Jo_Ann

Keith. Looks good! It does look like you have a double soffit panel (in 2d window) in your front/back desk unit. You can explode the block and remove one of them, then re-block. Not seeing what you describe as the side desk looking elongated? With the 2d window active, open your display options up in the toolbar and uncheck cabinet labels. Numbers will be all gone. POOF!

If you followed the tutorial correctly, and then did a framing overview...you should see the floor joists and the roof rafters both resting on the bearing wall below.

Design the first desk with kitchen cabinets (customized to your liking). Use a thin soffit for the dividing panel. Block the pieces together, then copy/paste the block for the other 2 desks.

Mick, "A court or courtyard is an enclosed area, often a space enclosed by a building that is open to the sky." Yes, any room type that uses a 4" floor structure will work (court, porch, slab, garage). I separated the 2nd floor with a wall. I think your example is not working because you forgot to recheck all the ceiling heights. They tend to automatically change, remember?

If appearance is what you are looking for, you CAN alter floor thickness in a work-around. The 1st floor is a standard build with 8' ceiling. The 2nd floor also has 8' ceiling. The left 2nd floor is the standard build floor structure. The right 2nd floor has been separated from the left side with a wall. This room has been designated as a 'court'. A court room has a default 4" floor structure. In this example, I added a 4" floor finish to increase the floor structure thickness to 8". You can see the difference in the image. However, in framing view it will not show any floor joists under the 'court' room.

New game plan. Forget the 3rd floor prow...it can be done easier on floor 2. Follow the settings in the 2d plan pic. The settings for the gambrel roof wall may vary (based on your own dimensions), but I think you can get the idea. The gambrel wing on the right is a narrower room, so the gambrel roof settings will be different (the lower pitch will need to be increased, and the distance from the baseline will need to be decreased). This will raise the walls to a better height. Draw the invisible prow walls as shown. Open the wall dbx and observe the angle, then make sure the other prow wall is at the same angle. Open the wall/roof tab on each prow wall, specify the pitch (same as upper gambrel wall 3" ?), then check 'high shed/gable wall'. The pic shows 4" pitch, but it should match the upper gambrel pitch (which is 3"). Oops. Open the small triangular prow ROOM dbx and designate it as 'open below' and uncheck 'show room label'. On the structure tab, make sure finished ceiling height is set at 0". Uncheck 'ceiling over this room' and CHECK 'use soffit surface for ceiling'. In a 3d view, you should now only see a prow roof with a white soffit underneath.

This is what I was able to build using auto roof. However, it took a LOT of tweaking and resetting ceiling heights (they kept changing automatically). To begin with, You should NEVER start drawing your interior room walls until the roof is correct! Delete them. ALSO, the 2nd floor gambrel roof rooms are NOT dormers. Like Kbird said, you should rebuild the 2nd floor with "0" ceiling height, add the invisible walls that are needed, and start setting all your roof wall types and pitches. The back room was then set to a 107" ceiling height. I had to set the front 'room' to a 3" ceiling height to make the roof join correctly. Depending on your own dimensions, this may be different (this is where the tweaking begins). At this point I recommend that that you start doing a 'save as' for each stage of the project that you get right. It will save you a lot of headaches if you need to go back to a place where things were going good. The front prow roof was done by adding a blank 3rd floor that only consisted of the tiny prow rooms. LOTS of tweaking here with floor and ceilings heights. Maybe Kbird can come up with an easier way!? When the roof is correct, you will turn OFF auto-build roof. You can then delete all the ugly prow room walls, AND raise the 2nd floor ceilings to the height you want them. NOW you can begin to draw your 2nd floor interior walls. At least this image shows that it CAN be done with your program, provided you have LOTS of patience!

Mick, I added the 2nd floor based on floor 1 (not a blank floor) with 0" ceiling height. I then drew the dormer, but needed the invisible wall to give it room definition so that I could add ceiling height (to make it rise out of the roof, of course). When I added the upper/lower pitch to the dormer roof, nothing changed. THEN, I noticed that when I moved that wall, the 2 pitches appeared!

