More dormer struggles

[ethanjsmith82]

First, disclaimer, I HAVE read the support article on how to create a manual dormer.  When I got to the step where it says to click and drag to do a skylight, it doesn't give me the actual box where I am clicking.  Only when I move back in towards the interior of the home (out of the newly created area) will it change the icon to the box and let me drag to create. I am sure I did something wrong but no idea what.  So, as a result I've been stuck trying to use the auto dormer tool.

 

This is a 2 story bungalow design.  Basically, a regular full gable two story home, but I am trying to make the front of the house look like a typical 1.5 story bungalow, albeit with a slightly extended upward roof.  So, the pitch of the roof for the front porch (7 feet deep) is 4 in 12, then the remaining front of the roof is maybe 8 in 12, and then the back side of the house is "squared off" to a 4 in 12.  And so obvously the rooms on the 2nd floor at the front of the house will have sloped ceilings. 

 

I have mostly been able to achieve this look manually, but now I want to add a large dormer to the front 2nd floor.  I am going for a full gable dormer, 6 or 8 inch pitch, 19' feet wide, centered, with its base as close to the transition between front roof pitches as possible.  Whenever I do this, I run into a few possible problems:

 

• error about the walls hitting existing walls (stairway).  I thought the whole point of a "floating dormer" is that you can put it wherever you want?  anyways, I can get around that by deleting the stairway and then adding it after the dormer gets created.  But any further attempts at editing the dormer bring the error back.   I can get around THAT by "exploding" the dormer parts after creation but then I'm in full manual mode.
• If I place the dormer closer than a foot from the point at which the two front roof pitches meet, I get the error about the dormer "not meeting the base of the roof".  Ideally I would like the bottom of the dormer (from the outside) to be even with the point at which the roof pitch changes.  This is not a huge problem, but something I noticed.
• By default the auto dormer seems to be creating one without any exterior walls on the front.  So, for both the attic portion and the windowed area it's completely seethrough.
• My transition point (where the porch roof meets the main roof) is not completely smooth, and I don't know how to fix it.  When doing an internal 3D view of the front of the home on the 2nd floor you can see bare wood at what must be near the transition point, so I know something is wrong there.

I think I am comfortable creating manual roof planes, it just seems like every time I do it I am left with bare wood spots, places where the exterior walls don't automatically "fill in", and various joints not snapping into place with adjacent areas, and other similar issues.  I feel like must be missing a major step.

 

Anyways, attached is the plan if that helps at all.  Thanks in advance for any suggestions you might have!

Proposed Plan - Seth's layout - bungalow.plan

[DavidJPotter]

This You Tube video may help you in that it is generally about dormers and working on and  with dormers

 

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

 

DJP