Hey Guys,

Can you two provide me with a link, or help here, on how to draw hips in Sketchup? Do I have to draw everything in plan to pull the component? I might be missing something, but I can't seem to back the hip after making the plumb cuts or vice versa.

Any help would be appreciated,.

Hey Mo, of course, there are a couple ways of doing this depending on your application.

For common hips/valleys, you can use the roofer framer's bible to give you the backing angles and then draw a 2D plane with your timber theo width and thickness and use the protractor to place the correct backing angles on each side of the timber. Cut out the unnecessary part and push pull to length. Getting the plumb cuts would start with getting the timber sitting in space correctly and then setting up cutting planes as I describe below.

For bastard valleys, or irregular shaped timbers (like logs) I use a different method.

The first thing I do is set up a ceiling cutting plane that I use for "cutting" my timbers. Basically, draw the roof as a bunch of no thickness planes, grouped together, that sit right at the top of rafter plane.

Now, place your hip/valley timber, in space, so that the outside edges of the timber are touching your ceiling plane (I use construction lines and isolate movement to the vertical to ensure that I am moving the correct amount and not accidentally moving the timber laterally.

Select the timber and intersect with model. Erase the extra geometry and fill in faces where necessary. If you want to sacrifice your ceiling plane, make a copy of it and group the copy and the hip timber together as two separate groups. Edit each one, select all geometry, and intersect with model. Once you have done this for bith the ceiling and the timber, you can erase the unnecessary parts from each (the timber with no backing planes and the ceiling backing planes with no timber) and then explode them both while keeping them grouped as a whole. This will save you some fiddling around with filling in faces.

The nice thing about using a cutting plane for an irregular setup is that you can move the timber/log up and down until you get exactly as much meat on your backing faces as you want, while still maximizing the timber. You can even model in the taper of a log and get that set in space to maximize the timber.

Cheers, Chuck

This is for a valley, but similar techniques apply. I do it all in SketchUp. I always start my drawing with a 'shell' - a paper thin model of the control surfaces - for me these are the outside timber surfaces where the timber meets drywall / SIPs / wood / etc. This helps in that can have a locked, wireframe geometry guide for placing timbers. In the video I just drew a 9:12 roof corner - but usually I have the full volume of the project.

I'm using 'pro' - so I show how the new solids tools work when clipping the foot or mitering the top. Otherwise - technique is such:

Turn on hidden faces in my 'shell' component.
Bring in appropriate size timber component.
Place center point of timber @ intersection point of 2 roofs @ plate.
Rotate in plan view to get timber in correct angle (example is 9:12 to 9:12, so 45 deg.)
Rotate in elevation - this requires snapping to the ends of the timber and then the peak - all represented in my wireframe / shell component.

For hips, trace the backing angle onto the component and push pull.

For valley - move the valley into the correct position. If you want a full backing cut - draw a guideline and push it up to the roof surface. Trace from the 'shell' surfaces onto the valley rafter and push pull the center V cut out.

I then stretch past beyond where I need the piece to go and use various techniques to miter / clip / develop joinery - depending on the circumstance.



Video might take some time for YouTube to process and have ready for viewing.

Slick technique, Mike. I've seen you use it before, and it's really intuitive. I use a different (not better) approach, which starts by drawing the valley or hip as a line, and then building up the rafter from there.

Mike, I saw you use the protractor tool to create a construction line on top of an existing edge. You may know this trick already, but using the tape measure tool, just double click on any edge. CB.

Thanks. Since I already have my guidelines in place with my shell I just grab something from the components bin.

As to tape measure - old habits die hard. I use that method 50% of the time.

I threw that together quick. If I have time I will try and get one out with audio.

Thanks fellas,

All of that information makes good sense and I am trying these different methods out.

Bmike, What command are you using @ 2:35 in your video. Is this like what Chuck is talking about with cutting planes?

Thanks again for the help.

That is in the new version of pro 8... solids tools subtract. You can find a plugin called booltools that will do similar, or you can create a dummy block just as I've done (no need to make it a component) - then edit the rafter component, triple click to select all faces and lines, then 'intersect with model' - you'll need to do some hand editing and deleting, maybe even drawing a few new lines to close out faces.

When I use the intersect with model method I usually isolate the component and work on a copy of it so that only the particular geometry that I want gets transferred in the intersect with model operation.