Modeling
About Archicad's design tools, element connections, modeling concepts, etc.

Create sloped butterfly roof

Anonymous
Not applicable
Hi,

I'm trying to create a butterfly roof that is sloped. So essentially you have the butterfly form (it slopes down by 3 degree to the valley) and then the whole roof slopes by 7 degress from one end of the building to the other. How do I go about doing this? (I'm an Archicad beginner)

Thanks
11 REPLIES 11
DGSketcher
Legend
Depending on the detail in the valley I would be inclined to use the SHELL tool. You can do this with single roof planes but it sound like it may be easier to set up with the Shell tool.

You may want to start by reading this and some of the other associated pages...
https://helpcenter.graphisoft.com/user-guide/76514/
Apple iMac Intel i9 / macOS Sonoma / AC27UKI (most recent builds.. if they work)
vistasp
Advisor
Could you show us a sketch please, Aditi?
= v i s t a s p =
bT Square Peg
https://archicadstuff.blogspot.com
https://www.btsquarepeg.com
| AC 9-27 INT | Win11 | Ryzen 5700 | 32 GB | RTX 3050 |
Laszlo Nagy
Community Admin
Community Admin
In 3D, you can create Roofs by specifying 3 points of the Roof ("Single-Plane" Geometry Method with "Complex Roof" Construction Method). This way you do not have to figure out exactly where the Pivot Line needs to be and what orientation it should have.
You can create other elements a node of which is at one of the locations you need to click. That way you can just click on element nodes when specifying the 3 Roof points.
Loving Archicad since 1995 - Find Archicad Tips at x.com/laszlonagy
AMD Ryzen9 5900X CPU, 64 GB RAM 3600 MHz, Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB, 500 GB NVMe SSD
2x28" (2560x1440), Windows 10 PRO ENG, Ac20-Ac27
Anonymous
Not applicable
Hi,

I've attached a sketch of what I'm trying to do. I played around with various roof tools and have managed to create a sort of roof that I want but it's in morphs, so I cannot connect my walls to it. This is problemmatic. I modelled a simple pitched roof, then did right click to create separate roofs by splitting into two. This then allowed me to give a negative pitch to each slope. That solved the butterfly part of the roof. But then I also needed to slope the whole butterfly roof by 7 degrees, which it wouldn't let me do unless I turned the roof into a morph. But once I turned it into a morph, I couldn't attach my walls to it...
Any suggestions?
Anonymous
Not applicable
You can do this with the regular Roof tool. To give the 7 degrees pitch you will have to rotate the Roof Pivot Line. The tricky part is to know what is the Roof Pivot Line rotation that will generate the 7 degrees pitch. But you can always use the trial&error method.
Another solution would be to use the new Beam Tool with a butterfly complex profile.
Hope this helps.
Laszlo Nagy
Community Admin
Community Admin
Look at the attached screenshot.
I have created to zero-thickness Roofs with 5-degree slope. They have a transparent Surface for better visibility.
Then, at the point they join, I placed another Roof with 7-degree slope.
You can see that on the left.
Then I defined the Roof Pivot Line by clicking points 1, 2, and 3, then drawing the Roof Outline.
The right side shows the result.
After the Roofs are done, the zero-thickness Roofs can be deleted.

Loving Archicad since 1995 - Find Archicad Tips at x.com/laszlonagy
AMD Ryzen9 5900X CPU, 64 GB RAM 3600 MHz, Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB, 500 GB NVMe SSD
2x28" (2560x1440), Windows 10 PRO ENG, Ac20-Ac27
DGSketcher
Legend
Or draw a V Shell, 3D rotate it to 7 degrees and add the required contour. So many options...
Apple iMac Intel i9 / macOS Sonoma / AC27UKI (most recent builds.. if they work)
DGSketcher wrote:
Or draw a V Shell, 3D rotate it to 7 degrees and add the required contour. So many options...
Yes. And they may or may not be related to how it all works with Interactive Schedules.

Modeling for just the sake of graphics and geometry is one thing -- modeling for that AND the Interactive Schedules should not be another - but quite often it is. This is because there are too many inconsistencies with the functionality of the Elements and the Interactive Schedules. I like having the different Tools for modeling these things but they should all function exactly the same way as a Basic, Composite, or Complex Profile and with the angle and rotational functions. That does not seem like it would be very difficult to do. In theory, I think you should be able to model the entire building with just a Beam, Wall, Slab, or a Roof.... + the Windows, Doors, Skylights, Objects of course. You just choose how you want it to be initially oriented in the model relative to the Plan View. We are not that far way from being able to do that are we ?

ArchiCAD 25 7000 USA - Windows 10 Pro 64x - Dell 7720 64 GB 2400MHz ECC - Xeon E3 1535M v6 4.20GHz - (2) 1TB M.2 PCIe Class 50 SSD's - 17.3" UHD IPS (3840x2160) - Nvidia Quadro P5000 16GB GDDR5 - Maxwell Studio/Render 5.2.1.49- Multilight 2 - Adobe Acrobat Pro - ArchiCAD 6 -25

How did you rotate the roof pivot line? Im trying to create something similar but I cannot seem to find a way of rotating the roof. 

Archicad 25 · MacBook Pro 2021, Apple M1 Max with 10-core CPU, 32-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine, 32GB unified memory · macOS Monterey