Hips n' Gables

I work at a lumberyard doing residential drawings, and several houses in my area have a characteristic that I can't seem to replicate in a satisfactory way. The attached screenshot is the closest I can come: Essentially, a house will have an interior bearing wall which intersects the exterior wall, and the roof will have a gable that references that interior bearing wall while sharing the exterior wall with the adjacent hip wall, effectively creating an L-shaped roof on a rectangular structure. By tracing two separate roofs, I can get pretty close, and auto hole helps minimize Z-fighting on the 3D model, but there are little annoyances that come with having to draw it as 2 separate roofs, like my gutters stopping and starting midway down the roof, since on the opposite side of the house, it's one continuous hip roof. I can't use the "match roof planes" function because they're two different roofs, and no matter how I try to fenagle the shape, I can't manage to create a single roof that matches this geometry. Am I missing anything that will let me create the appropriate roof? A "Merge roofs" function would sure be nice! Thanks everyone!

It won't be perfect any way you do it, but there are alternate options. One is to draw a complete hip roof over the whole rectangle. Change the one end to be a gable as you show on the right in your example. Then apply a gable roof via "Add False Gable" where you want the gable off the bottom side and set the width to be what you want.

Another option is to set hidden beams at the same height as the top of your wall top plates just below where you want that second gable to be (bottom left in your example). Set those beams just outside of the edge of the main hip roof overhangs, or anywhere beyond that. Make sure you uncheck "Extract In Model" so the beams do not show. Then, draw one more hidden beam to act as the gable end reference. It should either be placed a little below the long bottom wall or off to the left of the building (eventually). Set your gable end overhangs to model a little deeper than your hip overhangs. Then trace the whole roof with the "L" shape being created by referencing the hidden beams. Change the gable ends to be gables as you like. Adjust the gable end hidden reference beam to the left of the bottom wall and in line with the outside face of that wall so the gable end basically lines up with the hip roof to the right. Then, be careful, but you can typically adjust the gable overhang down to within 1/8" or so of the hip overhang. It will all be one roof, all one set of gutters, and probably be the cleanest look. I have noticed recently if the soffits are raked SP does not model them correctly at small bump-out gable roof like that, but you can hopefully make the right adjustments for what you need.

In my experience those are the better options. There are probably some other things SP users do that may work as well.

https://www.screenca...om/t/1I3o2lrcRt

I think you need to get rid of the interior bearing, draw a roof on the whole thing, gable the right, then draw a roof for that other

gable, use ignore walls some and uncheck regenerate,  Adjust this added roof down to middle, and make a gable, again uncheck regenerate.

I couldn't get it perfect, but close.

Below is one of the ways that I would draw this roof. I adjusted the gable overhang 1/64" larger than the rest of the overhang dimension's to make it work.

Are you trying to match the ridge lines?

I would Auto roof the whole house, then add the false gable, and then auto hole the roof under the false gable.  Would that work for you?

Hi everyone, Thanks for the input! By way of getting a roof like the example made, all of these ideas have merit in the right context. The false gable option works well as long as it's not going to push the ridge higher than the existing ridge. Otherwise you end up with a ridge sticking up in the air with nothing to connect to. Drawing it as 2 roofs as in my original drawing or Fred's screencap works, but you have what video gamers call "Z-Fighting" where 2 textures occupy the same space, so the render doesn't know which one to display, and unfortunately auto hole doesn't resolve this, plus you still end up with the odd visual of intersecting gutters, etc. I think for the context where I would use it, "cheating" out the measurement for the gable is the best option, as it allows Softplan to see the whole unit as one roof, so it handles textures, trims, and all that good stuff as connected. It would definitely be nice to get an option to "merge roofs" where Softplan can recognize coplanar roofs and combine those planes while leaving others as they are. #suggestionbox

That back side of the gable, can be made a bullnose and it will fill in the back, give it a distance, to make it fit correctly

Just change the pitch of the gable to be below or even with the main ridge?

you would have the change the left hip to match so it looks good.

I see Richard's method is probably the one and best

I don't watch many of the softplan videos,  But I I should have figured out that sytem.  Guess I've always drawn 2 roofs or would, I've really never needed to do a roof like that on a rectangular

house..    So I'm glad to have that added piece of Softplan functioning.       thanks

Gonna have to check that out, never used it,   

I’m glad that you like it. My favorite tool is “insert polygon edge”

Mine too!

I don't see it, Softplan has updated the video's