Product Overview
Section 1. Modelling the Roof
2. Drawing up the Roof
Our software works off the basis of drawing the roof up
on the screen, using a series of easy-to-use menus. Providing you enter
the dimensions for the perimeter of the roof accurately, and give the correct
angle or slope, then the roof generated on the screen should resemble the
roof in question. This gives the operator a great deal of confidence in
the outputs from our software as you are able to verify that the numbers
you entered, will result in the same roof that you are bidding for. "If
it looks like your roof, then it will be your roof!"
Because our software sits on top of a very powerful 3 dimensional CAD package,
we can utilize various tools to enable the drawing of the roof and checking
the result, before submitting to a bid. In the following sections, we have
demonstrated a number of methods of achieving this.
3. Importing Roof or Building outlines from another CAD system
More often than not, these days the roof plans you are working from have been drawn up using a CAD system, and then printed out to hard copy, resulting in thick piles of printed drawings which then need to be scaled off by hand or used in conjunction with a tablet or digitiser. Whilst our software can support the use of a digitiser, it is far easier to use other methods to get the roof outline in. The most obvious one is to import the CAD drawing of the roof plans direct from your customer.
CAD drawings can be saved in various different file formats, and our software
supports most of these, but the most common form is the .dxf format (drawing
exchange format). The real benefit of this is that there is no need to
re-scale the plan, and the software will be able to "snap" to
the nearest points, thus eliminating a lot of inaccuracies of measuring.
The plan below is an imported CAD drawing
By using the command Digitise Outline we can then move the cursor to the extremities of the wall outline, by "snapping" to those points, and after entering the pitch or slope of the roof and the eave offset from the wall, the roof is generated automatically, resulting in an accurate and fast method of working out the areas and lengths.
Plan
or Iso view...
At this point you could then continue and apply
the material to the roof to achieve the take-off quantities.
............. ..................
.
Metric
or Feet/Inches 
4. Importing Roof or Building outlines from a scanned
image or bitmap
We recognize that you may not have the luxury of obtaining the CAD file for the drawing in question, but you may be able to scan the roof plan, using a flatbed scanner. This type of hardware is available at a relatively low cost at most computer supply outlets. Our software can also allow the import of such scanned images directly into the program to eliminate the need to scale the dimensions off the drawing. Note, this feature can also be used if you can obtain the image of the floorplan via the internet. There are a number of web sites that allow you to download the image file for the floorplan you wish to quote on, and our software would allow that downloaded file to import directly into the program.
Using the imported scanned image, we can then digitize around the outline,
as with the previous example, although this time we need to re-scale the roof
once it is generated. You will only need to enter the true measurement from
one reference line and the software will then scale the whole roof proportionally.
....
5. Using our Track-Outline Command
Having mentioned the previous two methods of getting
the roof or wall outline into the software, the most common method used
is our Track Outline feature. This command allows the user to very simply
enter the direction and dimension of each wall to produce the wall outline.
We have built in a number of features to simplify this process, such
as the insertion of Bay windows, or lines at unusual angles. We also
invented the idea of "Closing" the outline with a right angle
to allow the user to double check that the whole outline squares up,
and the outline is of the correct dimensions.
No
matter how complex the outline..
From this outline, the user simply enters the pitch (or slope), the eave offset and the eave height.
At this stage, the software will generate a hipped roof, based on the outline,
but we can change any side to become a gable end. We can also change the eave
or gable offset from any line and the outline to any shape.
The resulting roof will now be generated and allow the user to view the roof
in 3 dimensions to verify that it resembles the roof on the plan.
There are often times when you need to generate part of a roof to have multiple hips, such as a "church spire". We have built in a feature that allows you to generate this type of roof simply and easily.
......
7. Drawing up first storey Roofs
Another useful tool we have added is the ability to generate a first storey roof attached to the wall (or roof) of the second storey. We call this command the Verandah or Porch command. Once you have generated the main roof, you can then select Verandah and click on the lines that you wish to attach the verandah to. These lines can be either wall lines or roof lines.
To go to the next section - Section 2 - Modifying the Roof - Click Here
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