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Multi-storey building all in one storey - would this work?


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Spending this afternoon trying to get my head around storeys. As usual, VW builds the UI to make things as confusing as possible. Anyway, that complaint has been covered elsewhere.

 

Most projects I work on have a maximum of 3 or 4 floors. I don't really need the automation to change something on 100 floor levels at once, that sort of thing. So at first sight storeys might not be for me (and that's the approach I've taken so far).

 

However - it seems to me that the potentially most useful aspect of 'storeys' is the use of 'levels'.

 

I'd quite like to be able to define or place objects relative to a set of defined levels.

 

But say I am placing a wall or some other thing at the 2nd storey. For sure, I will mostly want to define heights relative to that storey's finished floor level, or ceiling level, or whatever. But sometimes I might want to define them relative to a building-wide datum. So, for whatever reason, I want to make a height relative to the ground floor finished floor level, or the roof ridge, or something. As far as I understand, I can't do that with storey levels. Is that right? I can only place relative to levels on that storey, or the storey above or below it?

 

And it's not possible to have a "storey-less" level. Is that also right?

 

This made me think, would it work to just have one, overall storey? It would contain all the design layers, and I would set up all the levels I wanted as "default story levels". So I'd have one named FFL-1st, one named FFL-2nd, and so on. And then any element in any layer could relate to any of these levels.

 

This would let me give all design layers an elevation of zero. I do this sometimes already, because it means I can paste-in-place objects between layers without them jumping according to the layer elevations (a frequent frustration for me because I usually have quite a lot of directly-modelled objects). Then I would be able to set wall tops and bottoms relative to my levels, rather than working out relative to the project zero.

 

Has anyone tried something like this? Is there something that will mean it will be a disaster? I might give it a go anyway.

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Correct, all levels are offset from their relative storey. Levels relative to ground are not possible except if you hack it as described. Levels relative to ground could be a nice feature request though.

 

I'd be interested to hear how your experiment goes. What you'd be missing of course is levels relative to floor levels. For me these are the big advantage of Stories. They're really great when it comes to making changes to floor to floor heights halfway through a design. Or making changes to parapet heights, say. With storey levels these things can be coordinated consistently with ease. 

Edited by Christiaan
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1 hour ago, line-weight said:

And it's not possible to have a "storey-less" level. Is that also right?

 

Sure,

but that is basically just like oldschool Layer Heights usage.

Beside that with Stories, and Layers bound to Stories have the

only advantage, if a middle Story gets a height change,

you can control/automate how neighbored Stories will react.

Like Move away vs adapting their height.

 

1 hour ago, line-weight said:

But say I am placing a wall or some other thing at the 2nd storey. (on an other height than usually ?)

 

 

Not sure if I really got the problem

Most times I would duplicate the Wall Style and assign another Level

to top or bottom.

Or, you could use a Level specific for controlling Walls only, which

you can (tediously, as I always rant) adapt/change for that special

Story.

Or you can just overwrite that special Story's Wall

(at least since VW has the option of keeping modified heights when

replacing or updating Styles)

 

There are many possibilities, you jaust have to carefully organize

everything for your special project's needs.

Just like when organizing nesting Symbols and/or sorting/separating

geometry by Layers and Classes.

(And however you decide, the client will bring changes in a way that

they contradict to your special organization for change flexibility)

 

 

1 hour ago, line-weight said:

This would let me give all design layers an elevation of zero. I do this sometimes already, because it means I can paste-in-place objects between layers without them jumping according to the layer elevations (a frequent frustration for me because I usually have quite a lot of directly-modelled objects). Then I would be able to set wall tops and bottoms relative to my levels, rather than working out relative to the project zero.

 

As said in the other thread,

all geometry from collaborations sits on Layers at Z=0.00 or file origin.

 

The problem is that in VW Top Plan View, you always draw on Layer height.

Z=0 in that case.

And to draw for other "Stories" you would need to either always draw in 3D

with Auto Plane access or draw and manually adapt Z in OIP later manually.

 

 

So my conclusion is,

either use

- zero Layer Heights overall

- oldschool Layer Heights + Layer Wall Heights

- Styles+Stories+Levels

 

If you use a Story System,

better use it completely.

 

 

1 hour ago, line-weight said:

I wanted as "default story levels". So I'd have one named FFL-1st, one named FFL-2nd, and so on.

 

Levels belong to Stories.

They will only be accessible for Layers that belong to a Story.

