Any SketchUp Aficionados In The House?

[El Barto]

Slight chamfer perhaps if the hip rafter is very wide, as you have drawn. That is wider than But if you look at yours the chamfer angle is quite extreme and when the jacks go in they will be below the level of the apex of the hip rafters. This will surely create a problem when you come to batten across the felt.

With your large hip rafters (which appear wider than that are deep) you may find that getting them up is quite a challenger. Typically a hip rafter is done at much the same width as the commons. In such cases it is not worth chamfering as you wont see it anyway once the tiles are on.

This is an example of what I mean.

The hips on my drawing are purely aesthetic, hence the width. If I was going to add jack and common rafters and also a roof I'd make them much narrower.

By contrast, this is much more similar to what I build currently. Hip rafter is fairly narrow and uses square section commons that are not as deep. Very slight chamfer run off by hand with a power planer. (Takes ages doing it any other way as the wood is just too heavy to get near a band saw for me as I mostly work alone).

The image shows the hip rafter chamfered to match the angle of the jack and common rafters, same as in my drawing. Power planing the chamfer is the only way (although I suppose you could use a circular saw if you felt it necessary) because as you say, the timbers are much too heavy to manoeuvre

 

[El Barto]

This is a restoration I worked on where we added new hip rafters. These were chamfered with a power planer before being lifted into place.

 

[AJB Temple]

Interesting roof. Did they use a crane to get those hip rafters in place?

The barn we currently live in was erected about 1620. There is not a straight and regular beam in it, apart from later repairs and additions. I don't think the men who were doing these buildings back then worried all that much. Neither the roof nor walls are straight!

 

[El Barto]

Interesting roof. Did they use a crane to get those hip rafters in place?

The barn we currently live in was erected about 1620. There is not a straight and regular beam in it, apart from later repairs and additions. I don't think the men who were doing these buildings back then worried all that much. Neither the roof nor walls are straight!

We didn't have a crane - we had to lift them all in by hand! It was a taxing day to say the least.

Your barn sounds lovely.

 

[AJB Temple]

Sadly this barn is not the best I've had - it's probably the worst. It was "converted" by a dimwit developer in the early 1980's. Luckily he left the roof structure alone (I will fully expose it underneath in parts when I finish the refurb) but as was typical at the time, hacked about other bits of the frame. Lots of barns were bodged up at that time. There was a marketing obsession at the time with maximising the number of rooms, so a lot of partitioning has had to come out. All of the repairs and additions have been done with traditional oak framing. Two small barns have been rebuilt in traditional style and I made some other small buildings as well.

Had to learn as I went along in terms of what I could cope with on my own. It's quite a bit different working on your own, compared with being part of a team of blokes who can supply a lot of muscle. My wife is very helpful. Hopefully you will have a helper. Good luck with the build.

 

[LoveMonkey]

Hi,

I realise you have already found a solution to your Sketchup problem, but as with anything, it doesn't hurt to have multiple solutions.

In Sketchup you can use the Move tool on individual edges and faces within a group. Also, you may already know, you can type in the dimensions you need with a tool, rather than just trying to 'get there' with the mouse or working to a specific point. The way I would make your beams is as follows:

1. Draw a 2D rectangle the width required and longer than the length needed
2. Use the Push/Pull tool to turn that into a cuboid up to the height of the top of the square sides
3. Draw a line down the centre of the top of the beam
4. Use the Move tool to lift the centre line up to the top height, where the angled edges meet. You can fix the move in the red direction by pressing up after you have clicked the line with the tool
5. Use the move tool too lift the end of the beam up to the height required at the apex of the roof, again using the up key to lock movement in the up/down direction after clicking the end face with the tool
6. Make the beam into a group
7. Rotate and move the beam to the angle and position required
8. Copy, Paste in Place and the rotate the new beam to the position and angle required
9. Repeat step 7 for the final two beams
10. Open up a beam group and draw around the intersection with the line tool until you have gone all the way around the beam
11. Delete all of the protruding lines on the 'wrong' side of the intersection
12. Repeat step 10 for the other three beams

I hope that makes sense. With this method it shouldn't take more than a minute or two to get your beam structure done.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks

 

[El Barto]

Resurrecting an old topic here but I'm having an issue with Sketchup and geometry that hopefully someone can explain to me. I will try and explain as clearly as possible!

I am drawing the below frame, it measures 3000mm x 3000mm. The rafters are 100mm x 50mm. Everything seems ok so far.

However, zoom into where those two rafters meet and there is a tiny (1mm) discrepancy, despite the angles of the rafters being cut at 45º. In theory (at least to me) this should all be square with no discrepancies, but it's not. WHY?! The red line in the screengrab illustrates the matter from a different perspective. It is incredibly annoying, more so for the fact that I've done this before without these errors occurring but can't seem to do it again.

At this point I can't wrap my head around it. Any help appreciated.

 

[Fidget]

When you lift the rafters to meet in the centre doesn't it create a compound angle rather than simple 45deg?

 

[El Barto]

When you lift the rafters to meet in the centre doesn't it create a compound angle rather than simple 45deg?

Yes you are right. I was having trouble figuring out how to calculate that angle. I still don't know but I solved it by using guides, so the maths was done for me.

 

[Fidget]

I was going to suggest that guides might show you the detail

 

[El Barto]

I was going to suggest that guides might show you the detail

Yeah, it was enough of a headache using the guides without having to figure out all the trigonometry!

Got there in the end though (homer)

 

[Fidget]

Looking good =D>