Dog legged beam

[troberts]

Can anyone tell me how to create a doglegged roof beam? I have a roof ridge cutting across a beam span and I need to "kink" a beam.

[anthonyf]

Hi,
Can you post a sketch of what you are trying to do?

Cheers

[troberts]

Here is a sketch of what I am trying to accomplish. I have a compound sloping roof, with several of these required. There ought to be some way to do this parametrically.

Thanks, Tim

[anthonyf]

Hi,
You have a couple of ways that you can go about this,

1) Draw two separate beams, and extend and trim to reference lines using the cut tool.

2) Create an in place family (or new family file)

If you have a lot of beams like this of a constant size, ie same member each side of crank I would most likely create a family file to do this.
However if the members location and or size is likely to need adjusting later perhaps option 1 may be more suitable.

Please find attached a cranked family file for your experimentation.
(Note I'm unsure while it has an offset from its reference plane, if anyone can sort this out that would be greatly appreciated)

Cheers

Anthony