So you would need at least a single Story Container for your Levels

but as you proposed, you would need Level duplicates for each virtual

"Story", which

a) wouldn't be that fun to work with by scrolling in an endless Level Dropdown

and

b) you would need Wall Style duplicates for each virtual "Story" to assign

the correct related Levels.

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1 hour ago, Christiaan said:

Correct, all levels are offset from their relative storey. Levels relative to ground are not possible except if you hack it as described. Levels relative to ground could be a nice feature request though.

 

I'd be interested to hear how your experiment goes. What you'd be missing of course is levels relative to floor levels. For me these is big advantage of Stories. They're really great when it comes to making changes to floor to floor heights hallway through a design. Or making changes to parapet heights, say. With storey levels these things can be coordinated consistently with ease. 

 

Yes, I can see that (in my system) if I change a floor level, then any walls or slabs that I've got hooked relative to that floor level will move with it, but other things (furniture, doors&windows(?) ) won't, whereas they would if I changed the layer height or if the layer height were changed along with the storey.

 

This is not really an issue for most stuff I do which tends to involve existing buildings and therefore storey heights mostly are what they are.

 

In fact for me when it is most useful to shuffle floor levels about is when I am drawing up from a survey and need to shift things around until they are right. For this process, I mainly get things like floor levels and wall locations right first and then they don't change, after which I add further detail.

 

It's annoying that doors and windows can't be hooked to 'levels' (or am I missing something?) because surely this would be useful with either approach.

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36 minutes ago, zoomer said:

Not sure if I really got the problem

 

 

 

I suppose I am thinking of a scenario where eg. I am drawing up from a survey, and I have some element at 2nd floor level that I want to place offset from, say, some datum lower down like ground floor FFL, or DPC level, or window sill level or something, because that's where I took the measurement from when I did the survey. Maybe when I was measuring in a stairwell for example, or on the outside of the building.

 

But thinking about it, maybe this is a fairly rare use case, and relating it in that way is not actually useful in the longer lifespan of the drawing.

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42 minutes ago, zoomer said:

Levels belong to Stories.

They will only be accessible for Layers that belong to a Story.

So you would need at least a single Story Container for your Levels

but as you proposed, you would need Level duplicates for each virtual

"Story", which

a) wouldn't be that fun to work with by scrolling in an endless Level Dropdown

and

b) you would need Wall Style duplicates for each virtual "Story" to assign

the correct related Levels.

 

Yes... well here is the very basic setup I have made so far on the drawing I'm trying this out on.

 

1234125054_Screenshot2021-05-24at19_42_30.thumb.jpg.a1df4cdfcee4c29a0e737328e636bb67.jpg453898272_Screenshot2021-05-24at19_43_32.thumb.jpg.23c7efdaf79b7e7774b3190dcd75eb34.jpg

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9 minutes ago, line-weight said:

It's annoying that doors and windows can't be hooked to 'levels'

 

That is a problem.

I know that it already works in at least the German localization.

(We may get it a few Story System "iterations" later ....)

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5 minutes ago, line-weight said:

But thinking about it, maybe this is a fairly rare use case, and relating it in that way is not actually useful in the longer lifespan of the drawing.

 

I agree, in your case going just Layer Heights and Layer Wall heights

or even everything custom by custom heights may be more suitable.

 

I usually have to deal with 5-7 Story Buildings in preliminary design

phase with potential changes in any direction.

I can profit from the parametric and it is worth the setup work.

 

Just so pity that changing of Levels is so neglected.

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I'm also realising that because 'levels' can only really be used by a few object types, they are not as useful as I was imagining they'd be.

 

I'd like to be able to (for example) extrude a rectangle to create a solid, and then send it to sit relative to a certain level.

 

Another question, which I've not investigated... if I do set up levels, can I then use them automagically in sheet layer viewport annotation to quickly and accurately show significant levels like FFL and so on? Because that would save some time and help with drawing coordination.

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19 minutes ago, line-weight said:

I'd like to be able to (for example) extrude a rectangle to create a solid, and then send it to sit relative to a certain level.

 

me too 🙂

 

 

19 minutes ago, line-weight said:

Another question, which I've not investigated... if I do set up levels, can I then use them automagically in sheet layer viewport annotation to quickly and accurately show significant levels like FFL and so on? Because that would save some time and help with drawing coordination.

 

That is a wish I see all the time on the German forum.

 

 

21 minutes ago, line-weight said:

I'm also realising that because 'levels' can only really be used by a few object types, they are not as useful as I was imagining they'd be.

 

I had a project to model from PDF plan scans, no sections or height dimensioning.

Really complex by lots of jumping floor levels and multiple flight Stairs in between.

