Skip to main content
Michael Wilson/3 min read

Adding Steel Truss Roof to Building Shell: Step-by-Step Guide

Steel Truss Workflow

1

Place Truss Family

Pick or load steel truss family matching span.

2

Set Spacing

Trusses spaced per structural design — typically 4-8 ft.

3

Connect to Bearing Walls

Truss supports rest on top plate of bearing walls.

4

Add Roof Decking

Floor or roof family on top of trusses for sheathing.

Master Revit at Noble Desktop

Noble Desktop's Revit Certification Course teaches BIM modeling, families, schedules, and the full Revit workflow used by architecture firms.

This lesson is a preview from our Revit Certification Course Online (includes software & exam). Enroll in a course for detailed lessons, live instructor support, and project-based training.

The next thing I want to do here, just so we can kind of close this thing off, is put the roof in the two locations that we've already identified.

The next thing I want to do here, just so we can kind of close this thing off, is put the roof in the two locations that we've already identified. So I'm going to go to my Roof plan here, and we're going to add our roof into these two areas here. And so I'm going to go to my Architecture tab and Roof, and then we'll pick a type here, and we'll go ahead with this Steel Truss Installation on Metal Deck type, and we'll go ahead and draw it around the boundary here.

And this area is going to be a little iffy, so I'll just kind of start from, say, this point here, and then I'll bring it around. And this line, I want to be consistently straight here, so we'll take it all the way down and through. And then this one, we're going to have a skylight here when we get to that point, so we don't have to worry about that location too much.

But I'm going to use my Snap shortcuts, and so this was Snap Perpendicular, which that shortcut is SP, so Snap Perpendicular. And then I'll just run it across the face of the building here, all the way through. And I'm essentially just tracing that Level Two plan at this point.

And same thing, I don't know exactly how that one's going to pan out, but we're going to bring it across through to here. And then the last thing I need to do is check my lines here, and you can see that they all have a 9 and 12 slope assigned, so I'm going to select them all, and I'll uncheck that Defined Slope. The roof is going to be at the base level of Roof here, so I want to make sure that's set correctly.

And then I'll go ahead and finish the sketch, and then we'll remove the portion we don't need for the skylight. Now I'll add this portion of roof in here, using the same process. And then we'll use the Generic 9-Inch Roof, because it'll be a slightly different assembly.

And I'll trace around the inside face of my walls to close it off here. And we'll want to do the same thing where we take out that slope off the roof as well. And if you're having a Snap point, you can always use that S and then whichever Snap you're looking for shortcut as well.

So go ahead and select all the lines here, uncheck Defined Slope, and we'll go ahead and finish the sketch. And we're probably going to have to adjust the height of this a little bit. You can see it's popping up there, and so it's a 9-inch thick roof, and so we'll set that to negative 9 for the Base Offset.

And now we've got the rough cut here of our building shell, and we're almost there. Next step is we're going to add the columns at each one of the Grid Line locations so that we can use that information to help inform where we're going to put our windows.