Irregular Building Tool in 3D design mode
This guide applies to the easy-pv.co.uk and beta.easy-pv.ie versions of Easy PV. The information provided here may not be accurate for easy-pv.com and easy.pv.ie.
The irregular building tool allows you to create unusual roof shapes in the 3D design mode. It’s perfect for complex buildings and large commercial projects.
Step 1: Inserting the roof
Scroll down in the left-hand toolbar and select the irregular building tool in the miscellaneous section. In this example, we will plot the highlighted roof below. We will do so by plotting out each roof face one at a time.
Step 2: Resizing the roof
First, we will create the west-facing roof. Start by adding a new irregular roof and then drag each of the pink corner controls to the four corners of the roof face. If you accidentally create too many corners, click on the respective pink corner control and press the bin icon to delete them.
Resizing options if you click on one of the pink corner controls, it will bring up three options:
- Free corner angle (default): corners move freely when dragged, e.g. Step 2.
- Fixed corner angle: the angle of the corner will stay fixed when you drag it (see our Quick Roof guide for more info).
- Delete corner: this removes the corner, e.g. it would turn a rectangular roof into a triangle
|
Input precise roof dimensions Clicking on the white corners also brings up the dimensions for the adjacent sides. If you click on this value, you can input the precise dimensions for that side. |
Step 3: Editing the slope direction
The direction that the roof slopes is indicated by the arrow on the roof.
To edit the slope direction, drag the blue dot (it can be a little hard to spot at first!). You will see that this
moves the arrow.
It is useful to watch how the slope changes in the Elevations box. It’s likely you’ll want the gutter line to be completely horizontal. When it becomes horizontal, it will snap into place in the Elevations box.
Step 4: Edit roof details
In the same way as the normal 3D design mode, edit the roof height, pitch, material, and eaves depth using the boxes shown below.
Step 5: Creating a triangular roof
You now need to create the other three roofs. To create the triangular roofs, insert a new irregular roof and drag the x3 pink-white points to their respective corners. Then simply delete the remaining corner to turn it into a triangle.
The finished result!
After inserting all four roofs and amending the various roof slopes and heights, we have designed a complete irregular building.
