More Objects

Continuing with more of Exterior Decorator's objects:

Rake Fascia

Rake fascia is the item that got me started on this PowerTool. For those not into carpenter's vernacular, the rake is the edges of a roof which are pitched, or tilted, as opposed to the eaves. The finish that underlines the rake on the gable end wall is called the "rake fascia". On some of these the bottom corners are turned in to add a decorative touch in suggesting the closure of the gable triangle withhout actually doing so - these inward extensions of the rake fascia are called returns. I've had several homes to do Punch! models for, and many feature multiple gable ends in the front that have contrasting fascia, with returns. These are not difficult to do in the 3D Workshop, but each one is individual; they are complex enough to not scale up/down well. The fascia piece is designed to rest immediately under the roof's top surface, and must therefore follow both pitches of the roof line.

Note that the rake fascia, like all objects that have an elevation angle involved, is sensitive to stretching. Normally, all object may be stretched in Punch! to fit a space, but if one should stretch an object like a rake fascia along the angle dimension, the angle or pitch will change, and the object will no longer match the pitch of the roof it is supposed to match. Care must be taken to avoid stretching an object with an angle, except at right angles to the angle's measurement. For the rake fascia, it can be stretched wider, but not longer, and still fit.

The controls include:

• Elevation - As with the arch, the elevation of the fascia can be preset here, or left zero and set in Punch!/
• Thickness - same as for the arch.
• Pitch - the pitch of the roof that the fascia has to follow. The final fascia object will be symmetrical, and therefore will have the same pitch on either side. The fact that the object has this pitch means it cannot be stretched on the site to fill the space if it is too short or long, as doing that will also change the pitch, as well as the material width. The pitch can be entered as a pitch number (the rise of the angle associated with a 12" run) as used in the USA or as an angle, as used elsewhere. Entering either will reset both numbers to the new value.

• Length - The "spread" of the fascia along the roof line. This may be supplied in two manners - as the total chord length from one side to the other, ignoring the roof's pitch, and along one side's length from peak to roof end, following the pitch. As with the pitch entry, entering either way will update both. The former manner matches the way Punch! measures it's roof edges, while the second might be the easiest to obtain from an actual house using a tape measure. Notice that the length doesn't include any frieze board; see below.
• Beam width - the width of the fascia, always measured perpendicular to the material's edge at the point of measurement. This is contrary to Punch!'s roof thickness measurement, which is measured true-vertically, regardless of pitch.
• Return length - The return is a decoration added to the bottom of the fascia on either side. The effect is to suggest the closing of the triangle that the fascia represents along the bottom. The return's measurement runs from the point where the lower fascia line, running along the pitch, would intersect the lowermost point on the roof, to where the return ends with a vertical face. A length of zero results in a fascia that is uniform in width all the way down, with no break towards the center, suitable for interior rafter beams. Returns can extend inwards with longer lengths, even to the point of meeting in the middle, and forming the triangular part of roof trusses.

• Fill Return?- This checkbox will cause the vertical edge at the inside end of the return to be extended upwards to meet the pitch, adding more decorative "weight" to the returns. Without it, the return will be the same width as the rest of the fascia.
• Frieze? - If this checkbox is checked, a small triangular piece is added to each corner of the fascia, designed to close the flat soffits at the gable ends, called a frieze board. These result in a sharp triangular point, instead of stopping and dropping vertically to match the vertical height of the fascia at the apex. This addition is not part of the fascia's length measurement, included or not.
• Surface Finish - As for all the objects, this button allows for the object's total color or texturing.

Columns

The column is intensely used both decoratively and functionally. The use of jacks to help support beams in the basements of modern houses forms one modern implementation, and what would a Georgian mansion be without them?

In the Exterior Decorator, a column is built up in a series of sections stacked one atop the next. Up to seven such sections can be used per column (ond columns can be stacked in Punch! to allow for even more). Each section is a prismatic of cylindrical piece which is either straight or tapered as desired to create the column desired.

A word here about roundedness. As I mentioned before, curves don't really exist on computers, due to both the finite digital nature of computing electronics and the fact that graphics monitors are rasterized, meaning they display a square grid. Computers know only points - a line is a series of such points along what we humans recognize as a continuity. Straight lines can be drawn fairly cheaply (in terms of computer time); curved lines are always a series of straight line segments, and therefore the number of such segments takes the equivalent time that that many lines takes to draw. The number of these segments along a given line is called "resolution". Fine resolution means the lines approach the graininess of the monitor they are being drawn on, and so look very gracefully curvy - less resolution allows the lines and corners to begin becoming visible. As always in engineering, there is a trade-off here - basically speed versus geometric faithfulness.

A column has, many times, a circular cross-section. This curved smoothness is, as a matter of course, actually a regular polygon. In most instances, 20 sides around 360 degrees of arc (a full circle) is sufficient to render a circle indistinguishable from the polygon. Exterior Decorator allows the user to specify the order of the polygon that each section uses: three (the minimum) will specify a triangular column, four a square, six a hexagon, and so on, up to as many as thirty, which is considered here to be virtually circular. Note that for a particular purpose twelve sides may be enough to provide visual circularity; if it is, twenty is overkill and wastes computer time in rendering LiveView, so don't hardwire your brain to "twenty == circular".

The controls:

• Elevation - The object's elevation, as explained above.
• Surface Finish - The finishes are as discussed above.
• For each section:
• Sides - The number of side on the column proper, as mentioned above. This can be from three to thirty, with 20 being tantamount to circular. If it is set to 0, then the whole section will be removed from the section list. If it is negative, the next higher section will be opened (that is, all the sections above it will be moved up one, and a new entry opened in the space), and the number of sides will be changed back to positive.
• Top radius - The radius of the top of the section. This is measured from one corner from the center to one of the points of the polydon.
• Bottom radius - The same measurement at the bottom of the column section. Using the two radii a tapered column can be produced.
• Height - This is the height of the section.

Note that a restriction in the way Windows works will leave a new section (in which the number of sides has be changed from zero) until the user clicks on another entry control on the window, or the Go button.

Be aware that columns created with this tool look much better in LiveView than the 2D drawing on the dialog would lead one to believe. Thank goodness.

Exterior Decorator and the contents of this help file are
Copyright©2006 by ThistleKeep Engineering; all rights are reserved.
Comments and suggestions, as well as support, are entertained at Lmc@ThistleKeep.com.
"Punch!" and other titles of Punch! operations are trademarks of Punch! Software L.L.C.