Non horizontal/vertical reference planes

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One of the biggest recent improvements in VW is that we now have a fairly good reference grid system, thanks to the Grid Line tool (effectively creating vertical reference planes) and  the elevation benchmark tool (effectively creating horizontal reference planes).

 

The ability to set these up, know that they will stay in the right place and be independent of changes to the geometry of the model, and have them appear in the right place in viewports makes working in 3d feel a lot more secure and manageable, and allows various double-checking procedures to make sure things are where they are supposed to be.

 

I think it would be useful to have the facility to have reference planes that were neither horizontal or vertical. I'd be interested to see if anyone else would find this useful. Or maybe it is really a fringe request.

 

An example of when I might use it:

 

Sometimes I do works to existing buildings parts of which effectively get rebuilt, but need to be reinstated where they were. That might include pitched roofs. I might need to ensure that the outer surface of a pitched roof ends up where it was before even though the underlying construction has changed entirely. In this case, when preparing setting out drawings, the plane of the pre-existing roof surface is what various things need to be set out relative to. In this case it would be very useful to embed that pre-existing plane in the model as a reference. Just like I might do with an elevation benchmark set to an existing finished floor level, or a gridline set to the face of an existing wall, I could show an indication of this same plane in "existing" and "as proposed" viewports and double check that when I place things like new rafters, I have actually go them in the right place relative to what's important.

 

I think they could also be useful in keeping a handle on the geometry of things like new-build roofs too.

 

Obviously there would be a few things to think about, like whether they could appear on any section that intersected them, or only in views parallel with the plane and so on. But in principle they'd be very similar to gridlines and elevation benchmarks.

 

 

[Tom W.]

Perhaps I'm doing something wrong but I'm not finding Elevation Benchmarks that useful when placed on the design layer. Do I need to be using Stories to be getting the benefit? They don't show up in Section VPs as far as I can tell (only standard VPs) + you need to be looking straight at them to see them: if you want multiple elevations around the exterior of the building you'd need to place EBMs all around the model in order for them to be present in all of the views...?

 

I only say this as I am not finding they are the horizontal equivalent of the Grid Line Tool (which in contrast works perfectly across design layers + sheet layers). 

 

In VP annotations EBMs are great however.

 

 

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1 minute ago, Tom W. said:

Perhaps I'm doing something wrong but I'm not finding Elevation Benchmarks that useful when placed on the design layer. Do I need to be using Stories to be getting the benefit? They don't show up in Section VPs as far as I can tell (only standard VPs) + you need to be looking straight at them to see them: if you want multiple elevations around the exterior of the building you'd need to place EBMs all around the model in order for them to be present in all of the views...?

 

I only say this as I am not finding they are the horizontal equivalent of the Grid Line Tool (which in contrast works perfectly across design layers + sheet layers). 

 

In VP annotations EBMs are great however.

 

 

 

I use stories (sort of) yes.

 

Actually I just create one storey and put everything in it. That allows me to create storey levels and then my elevation benchmarks are tied to those. In each elevation or section viewport I can then choose which benchmarks to display. They appear in the annotations space but reliably at the right levels.

[Tom W.]

Ok thanks for confirming. I was thinking that must be the case as in a layer-bound set-up they are pretty dumb. This might motivate me to have a go with Stories as that sounds like really useful functionality...

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11 minutes ago, Tom W. said:

Ok thanks for confirming. I was thinking that must be the case as in a layer-bound set-up they are pretty dumb. This might motivate me to have a go with Stories as that sounds like really useful functionality...

 

A bit more on my single-storey approach in a thread here

 

That was before I started using EBs though. The EB functionality is kind what has swung it for me now, so that I feel it's worth having that storey level setup (the usefulness of which I felt was otherwise a bit limited).