Hey there, I’d consider myself a seasoned user of sketchup but I’ve only just recently started using the program for architectural design. I’m working on a large villa and I’ve come across some problems with the roof I want to model. I honestly don’t really know how to approach starting it off without getting into a huge mess of unnecessary faces/groups. I just need someone to instruct me on how I can model a Spanish Roof without using any plugins like “instant roof” which charge yearly subscriptions. Here’s an example of what I’m trying to model
Could you get away with just a texture? That would save on polygons. Otherwise, good luck and I’m sure this can be done. Wish I knew how to help you. Roman tiles, or hacienda tiles are pretty cool.
If you model every tile it will result in a really big model (remember that you will have to cut each one at hips and valleys, so components will only get you so far.)
Create a section profile of the roof (from gutter to ridge) , then simplify it to just the outline.
Use the “follow me” tool to run the shape around the perimeter of the building.
From the resulting roof planes, off-set the edges to create hips, ridges and leadwork.
… but individual tiles will look much better. (And they will take 10x as long to do. And if the roof pitch ever changes all the hips & valleys will need to be re-done.)
(If it’s just the outside appearance, then there are simpler ways to create the roof than follow-me: Working form a 2D plan and drawing on ridges/hips/valleys and then moving the highest points up.)
Thanks for the reply Dave; two questions though:
How’d you manage to cut through each face of the roof (the trapezoidal shape) through all of those tiles at once? I’ve never been in the situation where I had to do that. Also, how did you get the pitch right? Because the problem I’ve been having is modeling this in 3d space and struggling with rotating the whole thing to try and match it to the pitch of the roof and everything just gets out of hand at that point.
A few months ago I had the same situation and following Gully’s suggestion I got something acceptable. The fields are texture and the edges and hips are 3D tiles.
I know we’ve covered this topic before on the previous forum. It’s really a shame all that information is unavailable.
Just thinking aloud here without much time to experiment. Would it be possible to get a better finished model by roofing the model with 3d tiles, then exporting a 2d image of each roof facet, that image would finally be used as a texture for a single roof facet?
Finally you could have 2d roofing on one layer and 3d roofing on another.
Derick, I drew a simple solid box at the miter angle and used Trim from the Solid Tools to trim the tile components it crossed. I did this at each end of one face of the roof. I made the cut tiles components again (the Solid Tools convert components to groups) and then copied the roof and rotated it to make the other sides. To make the different length sides, I moved one end of the roof and then copied whole tiles to fill the gap.
It’s really not very time consuming and when it comes down to it, you could make any roof length you like after you’ve got the ends cut. As long as the pitch is the same, the miters are done and you just need to fill in between the ends.
