topic Re: Composite Dormers cleanly connected to Roof in Modeling

Composite Dormers cleanly connected to Roof

SRR55 — Fri, 18 Jul 2025 09:59:59 GMT

We have a zinc clad mansard roof construction with 10 dormers arrayed around it. The dormers themselves have two vertical cheeks, a vertical front face with glazing, and a flat roof. All elements, including the pitched roof they're inserted in to, have the same composite construction. We can't get the components to interact cleanly. As all components have the same composite, it should be a case of a custom intersecting angle at each face, with the vertical faces cropped below the main roof pitch, to give a triangular wedge for each cheek. Ideally that trim to the cheeks would also show in the plan, so you don't read it as a wall set further in to the room.

I've attached screenshots from both the model. We've read through various posts on this forum, and tried a few solutions with SEOs, cmd-click trims, connect to roofs, but they're all giving us slightly different and unwanted behaviours - in how the layers of the composite interact in 3D, or with walls vanishing, plans displaying wrongly etc. We also watched another video on using shells for this, but want to model these dormers with composite sections.

Re: Composite Dormers cleanly connected to Roof

BrunoH — Fri, 18 Jul 2025 14:59:20 GMT

Hi SRR55,

Something like this ?

Re: Composite Dormers cleanly connected to Roof

SRR55 — Tue, 22 Jul 2025 11:37:01 GMT

BrunoH, thank you! This is exactly what we're trying to achieve.

We've tried to reverse engineer from your file, alongside a YouTube video explaining the process (albeit in German...so we're following along visually). We've got the shell modelled just as you have, forming the roof and vertical cheeks, and can now get that to interact with the roof as we'd want - by selecting roof and shell, right-clicking and using the connect command.

We just can't then get the front facing wall to behave correctly. A similar select on the shell and wall, right-click then connect, leaves us with the wall cropped inside of the shell. Is this a weight/priority issue on the composite, or did you do this interaction another way? Thanks again,

Re: Composite Dormers cleanly connected to Roof

BrunoH — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 07:28:52 GMT

Hi SRR55,

Only Connect to Roof/Shell command, maybe material priorities, here are the settings of that file.

Verifies the function settings of each skin ( finish, other or core ).