Automatic Roofs vs. Manual Roofs

Chief Architect can create just about any roof style. Most common roof styles such as hips and gables can be automatically generated quite easily. More complex roof styles can be created manually. The manual roof tools allow you to create any roof system that can be represented using roof planes.

Automatically Generated Roofs

There are several ways to produce a roof for your plan. The quickest and easiest is to automatically generate a roof. In the Build Roof dialog, specify the Pitch and Roof Overhang, check Build Roof Planes and click OK to automatically generate a roof. By default, a roof plane is generated over each exterior wall, creating a hip roof. The program automatically joins the roof planes at ridges and valleys.

Any deviations from the default hip roof can be specified on the Roof tab of the Wall Specification dialog for any exterior wall. Here, you can specify a different overhang, pitch, a second upper pitch, and the elevation where the upper pitch begins for the roof plane that rests on the selected wall. You can also specify a Full Gable Wall, High/Shed Gable Wall, or other options instead of a default hip roof. See "Wall Specification Dialog".

Roofs can also be automatically generated using roof plane baselines. When roof plane baselines are used, information that determines where and how roof planes are generated is contained on the Roof Baseline tab of the Roof Baseline Specification dialog, which is similar in appearance to the Roof tab of the Wall Specification dialog. For more about roof plane baselines, see "Roof Baseline Polylines".

Bay, bow, and box windows also produce roof planes automatically. For information about these windows and the roof styles that can be used with them, see "Bay, Box, Bow Windows & Roofs".

Manually Drawn Roof Systems

Any roof system that can be created automatically can also be created manually. Each roof plane is drawn and edited individually, offering full control over the process and limiting the possibilities only to your imagination.

Using Both Automatic and Manual Techniques

Another option is to start with an automatically generated roof and use manual design techniques to finish it. Using both automatic roof generation and the manual roof drawing techniques, you can quickly design highly customized roof systems.