The major problem with the gable wall workaround is that once you’ve gone down that path you no longer can edit that wall with the plugin, so adding a window or door or editing an opening is no longer possible with the plugin. It was only ever meant to be a temporary workaround until the gable wall module is complete.
When you first click the gable wall tool you will be presented with the following gable wall matrix:
As you can see from the shading all wall types except for the “Gable” type have been grayed out. Initially I will make only this wall type available, then the “Shed” will be the next type I proceed to develop. The rectangular, gable and shed walls constitute the vast majority of wall geometries used in most construction however you can see there are quite a few other possibilities, so many in fact, that I quickly ran out of descriptive names to assign them.
Compared with a standard rectangular wall a gable wall with have the following additional parameters:
- Wall Height Left
- Wall Height Right
- Wall Pitch Left
- Wall Pitch Right
These four parameters will drive the location of the wall peak. In most situations the left and right values will be the same resulting in a symmetric gable wall however any combination of dissimilar pitches and wall heights will be possible which will then yield an asymmetric gable wall.
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For Gables - actually for ANY of the flat bottom variations - how about an option “on top of” - where you ask to identify an existing standard (rectangular) wall. With that, you could then offer a seamless construction (layers of the wall assembly) - perhaps separate options for exterior and interior sides!
- Seamless Exterior? Yes/No
- Seamless Interior? Yes/No
If you choose “on top of” to place the wall, the initial wall details include stud depth. If you choose “Yes” on the either “Seamless” option, then the new wall assembly “inherits” the various options for the exterior/interior sides of the wall on which the new wall is placed.
Of course, it wouldn’t surprise me if you’ve already planned exactly this - just haven’t mentioned it here yet!
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I like the theory of this. Build normal height walls, and then on gable ends, selecting the part you want added on to and then creating the wall on this portion only.
This way, wall joins are kept nice and clean from the initial set out. Similar to creating a gable truss on top of a standard wall. Agreed it would need the option for different exterior as often the gable has different cladding to the wall below.
But, just an idea, Nathaniel is normally a step ahead of us!
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I’ll have to give some more though to a seamless cladding option. I do have some ideas on this.
Typically with gable walls they are either balloon framed or rectangular framed with a gable truss above them.
However, one should be able to stack walls, (ie. put a triangular gable wall on top of a rectangular wall.)
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Neat. Does that generate based on the custom paremeters?
i.e, if the left knee height is different from the right and different pitch will it show/preview in the wireframe?
Is not critical if it does, just curious.
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Yes, the preview wireframe will show the exact outline of the framing. However I’m still working out details on what happens with gable walls and inside corners even though this scenario is probably not very common.
I’m going to have to dumb down some of the more general features/parameters found with rectangular walls as they apply to gable walls. For example with rectangular walls you can have walls connected at non-orthogonal corners. For gable walls this becomes very complicated and eventually I will probably allow it however for now I think it would be best to limit gable walls to ONLY orthogonal connections at the corners. If I don’t do this it will be another 6 months of programming before I ever complete the gable wall module.
As I was testing asymmetric gable walls earlier today it became apparent that the intersection at the peak is a little more interesting with the asymmetric case. Also I will probably make the double studs positioned at the peak an optional setting in the global settings.
Notice how the door falls beneath the gable wall peak:
In this situation the symbol or outline for the opening must be broken into two faces as shown.
There are a lot of little details like this that further complicate things having to do with gable walls, finding them all is a slow and meticulous process.
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My first experience with any BIM program was MacArchitrion around 1987±. Wall blocks were 6 sided solids and 4 of the faces had to be plumb. The only way to make a gable was 2 separate blocks butted together at the ridge. Installing a window centered centered under the ridge (Gee, how often does that happen?) was not really addressed other than a work around to install it in one block and hanging partly outside the block it was installed in.
The program was also integer based, not floating point, so you could get round off errors finding the center of an odd number sized object.
Have you ever thought about the 2D symbols just floating above everything? I guess that only works for orthographic views.
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The wall label for a gable wall actually will float above the wall at the peak height. I have thought about also gluing it to the inclined surface of the top plate but I really don’t see a problem with it floating above either.
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Working on in-wall columns for gable walls:
A full height column just butts up to the underside of the top plate(s) and is cut at a bevel to match the pitch of the wall as shown.
A more interesting scenario is where the column is less than or more than the plate height and you might then have a beam pocket, in this case at the peak of the wall:
I haven’t played too much with the existing column and beam tools. but I really like the idea of creating beam pockets. Is this option available on normal walls also? Very handy.
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This feature has been available with rectangular walls since Version 0.9.5 - 09.17.2018.
A bit more to do with the framing but it appears to be mostly there now, notice the mid-span blocking algorithm will need some additional logic:
The critical items still needing further attention are:
- Cavity insulation
- Mid-span blocking
- Sheathing, Cladding, Gypsum
- Ext. Trim: Corner Trim, Band Board, Frieze Board
- Quoins
- Beam Pocket cut outs (sheathing, cladding, gypsum)
The future items that will need to be addressed at a later date are:
- Estimating quantities for Gable Walls
- Framing dimensions for Gable Walls
- Simpson Strong-Walls
Fantastic (thanks for the beam pocket response).
Looks great.
The additional logic for blocking would work well on normal walls also - as you can have floating blocks above the wall if you set too high parameters.
What is your estimate timeframe for a public release so we can help test?
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Looks like we have the mid-span blocking firing on all cylinders now:
Notice the california corner still needs to be beveled where it abuts the top plate, I guess I missed that one earlier, I’m on it.
After that I will work on the cavity insulation.
I will release the gable wall to the public once I have completed the previous checklist, I will keep posting updates as I complete each item. The ETA could be in a as little as two days or it could be as far out as two weeks depending on if I run into any specific roadblocks along the way. You never know until you dig into the code.
I’m not sure if I’ve got this right and I need to make sure it is right.
Shown below is an exterior gable wall forming an outside (orthogonal) corner with an exterior rectangular wall, probably the most common configuration that will be encountered with gable walls.
The gable wall terminates with an outside corner and the rectangular wall terminates with an inset outside corner. Does this look correct?
If we were to reverse the terminations (gable → inset outside corner and rectangular → outside corner) how then should the corner look?
P.S.
Here is what I am proposing for the reverse case where the gable wall forms the inset outside corner:
