After some advice for creating a roof (hip roof), various angles

Hey guys,
I’ve spent an awful long time already on this model so I’m looking to save time and create a roof quickly.

I’ve got roof plans (2d) showing the pitch of various surfaces and… Im a bit brain fried (through doing other fairly droll tasks in SU today), to think it through but its obvious to me that the roof plans must be very useful to me in this situation.

What I’ve done so far is lay them directly over the top of what I’ve modeled and it seems to fit (there’s a couple places where it looks like things don’t match exactly (line up) with the underlying geometry I’ve made, but I think that may be intentional so I’m not worroed about it for now.

But, at the risk of sounding far too simplistic, is there any tool or method / extension in SU I can use to create geometry from my 2D roof plans. If the lines simply described walls (like I’ve done for the rest of the building), then I could just bring everything upwards with simple PUSH/PULLs but obviously there’s a bit more to it with hip roofing.

I’ve added a few screenshots to show what I’m working with.

NOTE: Im sorry that the images are flipped, it’s just the way it’s going! I’m modeling the left side first, and then mirror it.

This is what I need to create:

And this is the outline in context with the model:

Basically are there any tools out there which could make the task easier?

I’m not complaining (it’s my own fault), but you live and learn, and with this project… I made myself 3x the work by doing every single layer (outer brick, cavity wall, inner blockwork, plaster). Waaayyy too much detail for what I need to achieve really (a final exterior render). But I’ve done it this way just for completeness. Live and learn though, I wouldn’t do it this way next time.

There’s more than one way to do it. With plug-ins, Medeek’s truss/roof plug-in seems to just crank out such a roof with parametrics. I haven’t gotten or used it myself as yet, so I can’t speak from experience.

It’s relatively straight forward because the plate heights are all the same. Without plug-ins, one way is to draw one half a typical roof sections as a closed shape, draw a path along the top wall plate and use follow me to extrude the roof section along that path. That will generate hips and valleys, but you still have to come back and clean up what ever runs short of long.

The Truss extension if you want to actually build the roof.
Tig’s Roof plugin would probably create a visual with less work.
The former would be more suitable for condocs I think.

For final exterior render you only need the shape of the roof, the tiles (or shingles) layer (plus gutter, etc.) You could do the details of the inner structure and construction any time later.
With the roof plan as shown it wouldn’t be much work if you have the exact measures. The plan shows at least two different pitches.
Could you share the roof plan and additional information of these pitches?

p.s. do the shape inside a separate group (or component that can be mirrored with the advantage of doing any changes just once in the original component or in the mirrored one).

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Roof Videos by Aidan Chopra


Complex hip roofs and the Follow Me tool

Using Intersect with Model to make roofs

Making hip roofs

Creating eaves for buildings with pitched roofs

Constructing gabled roofs

Building flat roofs with parapets

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Thank you Geo.

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