaps others can take a look and see wherein the problem lies.

If push comes to shove and as mentioned, you have the ability to create floating dormers manually because you have the power of HDPro.

Good luck.

[rkern]

Good Morning -

Bob here using HD Pro 2012 on a PC with XP. First let me thank you which I found very informative. And also thanks to Elovia foe the careful examination of the views I sent out and noticing things appear slightly off.

Not sure what is wrong but still unable to use Auto Dormer tool. This morning I went back through the house section I am trying to use auto dormer tool on and used the parallel tool to ensure things are aligned. Still note when I try to place auto dormer the edges are jagged and the dashed ceiling roof intersection lines are also jagged. So I have a problem and not qite sure how to get out of this and clean it up. Let me try to attach the plan.

I am getting an error flag when I try to attach plan. Suggestions?

Bob

[rkern]

Elovia -

I wish I knew the error I was making to create objects that are not parallel. I obviously am doing something that creates this situation. Elovia mentioned the snap angle tool and when I looked it was not on - is that one of my problems. Regardless I sent the plan file this am. Maybe he has Elovia's e-mail and can forward it on. I am almost more interested in figuring out what I am doing wrong than fixing the error so it does not happen again. This is a really good sw tool but there are some things that are very trial and error about the learning process.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Bob

[Elovia]

I highly recommend using angle snaps turned on for the vast majority of design work. Computers are very literal minded and to them, 0.00000023 degrees is not the same as 0 degrees ... even though to you or I it might be close enough. Human interface is just not precise enough to meet computer requirements without computer assistance.

Even if you have a specific reason for not wanting walls or other items to snap to the default angles, there are other ways to customize individual items in the software to meet those reasons. The most common method is to hold down the Ctrl key while dragging a wall end or an item's rotate handle.

It is good practice to draw your model in the orientation where the majority of walls are on the angle snaps, and then customize the minority that are not.

You could go through and use the "make parallel/perpendicular" tool on each and every item to square them back up, but as mentioned, starting over with angle snaps turned on might be the quickest route ... provided you're not very far along in your design. And even if you are, by the stage you're in, you've probably already worked out the challenging design decisions so re-drafting the model will go quicker the second or third time around than the first time.

Good luck.

[rkern]

Elovia -

I appreciate your dedication and assistance. You identified things that I needed to do differently and for that I learned and the design will be more robust. You folks that take it all on regardless of the maturity of tool learning an individual may have is really great and saves most of us all kinds of time - not to mention lowering our frustration levels!!

Thanks again for your help,

Bob & Patty