🏠 ADVANCED BARGE LINES
This is a tricky job at first glance, but actually very simple to complete. We assume some knowledge of the barge lines funciton already and reasonable competence with the Roof Wizard modelling tools.
We use the Barge-Line function under CONSTRUCT-ROOF.
NB: Remember the primary rules for barge-lines? Start two or more points away from the barge lines; and what goes up, comes down the same amount. Refer to our training notes on Barge-Lines for more details.
🧭 START HERE
We started in the bottom right hand corner, only because we didn’t want to start on a funny angle, and digitised the following up to the barge line bit:
For the record, changing your line defaults under the “Options” button on the Track-Outline dialog can make the digitised line much easier to see.
Now, when we get to this point, we need to draw pretty much the following:
The easiest way to draw this is to digitise the first line going up, then simply type in L5, to move across 5mm and the D?? where the ?? is the same length as the first line digitised. For instance, when I digitised my first line upwards, it was 850mm long, so we then typed in L5 and D850 to get to here:
We then continued to digitise the remainder, and used the CTRL key to select the line on the new angle to the left.
When we drew this line, we then right-buttoned out and selected the “Align Axes with Last Line” to keep everything 90 degrees to the line just dimensioned:
📐 Dormer in/out symmetry (valley alignment)
The other trick is when coming across “Dormer” parts of the roof where you need to go in and out by the same amount, to ensure the valleys align on the roof.
To do this, you digitise the first line, then digitise across, and then finally type in the final dimension.
For the first “dormer” in this direction, we digitised up (700mm) then across and then finally typed in D700, to get the following:
We did this again later in the drawing – this is to ensure that each side of our hip end is symmetrical.
On the right of the new “dormer”, we right buttoned out again and selected “Reset Snap Axes” to put things back to the original axis, with 90 degrees perpendicular to the screen:
📏 Final barge-line trick (matching lengths)
The last bit was the same trick as before with the barge lines, the only issue this time was to ensure the barges are the correct length, you type in the same value before with the Left option.
So, we went L850, D5 and then kept digitising:
✅ Close, step back, and finish
When you get to the top-right hand corner, you select Finished-Digitising, and then Close-Square to ensure the corner aligns with the starting location.
The image goes from this:
to this,
and then you Step Back one position to put the last lines in.
Or, alternately you can add the last “dormer” using the Mod-Roof > Dormer command.
It is the same eave height, so maybe go around it as you have for the other gable ends.
Once the outline is completed, select finish; set the roof default parameters (pitch over hang = 0 eave height etc); select [Finish]; you will be presented with the Roof Mod Options dialog box.
select option [1] and then the 5 gable planes;
and then the [3] the barge lines, and the [Continue] and - voila!