Create Valley Trusses

Video Transcript:

Welcome! In this video, we’ll walk you through how to add valley trusses to your layout using two different methods. We’ll start by placing trusses over the garage and rear porch, then finish up with the front porch. By the end, you'll have a clear understanding of how to place valley trusses accurately and efficiently across your design. Pan over and zoom into the garage area and we will get started. With the garage we will use the first method to add the valley trusses.

So here, we are going to select the truss that is closest to the house wall. Let's right click on it and, then select start run. We will use 2 feet as our spacing distance. Then we will drag up to put in a single truss. And as you can see here, the truss is bound by the perpendicular trusses. Our next step is to add a cut for the roof plane. So, from the properties panel scroll down until you see Additional Cuts. Here, we will click, Add cut, from the Bottom Cuts option. This cut will be defined by clicking to select the front plane of the house.

And then from here we will need to recalculate. So, right click on the truss and select recalculate. As we can see the Valley truss extends out to the valley lines.

A side note, If your designs call for sheathing thickness there is a roof plane setting that can be adjusted. Then that Valley truss will be cut back.

Next let's create the remainder of the valley trusses. We will right click on the truss we just adjusted. Then, click on Start Run, drag your cursor up to add these trusses.  We will skip that last one because it's going to end up being too short. Then click to place these trusses.

Let's see what that looks like in 3D view. If we spin the model around, you will see we've added the valley trusses here above the garage. Go back over to our layout.

For the porches we will use a different method to add our valley trusses.

So, pan over and zoom into the rear of the house. Here we are going to essentially follow the same process, but a little less back and forth. Right click on the truss that sits next to the outside wall of the house. Then select Start run. We will again use 2 feet as our spacing. Drag down to place the trusses, we will not add the last one here as well, as it will be too small. Click to place these valley trusses. While the trusses are still selected, let’s go over to the properties panel, here we are going to add a new bottom cut from the additional cuts area.

For this cut, we will select the roof plane on the rear of the house to cut the trusses back to. We then need to right click and recalculate the cuts for these trusses.

Let's see how this rear porch looks. Click the 3D camera icon and then we can spin this model around to see that our trusses have been added to the rear porch. This all looks good as well.

Next, let's pan over to the front porch of the house and add the valley trusses here. We will follow the same steps as we did in adding the rear porch.

Right click on the truss sitting on the edge of the bearing. Then select Start Run, drag your cursor up, here, we will also eliminate that last truss, as it is too small. Then we will click to place these valley trusses.

Once again, from the properties panel we need to add a new bottom cut. We will use the front plane of the house to Define our bottom cut, so click to select this plane.

And finally, we will need to right click on the truss, and select recalculate. There we are, the trusses extend out to the valley on each side.

Let's go over to our model and check out our final work in the 3D view. These all look great, here we see the front porch, the garage, and the rear of the house.

Whichever workflow fits best into your project; we hope this video gave you the tools and confidence to add valley trusses smoothly to your layout.

Thanks for watching!