3d symbol with multiple layers?

[Brian H]

Is it possible to create a 3d symbol with multiple layers? I want to take a 5 story model and create a symbol that I can place/reference into a site plan. I have 6-8 buildings that I want to do this for and don't want to WGR all of these 60+ layers if possible. I tried to make a layer link of the the 5 floors but it would not allow me to create a symbol from this. If a symbol is not possible what might be the best method of achieving this?

Thank you-

Brian Hores

VW12.5

[michaelk]

If you create a symbol from geometry in multiple layers, all the geometry gets sucked into the symbol, which is placed on the active layer. Original layer assignment of each object is lost.

Not sure if you are trying to control floor visibility on the site plan...

Option 1...

If you are trying to just put a building on a site, and don't need to control layer/floor views, then that should work. But you'll want to create the symbol from a duplicate of the building geometry, to keep very bad things from happening. Depending on how you use Layer Z values, it might collapse everything down to the first floor. See Option B

Option B...

If you need to control floor visibility (or if all you floors fell down when they lost layer information), you might try nesting symbols. Make a symbol for each layer of each building. Create a Class for floors 1 through 5 and assign each symbol to the class. Don't assign the objects inside the symbol to that class. Just the symbol. Then make a symbol for each building that is composed of all the floor symbols. Now you can insert the building symbol and turn floors on and off by class.

There may be some fudging around w/ z heights of symbols, depending on how you use layer Z values.

Not sure if you wanted to, but you could still reference the symbols from other documents if needed.

Probably not a perfect solution (I bet it leaves a line at every floor break), but it should work.

hth

michaelk

[James Russell]

If you have a copy of VW 2008 or later you might be able to use the model box feature to create a model box of each of your buildings and use this in your overall plan.

Just another suggestion.

J