AEC>Floor command dimension to top of floor

[reem]

Architectural drawings dimension to the top of a floor or slab / never to the bottom. Make the Floor command uder the AEC menu, and the Object info pallete for Floors display the delta Z height at the top of the floor.

The way it's set up now, I have to subtract the slab / floor depth every time I set a floor. It's a waste of time and brain power.

And if you change the slab thickness for some reason everything has to be adjusted, like wall and window heights, all your layer heights too.

Say for example, in Schematic Design you worked with a 6" slab, and then later the Structural Engineering calc's tell you the slab needs to be 8" of concrete. Building it into the program so that you can do this seemlessly makes sense.

Set it up so it's more intuitive, based on how architects draw and design the building; not an arbitrary number that must be calculated each time.

[mike m oz]

I agree - the program should work the way we the users think, and as 'reem' says floors are usually set by their top surface.

Model Setup does it correctly - so for the sake of consistancy the Floor command should do it this way as well.

[islandmon]

There are two different surface elevations to consider. The raw slab or deck and the finished floor. These elevations are critical and require a well thought out approach. Structural walls are always configured on the raw slab or deck whereas the doors & windows in the walls are configured according to the finished floor elevation.

[Travis]

I generally do the floor components (joisting/slab, subfloor, finish floor) on one layer and the walls on the layer "above". This way windows are always set to sill height above finish floor. Any changes to the floor's component thickness(es) are taken care of in the floor layer with the layer's (or often layers') Z-height adjusted if necessary.

Using this approach, I find the current floor protocol to be "natural" and intuitive. The slab/joisting/framing is represented by one Floor object that is x-thick (Start=0, thickness=x), the subfloor is represented by another Floor object that starts at "x" with thickness "y", and so forth.

Just another way to look at it.

[ 03-25-2005, 10:19 AM: Message edited by: Travis ]