Truss geometry follows ANSI/TPI 1 and SBCA practice: members are cut to butt at a joint and a toothed connector plate is pressed into BOTH faces. Web pattern is chosen by top-chord length (king post, Fink W, double Fink WW), not a span lookup table. Gable trusses inset against the inside faces of the end wall posts. Hip roofs get a step-down set with flat-top trusses and a king common at each end.
Also called: truss · king post · fink · double fink · gang nail plates · step down hip set
- 1Top chords are plumb-cut profiles that seat on the bottom chord at the heel and butt at a vertical peak.
- 2Webs stop short of every chord by a declared joint gap and are clipped to the chord half-planes, because the plate is the connection.
- 3A galvanized gang-nail plate is drawn on both faces at each joint and counted in the BOM as a TrussPlate.
- 4describeTrusses() reports the set in trade terms: gable + common counts, web family, or for a hip 'commons + step-downs + king common - no gable ends'.
- 5The BOM line carries the SmartBuild-convention spec string C{span}P{pitch} plus the o.c. spacing.
- 6Inspect names any chord or web as part of one plated truss - 'not a 14ft yard stick'.
Gable trusses sat in the same plane as the posts beneath them, so chord faces and post faces were exactly coplanar and the gable posts rendered as flickering zigzags. Costlier than the flicker: a truss is a purchased assembly, and listing its chords and webs as lumber orders that timber twice — once inside the truss and once as loose sticks. Trusses are modelled and priced as units, and the material list states outright that shop-cut chords and webs are not on it.
- Modelling trusses as loose lumber and ordering them twice.
- No orderable description of the truss set for a truss plant.
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