Raising the Roof
If you're lucky, the roof you want to build is fairly simple. Unfortunately, home builders sometimes go a little crazy, creating roofs with dozens of different pitches (slopes), dormers, and other doodads that make modeling them a nightmare. For this reason, I'm going to keep things pretty simple: The following sections are dedicated to showing you how to identify and model some of the basic roof forms. After that, I tell you about a great tool you can use to assemble complicated roofs from less-complicated pieces — it's called Intersect with Model, and I think you'll get a kick out of it.
The tricky thing about roofs is that they're hard to see. If you want to make a model of something that already exists, it helps to be able to get a good look at it — that's not always possible with roofs. One neat way to get a better view of a roof you're trying to build is to find it in Google Earth. For more information, check out Chapter 11.
Before I dive in, what follows is a brief guide to general roof types and terminology; this might come in handy for some of the explanations I give later on. Figure 4-29 provides a visual accompaniment to my written descriptions:
1 Flat roof: Flat roofs are just that, except they aren't — if a roof were really flat, it would collect water and leak. That's why even roofs that look flat are sloped very slightly.
1 Pitched roof: Any roof that isn't flat is technically a pitched roof.
1 Shed roof: A shed roof is one that slopes from one side to the other.
i Gabled roof: Gabled roofs have two planes that slope away from a central ridge.
1 Hip roof: A hip roof is one where the sides and ends all slope together.
1 Pitch: The angle of a roof surface.
1 Gable: A gable is the pointy section of wall that sits under the peak of a pitched roof.
1 Eave: Eaves are the parts of a roof that overhang the building.
1 Fascia: Fascia is the trim around the edge of a roof's eaves where gutters are sometimes attached.
1 Soffit: A soffit is the underside of an overhanging eave.
1 Rake: The rake is the part of a gabled roof that overhangs the gable.
1 Valley: A valley is formed when two roof slopes come together; this is where water flows when it rains.
1 Dormer: Dormers are the little things that pop up above roof surfaces. They often have windows, and they serve to make attic spaces more usable.
1 Parapet: Flat roofs that don't have eaves have parapets: These are extensions of the building's walls that go up a few feet past the roof itself.
- Gabled roof Dormer Valley Hip roof Flat roof Parapet Shed roof
Fascia Soffit Gable Rake Eave
Fascia Soffit Gable Rake Eave
Figure 4-29:
Some different kinds of roofs, and their various and sundry parts.
Figure 4-29:
Some different kinds of roofs, and their various and sundry parts.
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