Old Multi-story model transfer to "stories"

[stevenaia]

Greetings

Something to ponder over the holiday:

I have a 7 story mixed use building created in 2010 (i.e. no stories)  It was a developed schematic design (all floors modeled, elevations and sections taken and rendered) Many duplicate apartment units which I made into symbols with some strange elevational results but it all held together for what was needed.

7 or 8 years later (now) the project may be coming back to life.  I suspect many changes will ensue including story heights.  I spoke to VW support and they suggested that I not move to stories due to the complexity of transferring the model layer by layer and the complicated setup. 

 I currently use stories for literally everything (even single story additions, even though levels and walls can be cumbersome at times.)  I have found when it works, the results are a real time savings.

Anyone have any experience/thoughts/insights on something like this?

Steve

Steven Glickman Architect
400 Northampton St, Suite 500
Easton, PA 18042

V:         610.253.6536
E: stevenaia@gmail.com
http://www.stevenglickmanarchitect.com

[zoomer]

I had similar and did the conversion and feel better with it now.

But it depends on you and your project if it is really worth

 

I assume you used Layer Heights already.

So it should not be a problem to create Stories and assign them to

your Layers (check heights again). So you can do changes later

in a more parametric way.

I would also assign Styles to Windows and Doors.

I don't know how many Wall Styles you needed to use but it is also a nice

investment to upgrade these to use Story Levels.

 

Like you already had, those apartment prototypes in Symbols will cause

problems with Level heights, because e.g. Walls won't update their heights

in Symbols. Maybe it helps to pack only level independent things in the Symbol

and use an additional group for level dependent things like Walls.

[Guest Wes Gardner]

Hi Steve,

Sounds like you've got the working knowledge/understanding to make the switch! Yes, once you get the floor-to-floors figured, it's really not that difficult to create the required stories - you'll need both foundation and roof stories as well.  You WILL need to convert your walls styles otherwise the components within the wall won't "know" where/what to "look for" and will end up with zero height.  I suggest three layers per story - slab, floor layout and ceiling.  You'll probably need a level (we call it "Ledge" by default") or two that DO NOT have layers associated with them.  What's cool with stories is if you don't quite get it right, when you change the story height, all the walls (and stories above/below) will update to the new heights.

 

Wes

[stevenaia]

Thanks, Wes,

 

I've set up stories and am copying layer by layer into the new document and will be replacing stairs and wall styles and columns with appropriate story-aware objects.  

 

Since many of my apartments are identical, is there any way to make complete apartment units symbols - story aware so if I change the story heights of multiple floors, which I expect I may do, that I won't have to edit the 6 unique apartment symbols on multiple floors?  What's the best workflow to handle this?

 

Steve

 

[Guest Wes Gardner]

Hi Steve,

 

Unfortunately, this is a short-fall at the moment.  It's best to just use Layer Wall Height for the walls within symbols

 

Wes

[techdef]

Has anyone figured this one out yet? Kind of a big bummer to hear... by which I mean the ability to replicate an apartment across multiple stories

Edited September 20, 2018 by techdef

[stevenaia]

The project is progressing, sort of,  but fewer redundant apartment designs, just using layer wall heights with Stories at this point as mentioned above.  I may need to remove a story for zoning but that shouldn't be a problem. But here's a camera march rendering at fairly low rez, and an .mov file (43 MB, so be patient) (If you VW moderators can figure out how to remove those redundant (ghost) animations, I'd appreciate it)

 

Edited September 20, 2018 by stevenaia

[techdef]

Looking good! Will try out layer wall heights on my model. Thx