Learn the techniques to create a realistic roof for a clubhouse using protractor and other tools. This tutorial walks you through the process of creating the roof slope and building walls in specific angles to match the roof.
Key Insights
- The protractor tool is crucial in creating the roof slope with precise degrees or the ratio format, such as 5:12, 6:12, 7:12, etc. which defines how many units up for every 12 units across.
- Creating the roof involves drawing a rectangle from corner to corner, creating a line from the midpoint along the red axes, and pulling the geometry up to fold it over the constructed guide lines.
- Building the walls to match the roof is done by extending the walls above the roof plane, intersecting the face with the model, and then trimming the wall to match the angle of the roof using the push-pull tool.
Note: These materials offer prospective students a preview of how our classes are structured. Students enrolled in this course will receive access to the full set of materials, including video lectures, project-based assignments, and instructor feedback.
So in this video we are going to build the roof for our clubhouse. We will use the protractor tool right here to give us the roof slope and help create some guidelines.
So click the protractor tool and let's orbit around to this face here. You can either use this face or this face. I will use the face that's next to the kitchen.
So click it on this corner in the red direction. You might need to orbit kind of downward so you don’t snap to the green axis. Click here and click your first reference point and then your angle.
So with the protractor you can type in an actual degree or you can type in a roof slope. Roof slopes can be in a ratio format: 5:12,6:12,7:12, etc. Basically, for every 5 units we go up, we’ll go 12 units across—right?
So in this case, we'll make this slope 6:12. Enter. Then I’ll go to this corner along the red axis and do the same thing.
Click a reference plane, a reference edge, and then do 6:12. And now we have these two grid lines with our peak for our roof. So let's draw a rectangle now from this corner to this corner and a line from the midpoint along the red axes.
And then use our Move tool, we can pull this geometry up and fold it essentially over that. If you hold Shift, you can lock around the blue axis until you get your little X for constrained on line from point. Then now I'll go to Edit, Delete Guides, and triple-click, then make group for this roof plane.
I would do the same thing down here. Use the Protractor tool, set to 6:12 on this side. The same thing over here.
Making sure—see how I accidentally clicked in the blue? I will hit Escape and then make sure that I can find the red. You may need to orbit down lower so you can really get to that direction. And then we'll do the same thing with the rectangle, centerline, and click in the line and holding Shift, snap at the intersection of our guides.
And then we can go to Edit, Delete Guides, Select tool, triple-click, make group. And because these two portions are identical in size, we can copy this roof portion. Hitting the Control key to get your plus sign to make a copy to this corner.
Double-checking that these line up perfectly and this line up perfectly—we are good to go. Now what I'll do is I want to extend these walls up above our roof plane so that way we can intersect and create our walls at these specific angles. So I will double-click into our walls.
Okay, I will start with the center first and I will pull this up. We want to be more extreme because we can't see what that other roof plane looks like unless we go to View, Component, Edit, Hide the Rest of the Model. Then we can see it.
We want to go just above it just like that. And then let's click this face here and we see that this line is crossing this, so we can go to Intersect Face with Model. And now if I go to View, Component, Edit, Hide the Rest of the Model, you can see that I created this line from that roof plane.
This is from the roof plane. And then if I click this face, you can do Intersect Face with Model, and I can see that I have this roof plane. So I can also then Push/Pull this portion until it’s on face to delete that.
I can do the same thing on this side. Intersect Face with Model, Push/Pull, and then to clean up this edge, I can go from this point here and then reference this edge point so that way it matches that same angle and it's magenta. Click here and then go into my Push/Pull, I can actually trim out this wall plane to match the same angle.
Then go into my Eraser tool. I can erase this line and this line. I can do the same thing over here. Draw a line along the magenta axis and then Push/Pull this wall all the way back to the very end and then erase this line and this line.
Then we can do the same thing for these walls on the back. We want to pull this one up above our actual point here—right? So somewhere above it. It doesn't matter where; we'll clean that up later.
And then let's go select two of these inside faces and we'll do Intersect with Model knowing that we have our roofs. Then we can actually do the same thing we did before—Push/Pull that to delete that face. Double-click and we can orbit around, and then we want to draw these lines to fill this in all the way down to the corner, all the way down to the corner, and then Push/Pull this wall and Push/Pull this wall and Push/Pull this wall, and then use the Eraser tool to delete.
Delete here, here, here, here, and there. And then, you know, we can see that this is a thicker line. When I delete this, it may break this open, and so it basically looks like that. This is an opening right here and there's no face, and I do see that when I orbit around and I look inside.
So what I can do is we can fill that in by drawing a line to connect that and then erase these lines. Then I would do some additional cleanup to trim this trim that got intersected, and this wall here, and this line here on this wall, and this line here on this wall, and these lines at the top—here, here, here, and here. That looks very clean.