3D, roofs and pictures

1Open the 3D window

Click 🧱 3D in the toolbar over the preview. The 3D window uses the walls you set up in the 🏠 Building window (chapter 5), so set those up first; if something stops the building standing up, the window says so under Can’t stand this building up yet, with a button to open the Building settings.

The model takes a few seconds to build - longer for a big building - and says Building the model… while it works. It rebuilds by itself whenever you change a wall or a roof setting.

Close the window with the × at its top right.

2Look round the model

• Turn it: drag with the left mouse button.
• Slide it: drag with the right mouse button.
• Zoom: the scroll wheel.
• Start again: Reset view.

Click a wall - on the model, on its label or on its card in the list - and the camera flies round to face it. Its card opens under the list with a picture of its face, its length, how each corner meets its neighbour (a 90° mitre, say) and the length of its core. Edit this wall takes you to that panel in the editor.

3Painted, as cut, exploded

Painted (at the top) shows the model finished - brick, stone, slate, painted joinery. As cut shows it as it comes off the laser: the bare board with its engraved joints, before any paint. It is a good way to see exactly what the laser will engrave.

Drag Explode to the right to pull the building apart: the walls move out from their cores, the roof lifts, and you can see the plates, internal walls, trusses and keys inside. Drag it back to put the building together again.

• Glazing shows or hides the glass and doors in the openings.
• Labels shows or hides the walls' names on the model - untick it for pictures.
• Roof lifts the roof off, to look inside (see the trusses in section 9).

4Scenes and the sun

Here is the same church, from the same place, in each of the four scenes:

Choosing a scene also sets the sun's height to suit it, and Dusk ticks Windows lit for you. You can still change both afterwards.

5Build it step by step

Tick Build it step by step and drag the slider beside it. The model shows only what is in place at that step, and the box says what to do: which wall goes on next, which way round, which strips and corner keys to glue. The last step is Put the roof on.

6The roof

The roof is designed in the Roof part of the left-hand column. Its slopes are cut from roof board with the slate courses engraved, and the 3D roof is drawn from exactly those parts. Crowhurst station has a hipped roof with gutters and downpipes:

The other settings:

• Roof board: the thickness of the board the roof is cut from (1 mm to start with).
• Ridge runs: as the walls say, along the front or along the side.
• Covering: Welsh slate, with engraved courses, or Plain (no courses). For slate, choose the Slates - Countess 20 × 10 in, Duchess 24 × 12 in, Lady 16 × 8 in or Small 14 × 7 in - and the panel shows the course gauge in model millimetres.

7A roof in parts

Many buildings have more than one roof: a nave and an aisle side by side with a valley between, a lower chancel, a lower wing. Build these as a roof in parts - each part a rectangle of the plan with its own type, ridge, pitch and eaves height. (Roofs in parts are for buildings whose corners are all square.)

1. Tick Build the roof in parts 1. One part appears, covering the whole plan, with a small plan above it.
2. Set the part 2: its name, Gabled or Hipped, which way the ridge runs (the longer way, along wall 1 or across wall 1), its pitch and its eaves height - left empty, the roof's own pitch and the walls' height are used. The bottom row is the rectangle, in mm: along wall 1 from its left end, and back from it.
3. If the walls' tops don't follow the new roof, the panel says so. Click Fit the walls to the roof 3: each wall is given a top line along the roof - gables where a part's ends are, steps where the eaves change.

To add another part, click + Add a part and type its rectangle, or use Split along… 1 to cut a part in two along one of your internal walls. Remove a part with its ✕. Where a part's gable end stands above a lower part's roof, that inner gable 3 is listed: it gets a core piece on the carcass sheets, and Make its stone panel adds a panel to face it to your panel list.

Buttercrambe church's roof is in three parts: the Chancel, lower, with its eaves at 52 mm, and the Nave and South aisle side by side at 60 mm, with a valley between them. The nave's gable over the chancel roof is an inner gable, faced by the panel Nave gable over Chancel.

8Stone copings, crosses and a bellcote

Churches, chapels and many stone buildings have their gables coped: the wall stands up past the roof and is capped with stone. Tick Stone copings - on the gables (for gable roofs, not hipped or flat ones):

• Above the roof: how far the coping stands above the slates (1.5 mm to start with).
• Kneelers - at the feet: the projecting stones at the bottom of each coping.
• Crosses on the apexes: Plain (Latin), Celtic (ringed) or Fleury (budded ends), with a Cross height (6 mm to start with).
• Bellcote: choose the gable it stands on. Then one or two Bells, pointed or round openings, topped by a cross or a spirelet, and its size (16 mm wide and 18 mm high to start with).

The copings are cut from the skin board and go on the roof cut sheets; the amber note under the settings says how to fit them - each glued on its gable's face over the roof's end, the caps along its top, each cross cut twice and glued back to back, the bellcote's core and back behind it.

9Bargeboards, gutters and trusses

Bargeboards and finials

For a gable roof, Bargeboards puts a decorated board under each verge: Plain, Scalloped, Gothic (cusped arches), Pierced quatrefoils or Wavy (Swiss chalet). Set the Board depth (4 mm to start with), a Finial at the apex - Spike, Ball or Fleur (three leaves) - and the colour it is Painted.

Each gable's bargeboard is cut whole, as one inverted V, from the roof board: glue it under the verge, its face flush with the roof's edge, then the finial on its face at the apex.

Gutters and downpipes

Gutters - Half-round - runs a gutter along every eaves. Then choose Downpipes: At both ends of each wall, At one end of each wall or None, and the colour they are Painted (black, bottle green, cream or grey). The downpipes come with swan necks at the top, holdfasts up the wall and shoes at the foot.

They are cut from thin card on the roof sheets, with the chimney stacks' courses and pots; the amber note under the roof settings counts them and says where each goes.

Trusses

For an open roof you can see into - a chapel or church interior, a goods shed with the roof off - choose Trusses: Collar, King post or Arch-braced. Set how far apart they stand (Every, 30 mm to start with), how deep the Timbers are, and the colour they are Stained. They are cut from the core board and glued upright across the building, their tops against the roof's underside, so the roof still lifts off over them.

10Front layers at the corners

A front layer (chapter 2) is glued on its wall's brick face, so it stands out from the wall. At a mitred corner, two front layers cut to their walls' width stop short of each other, and a gap shows on the bevel. The 3D window spots this and offers to fix it:

Click Widen the front layers for the corners. Each listed layer is cut wider at the ends that meet another front layer - here 1.0 mm a side - and everything on it is moved along so it stays in place on the wall. Their exports change too. When you build, sand the widened ends to the wall's bevel.

11Pictures and videos

The buttons along the top of the window turn the view into pictures for your shop, your website or your layout's notice board:

Where next

• For courses that follow a gable's slope, and Dutch and crow-stepped gables: Raking courses and shaped gables.
• For stone walls and printing walls in resin: Stone walls and resin printing.
• To cut the walls and the carcass: Cutting it out and The Building and Plan windows.