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Half Storey


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It seems to me that a half height Storey is not something that VW can handle.

Two examples:

- The classic North American Split-Level home. the Lower Level and 2nd floor could be treated as two Storeys but the Main Ground Level can't be a Storey, rather it must be a normal Design Layer set to a bottom Z of 00.

- More problematic is the case of a multi building project, say two office towers, a residential tower and a parking garage. Due to site considerations often all three buildings have a different 00 entry grade, sometimes. How does one manage to use the Storey feature in a situation like this? It's one thing to have separate files for each building, but at some point all buildings likely must be shown in context to one-another. Seems to me one would not be able to Reference each building into a single file. How does one illustrate the connection / transition?

Is there an elegant way of managing this issue from the start or is it a work-around?

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Okay I think I have a working idea of how to best attack this Half Height Issue:

Each Building in the project would have to have its own Storey Element. To use the example of the four buildings as one project, this would mean the following:

ENTRY STOREY (Call this Storey 1)

One Storey with four of each of the Storey Elements required, ie. Four Slabs (eg. Slab Building 1, Slab Building 2,Slab Building 3,Slab Building 4) Four Floors, and Four Ceilings. Each would have to be set based on where the Storey Element is in relation to Zero Zero.

Rinse & repete for each Storey. Ensuring that Objects (Walls, Floors, etc) are assigned to the correct Storey Element. So this also means, for example, each Wall type may have to be not only duplicated per Storey, but per building as well. So a single wall assembly could have minimum of four examples.

So to take advantage of the power of the Storey function, one still would need to do some mental gymnastics. Its starting to sound like VW needs something like a CLASS for Stories so they may be separated. A Storey Set if you will.

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There might be another way that you can do this, if use levels to control the half story height. So you could put the two parts of the split level building in the same story, but use different levels to control the the top and bottom bounding of your walls and objects.

edit...

Sorry, I just read that you using Vectorworks 2014, levels are only available in Vectorworks 2015.

Edited by Jonathan Pickup
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Thanks,

I'm attempting to absorb this without the ability to run 2015 until we have new machines.

If I get the point, one may more or less "override" the Storey constraint by adding a LEVEL. So to take my example I could have a Level for each building's Slab relative to 00 based on where and how the site impacts the Z dim of the Slab?

Let me take my Split Level as a more simple example:

The Basement & 2nd Floor are straight forward, but the Grade or Main floor could have a LEVEL that allows the foundation, slab, floor, ceiling, and roof to be 1250mm above the Basement without messing up either the basement or the 2nd floor. Am I getting the point?

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K,

I'm going to have to play with this to get it. I would need a several Levels to "tell" one Slab in the basement to live -1250mm and another Level to "tell" another Slab at grade to live at 00mm?

or

Do I tell each Slab to be relative to the Storey or the Storey's Level?

There really isn't anything on the Service Select on the subject.

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Jim - There's a current thread in the Wish List forum:

https://techboard.vectorworks.net/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=209615#Post209615

About 5 posts from the start is a link to Wes Gardener's tutorial pdf. Jonathan's materials will also be excellent.

That wish list thread is full of carping (by me and others) about the complexity, tricky nomenclature, and inaccessibility of vwx Story system. But really, Stories is pretty cool and works as advertised. It takes some screen time to get the hang of it.

A definition detail that tripped me up at first: Default levels are those which occur in all stories of a particular vwx file. eg if Level "Ceiling" z=3000mm is a default level, it will appear in the level list of every story. User can opt to enable Ceiling in each Story to be available for binding objects 3000mm above that Story's z=0. VWX has a few "built in" Default Levels ("built in" is not what makes them default) which you can use or ignore or modify, or you can create your own. User can also create non default levels, unique to the Story in which they are created.

I think you could draw the split home as 3 Stories - but the Story control dialog doesn't graphically show the splits overlapping (attached).

or as 2 Stories with a few extra levels and an extra layer in Foundation and Garage Stories to accommodate the mid story items.

I lived in a classic Split long ago. This one was kind of a double split with a full basement under the main floor. Basement footing z value was a half Story below the garage Story. Levels could do this.

-B

ubbthreads.php?ubb=download&Number=12079&filename=SplitStories.png

Edited by Benson Shaw
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Ok, this is actually very simple to accomplish. You just have to see a story as not the complete story with floor and ceiling, but see the story as the whole slab of that story.

And to make it easier, combine floor 1 and floor 1.5 into one story.

Ow, and as a plus, you'll not get into trouble with story levels overlapping...

Here are sections to see what I mean: (They aren't split levels, but you will get the point, you begin with drawing story boundary lines through the middle of each floor.)

ubbthreads.php?ubb=download&Number=12086&filename=VW2013.0 - 04 BOUWLAGEN.png

ubbthreads.php?ubb=download&Number=12087&filename=VW2013.2 - BOUWLAAGONDERDELEN.png

Edited by Dieter @ DWorks
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Thanks Dieter, but I think you are missing the point.

The issue is that one may have essentially several sets of Storeys in one file. The problem is when one changes the Z dimension all Storeys are linked and one must then decouple the set that may not be impacted by such a move.

While the Storey tool has some real potential, I think it needs more road testing.

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Thanks Dieter, but I think you are missing the point.

The issue is that one may have essentially several sets of Storeys in one file. The problem is when one changes the Z dimension all Storeys are linked and one must then decouple the set that may not be impacted by such a move.

While the Storey tool has some real potential, I think it needs more road testing.

You can change a story in z-height without affecting the others...

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