symmetrical bay window

[phil2789]

I am trying to draw a 3-sided bay window that is perfectly symmetrical. There is a 2' wall perpendicular to the main exterior wall before the 3-side bay window starts. I can't get the two 2' walls to be the exact same length, or the two 45 degree walls either. Any tricks on how to accomplish this? I use version X2.

[Curtis Johnson]

Phil:

Are you manually creating the bay window or are you trying to use the CA bay window tool?

[JLaughner]

In x2, use the polygon shape room tool - size sides as required, select 3 of them & point to point move to where you want it

Jack

[Curtis Johnson]

Phil:
I seldom use the bay window tool that CA has and usually build mine manually as I feel I can control things more easily. Until I saw Jack's post, I have never used the "Polygon Shaped Room ..." tool, but, having tried it, it is very fast for the polygon it creates, but when you have to point and paste it into an existing wall and then edit out the parts you don't need, I find I can manually create your bay window condition with about the same speed.

The first attachment is one I created manually; the 2nd shows Jack's idea pasted to the wall before editing; the 3rd shows the polygon method after editing and with one window in place.

With your 2' sides, you will find that your window sizing is very limited (very narrow windows). There is some tweaking within CA you can do to increase the window width, but there are limitations:

1. Change the wall stud thicknes (non-standard- down to 1/16"),
2. Change the rough opening (R.O.) for each side (window spec dbx - I believe 1" ea. side is the default)

It seams to me that the way CA builds wall framing (studs) for angled wall intersections isn't right - it almost looks like they allow enough room for 3 studs on either side of the intersection (2 king studs and 1 trimmer). The 4th image shows my editing of the stud locations in the wall, but after doing that CA would not allow me to resize the window to make it wider. Maybe someone who does a lot of framing work will comment on this and offer a better solution regarding the framing.

There have been threads on the forum about how some CA users have created joined windows for corner conditions (either within CA or with 3D symbols created outside of CA and imported in). If you need to reduce the thickness of the corner columns, you may want to try doing some searches and see what you can find. I believe there is a way to join windows such that the corner condition isn't so thick but I will have to go digging to figure it out.

Your primary question seemed to center around dimensioning of the wall components. I would do this manually and/or with the Polygon Shaped Room tool with manual editing, dimensioning as required by selecting the desired wall segment and clicking on the controlling dimension and changing it as needed.

[phil2789]

I tried the Build > Wall > Polygon Shaped Room tool and it worked perfectly -- very easy and very quick. Best of all, all the walls were exactly the same length, which is what I was trying to accomplish.

Thank you so much for your help.

Phil