Dormers

Dormers can be drawn manually or placed automatically using the Auto Dormer tools.

Manually Drawn Dormers

Once you are familiar with Chief Architect's roof tools, drawing dormers manually can be quite simple. There are several different ways to draw dormers; some methods work better in certain applications. A variety of resources are available at www.chiefarchitect.com with information about drawing dormers manually. There are a few things to keep in mind.

Walls extend upward until they meet an overlying roof plane.

A wall can also be cut by underlying roof planes if Roof Cuts Wall at Bottom is checked on the Roof tab of the Wall Specification dialog. For this to work properly, the edge of the roof plane must extend completely through the width of the wall.

Polylines can be converted into a Hole in Roof/Ceiling that allows walls to extend above or below the roof line. See "Convert Polyline Dialog".

Auto Floating Dormer

Select Build> Roof> Auto Floating Dormer and click the roof plane where you would like to place the center of the dormer's front wall.

All the walls of a floating dormer are cut off at their bottom by the underlying roof plane. To produce such a dormer manually, check Roof Cuts Wall at Bottom for the dormer walls on the Roof tab of the Wall Specification dialog. A floating dormer is really a complex skylight, since it sits atop a hole in the roof just as a skylight does.

Usually no room is defined by the walls of this type of dormer. The pictures below show both the outside and inside of a typical floating dormer.

A floating dormer can be placed in floor plan view on the same floor where its underlying roof plane displays, or it can be placed on the floor above. Which floor it should be on does not depend on which floor the underlying roof plane is on, but you must always click within this roof plane in floor plan view to create the dormer. Normally it does not matter what floor the dormer is on, but it may need to be on a certain floor so that the dormer walls do not interfere with walls or railings in the room below it. To do this, it may help to display the underlying roof plane on the appropriate floor using the Roof Plane Specification dialog. See "Roof Plane Specification Dialog".

If the dormer is defined on the floor above and the room below has a flat ceiling, then defining a room, which is automatically Open Below, causes a hole to be produced in the ceiling under the dormer.

Auto Dormer

Select Build> Roof> Auto Dormer and click the roof plane where you want the center of the dormer's front wall to be.

The walls of an auto dormer go to the floor and meet a knee wall on either side on the back of the dormer. This knee wall must run parallel to the underlying roof plane.

If you are creating a (non-floating) auto dormer, a knee wall must already exist. The dormer side walls run back to the knee wall and the knee wall is broken where the dormer walls meet it.

The knee wall does not have to be designated as such on the Roof tab of the Wall Specification dialog unless you are generating an automatic roof.

A non-floating dormer must always be created on the same floor as the knee walls.

Dormer Defaults

The initial width, height, roof style and other parameters for Auto Dormers are set in the Dormer Defaults dialog, accessed by double clicking either of the Auto Dormer buttons or via the Default Settings dialog. See "Dormer Defaults".

Editing Dormers

Auto dormers are like other objects in Chief Architect. They can be selected and edited in a variety of ways. See "Editing Auto Dormers".