 

So I set lots of Levels for each Floor Level and Stair Landings,

have manually overwritten the related Wall Styles.

I had Styles of Walls, Stairs, Columns, Slabs, ... bound to Levels

 

Sometimes I misread the number or direction of Stairs from the PDFs.

with my parametric Story Level System I was able to push one Tread from one

Stair Flight to the other and all related Walls + Slabs + Landings followed

automagically.

That was fun.

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AFAIK not posible.

 

I think they have a different tool for "vertical or Z dimensioning" (Höhenkoten here)

in Sections but even there it does not work automated so far.

 

I don't used/needed it so far but AFAIK

it works like, set first mark, assign delta from Z=0 and spread further marks.

When you change your Stories/Levels, go back into Annotation Space of VP

and adapt to changes manually.

(Maybe error prone)

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Yes, a big advantage of it happening automatically is not just time saving but makes it much easier to spot errors - if you know the level is always correct and can't be moved accidentally then you can easily see when things are not in the right place (same with vertical grid lines).

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2 hours ago, line-weight said:

One annoyance already noted: it doesn't seem possible to re-name 'levels', as far as I see. So whatever name I choose for it, I am stuck with for good, unless I want to make a new one, and then manually re-associate all walls etc with that one.

 

Yeah, I hate that it was even released like this. I've spent a lot of time reorganising some files because of this. 

 

I thought I had a wishlist item for this but I can't track it down.

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2 hours ago, Christiaan said:

 

Yeah, I hate that it was even released like this. I've spent a lot of time reorganising some files because of this. 

 

I thought I had a wishlist item for this but I can't track it down.

 

It feels a bit like it doesn't really want you to make your own level types at all. But the first thing I wanted to do was get rid of all the default names and use ones that were meaningful/relevant to me. Normally VW is quite good for this kind of customisability.

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A small problem I am finding:

 

1314940327_Screenshot2021-05-26at10_22_28.thumb.jpg.656a99cc51cb09eaefa298d46128e0bb.jpg

 

That line should not be there. It's between two wall objects. They are on different design layers, but the bottom of the upper wall is bounded to the same level as the top of the lower wall.

 

2142565984_Screenshot2021-05-26at10_22_45.thumb.jpg.77a1f2558e34f963e234d262e6425436.jpg

 

If I manually grab the bottom of the upper wall, so I can resize it up and down, and then snap it to the top of the lower wall, the line disappears, as it should.

 

2000786365_Screenshot2021-05-26at10_23_29.thumb.jpg.92c836a09725c8460805148db9a39121.jpg

 

In the OIP, both objects are still shown as bounded to the level, with an offset of zero. So as far as the OIP is concerned nothing has changed, but the line has now disappeared. This doesn't seem to happen in all instances (for example it hasn't happened around the corner you can see in the screenshot), just some places.

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I get this a lot, using layer bound set-up rather than level-bound. Not sure why it happens sometimes + not others. But setting the walls in render tab to 'Use World Z for Origin' usually sorts it. Sometimes it occurs despite 'Use World Z for Origin' being set + I have to do the reverse - uncheck 'Use World Z...' - to remove the line...

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Usually the main reason for such unwanted lines between Walls is just

that the Walls aren't properly aligned in XY, slightly different length, ...

 

I haven't noticed such unwanted lines so far, although I use Level bound

Styles only. Will have to look closer ....

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39 minutes ago, Tom W. said:

I get this a lot, using layer bound set-up rather than level-bound. Not sure why it happens sometimes + not others. But setting the walls in render tab to 'Use World Z for Origin' usually sorts it. Sometimes it occurs despite 'Use World Z for Origin' being set + I have to do the reverse - uncheck 'Use World Z...' - to remove the line...

That's a setting I've never looked at or used before. But it seems to be greyed out for my wall objects anyway?

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13 minutes ago, zoomer said:

Usually the main reason for such unwanted lines between Walls is just

that the Walls aren't properly aligned in XY, slightly different length, ...

 

I haven't noticed such unwanted lines so far, although I use Level bound

Styles only. Will have to look closer ....

Fairly sure it's not an XY issue in this case because it's sorted by only adjusting the Z height.

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15 minutes ago, line-weight said:

That's a setting I've never looked at or used before. But it seems to be greyed out for my wall objects anyway?

I think the render mode needs to be by component rather than by object.

This setting is normally used to get textures to run continuously between walls on different floors - horizontal textures like bricks or horizontal cladding - rather than stopping + starting again. But seems to remove the unwanted lines as well...

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