Support

One person answers these. Replies take a day or two, and every one gets read.

If a figure looks wrong

This is the one to send, and it is worth sending. Please include:

• The span, plate length and pitch you entered, and the roof type.
• The timber sections, the overhang and the rafter centres.
• The figure you expected and where it came from: a book, a table, a square, or a roof you have already cut.
• The conventions line off the schedule. It is printed on every sheet, and it decides several of the numbers.

That last one matters more than it looks. Most figures that disagree turn out to be two people measuring from different places rather than an error, and the conventions line says which place the app used.

The quickest way to send all of it is to export the cut schedule as a PDF and attach it, since everything above is on the sheet.

Common things

The lengths do not match my ready reckoner

Check the conventions first. Whether the run stops at the half span or half a ridge thickness short of it moves every common rafter, and both are real practice. The schedule says which it used.

The bevel is not the angle I expected

An angle and its complement are both correct answers, measured from lines ninety degrees apart. CutRoof states bevels against the edge of the timber, the way the reckoner tables do, and prints that on the sheet. There is a setting to state them from the square cut instead.

My jack ladder starts at jack 2

That is deliberate. If the layout puts a position hard against the corner, the hip-face deduction can consume the whole rafter and there is no member there to cut. The survivors keep their original numbers, because renumbering them would hide something true about the layout.

The app will not accept my dimensions

The app refuses inputs it cannot compute honestly rather than returning a number it does not believe. The message says which figure is out of range and why.

Requests

Valleys, T-plan and L-plan roofs, unequal pitches, purlins and a timber order list are all understood as gaps. Saying which one you need most genuinely changes the order they arrive in.