Trial and error. Lots of trial and error.

Good afternoon Mick, Here is the upper floor with the manual dormer. Notice the invisible wall keeping the dormer separate from the rest of the room? Try moving that wall forward and backward (while watching the roof in 3d) and see if your upper/lower pitch settings appear. Weird.

Just my 2 cents. Here is what I have so far. It's hard to make guesses without any of your dimensions or settings, because they really can change the way something turns out...or doesn't.

I think what Mick said is true. Changing the ceiling height might move the roof ridge, but I think the roof will no longer be symetrical (equal pitch on each side of the ridge). Here is my thought on the subject.

If this is what you are trying to do, just draw the basement walls like the 2d picture and then draw the stairs up to floor 1.

Bob, Have you added the 2nd floor (to support the dormer room)? I added a 2nd floor with 0" ceiling (2nd floor extends over porch walls, too). After defining all the wall roof tabs for the 2nd floor, you can go back down to floor 1 to work on the porch (and you can leave auto roof on until you draw the interior knee walls and raise the ceiling within those knee walls on floor 2). I used invisible walls for the porch. Remove the roof from the porch room in the dbx (floor 1!). You can then extend the porch room out 18" and add the extra connecting walls to keep the room definition. You should then go to floor 0 to reset the porch foundation walls where you want them. I recess the foundation walls somewhat, because a porch slab usually overhangs the foundation a little bit.

Bob, Your upper pitch doesn't look steep enough to allow a dormer. Recheck the real roof pitch. The real dormer looks like it is also a gullwing roof. I had to draw the dormer manually to be able to access each wall/roof tab to make it 2 pitches. I think with Pro you can explode a floating dormer to enable access to each wall definition?

This is what I got with the settings that are shown.

Looks like just an upper/lower pitch setting on the roof tab of each wall definition.

BRAVO! Thanks for sharing!

You CAN build the dutch gable roof with ordinary wall and room definitions, as well as a gull wing roof. However, doing both together on the same roof may not be possible. As said in other posts, you need to post a good picture of the existing roof. Kbird: custom cupolas? Huh???

Because the user wants to use framed windows, maybe this thread is more relevent: http://hometalk.homedesignersoftware.com/showthread.php?19502-Double-Bay-Window-in-room-corner

What? No pic to share??

You CAN'T turn off 'auto build roof', then delete invisible wall, then draw skinny porch room and then REBUILD roof! Your roof has to be correct in every way before you turn off 'auto build roof' and start deleting invisible walls! You can't rebuild the roof again after making changes. Study the 2d floor plan pics again, and the settings listed. YOU control those walls. The end wall (porch) is invisible too. Also note in the 2nd floor pic, that 'use soffit surface for ceiling' is checked. The overhang ceiling surface will not look correct unless you check that.

Mick, Try it and you'll see why the 153" is needed to straighten out the peak of the roof.

I can see that you have already added floor 2 with ceiling height at 30". Add invisible wall down the center of the room. Open the room on the left and raise the finished ceiling to 8'. Select the left wall and follow the roof tab settings shown in pic 2. This creates the 'dormer'. In pic 2, notice the invisible walls drawn around 3 walls of the building (they are dashed red). It is kind of like a really skinny (depth) invisible porch, and this forces a roof to build ( thus creating a 'fake overhang'). Pic 3 shows a close-up of the 'room' details (the 'room' is colored gold, for clarity). I hope the number details are clear enough to see. Pic 1 is the result you should get. While creating this, some of your objects and settings may change or move. Frustating, but just keep going back and resetting them until they behave. I hope this helps! When the roof is correct, turn OFF 'auto rebuild roof' and you can then delete the invisible porch and the 'fake overhang' roof will remain.

Room ceiling should be set at 2.10m and then build roof. When you no longer need to rebuild the roof for ANY reason, turn off auto rebuild roof. THEN raise the finished ceiling height to 2.70m.