topic Re: Structural Plans and Wall Visibility in Modeling

Structural Plans and Wall Visibility

Anonymous — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 23:46:17 GMT

Hello Archibots,
What is the best way to setup structural framing plans? I want to do floor framing plans with the floor below shown dashed. This works fine while drafting and using the ghost story shown below but getting it to plot right is another matter.
Right now I'm using RCP plan for showing walls on the current story and coping the walls up from below and changing the cut wall line type to dashed. is there a better way?

Thanks

Re: Structural Plans and Wall Visibility

Karl Ottenstein — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 00:10:26 GMT

info.kaldis wrote:
Hello Archibots,
What is the best way to setup structural framing plans? I want to do floor framing plans with the floor below shown dashed. This works fine while drafting and using the ghost story shown below but getting it to plot right is another matter.
Right now I'm using RCP plan for showing walls on the current story and coping the walls up from below and changing the cut wall line type to dashed. is there a better way?

Yes, better way there is.

Copy things not, for therein the deep peril of error lies.

On your layout your drawings stack: one view for your 'walls below' and another for your framing.

Your 'walls below' view with RCP settings you define, but also on top a striped diagonal fill with a heavy white pen you place (on top). This dashed the lines makes.

Completely live drawings this will give you.

Archibot

PS My Archibot responded pretty well, but I'm back from a break and just to correct him - a single striped fill (that I put on a layer called Ghost Masking Layer or somesuch thing) works if your walls are all rectilinear and orthogonal to the screen. If you have angled walls, you'll need multiple fills at different rotation angles to accomplish the solid-to-dash fake-out. There are also games you can play with the floor plan cut plane (FPCP), but they require that you do not use 'symbolic' for your wall representation. The method given here works in all versions of ArchiCAD. --Karl

Re: Structural Plans and Wall Visibility

Anonymous — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 00:44:21 GMT

Nice, thanks. I will play around with that.

PS, How is the weather in Montana right about now?

Re: Structural Plans and Wall Visibility

Karl Ottenstein — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 02:51:01 GMT

info.kaldis wrote:
Nice, thanks. I will play around with that.

PS, How is the weather in Montana right about now?

You're welcome. Weather's beautiful, but a bit more snow would help. 😉

Re: Structural Plans and Wall Visibility

Anonymous — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 17:53:28 GMT

Karl wrote:
On your layout your drawings stack: one view for your 'walls below' and another for your framing.

Why stack the views? Is there an advantage over creating a single RCP view with a structural plan layer set to display framing?

Re: Structural Plans and Wall Visibility

__archiben — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 21:32:34 GMT

Chris wrote:
Why stack the views? Is there an advantage over creating a single RCP view with a structural plan layer set to display framing?

in theory you can try and cobble something together with all sorts of complicated cutplane levels and offsets - but it's quicker (and easier to maintain) to overlay a couple of simpler views on a layout . . . (small steps )

and the guy wanted the walls from the floor below - those wall layers would then be washed out by the current floor walls as well, no? to get around that you would need all sorts of different wall layers and again it starts to get far more complicated than it should.

~/archiben

Re: Structural Plans and Wall Visibility

Anonymous — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 03:28:07 GMT

~/archiben wrote:
Chris wrote:
Why stack the views? Is there an advantage over creating a single RCP view with a structural plan layer set to display framing?
in theory you can try and cobble something together with all sorts of complicated cutplane levels and offsets - but it's quicker (and easier to maintain) to overlay a couple of simpler views on a layout . . . (small steps )

and the guy wanted the walls from the floor below - those wall layers would then be washed out by the current floor walls as well, no? to get around that you would need all sorts of different wall layers and again it starts to get far more complicated than it should.

~/archiben

I'm probably missing something but if you want a framing plan, say a second floor framing plan, wouldn't you just create a first floor plan view set to Reflected ceiling plan and then add the structural elements there? Or is it that you would want the structural elements to be visible on the Second floor plan?

I'm thinking of this as more of an annotation issue rather than modeling.

Re: Structural Plans and Wall Visibility

Link — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 04:12:36 GMT

No, in AC plans don't look upwards. So an RCP still looks downwards, but we use model view option and layer combinations to filter elements. Still the plan itself looks down.

So we stack two plans on top of each other on the layout. The one on the bottom is usually the walls from below and the one on top is the structual plan above.

Cheers,
Link.

Re: Structural Plans and Wall Visibility

Anonymous — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 19:36:14 GMT

Link

I think Chris is saying "view the floor below (in RCP mode) and show the floor framing overlaid on it" still looking down, as your framing sits on the walls below. That's the way we do it here, seems to work o.k. for us.

And Karl, since when was Yoda an autobot?

Re: Structural Plans and Wall Visibility

Karl Ottenstein — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 20:12:49 GMT

And... the original question included:

info.kaldis wrote:
I want to do floor framing plans with the floor below shown dashed.

Tricks with fills are the only way to get elements to appear with solid lines in one view and dashed in another...and getting the stacking order right when beams, etc and lots more are involved is next to impossible. As Ben said, simple views and small steps... 😉

Karl

Re: Structural Plans and Wall Visibility

Karl Ottenstein — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 20:14:32 GMT

s2art wrote:
And Karl, since when was Yoda an autobot?

He's my archibot. How do you think I figure all of this stuff out? 😉

K

Re: Structural Plans and Wall Visibility

Link — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 21:15:31 GMT

s2art wrote:
Link

I think Chris is saying "view the floor below (in RCP mode) and show the floor framing overlaid on it" still looking down, as your framing sits on the walls below. That's the way we do it here, seems to work o.k. for us.

By RCP mode are you referring to setting the Story Viewpont Type to Ceiling Plan in the Model View Options, to change the appearance of your GDL Objects?

Cheers,
Link.

Re: Structural Plans and Wall Visibility

Anonymous — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 22:09:48 GMT

Link wrote:
s2art wrote:
Link

I think Chris is saying "view the floor below (in RCP mode) and show the floor framing overlaid on it" still looking down, as your framing sits on the walls below. That's the way we do it here, seems to work o.k. for us.
By RCP mode are you referring to setting the Story Viewpont Type to Ceiling Plan in the Model View Options, to change the appearance of your GDL Objects?

Cheers,
Link.

Yes, MVO's but not necessarily relating to GDL objects, just to show walls as continuous over openings "Show opening only, with contours"

Re: Structural Plans and Wall Visibility

Link — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 22:15:54 GMT

s2art wrote:
Yes, MVO's but not necessarily relating to GDL objects, just to show walls as continuous over openings "Show opening only, with contours"

Oh right. Well that's what I do too.

I just read his post as that he expected the RCP to look up and see the floor framing above.

Nevertheless, I think it's clear now!

Cheers,
Link.

Re: Structural Plans and Wall Visibility

Anonymous — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 19:07:48 GMT

s2art wrote:
Link

I think Chris is saying "view the floor below (in RCP mode) and show the floor framing overlaid on it" still looking down, as your framing sits on the walls below. ......

exactly!!

Re: Structural Plans and Wall Visibility

Jefferson — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 16:16:07 GMT

If I understand info. correctly he's asking for something I have been doing for quite a while..........ghosting separate floors, above and below, in my layout. My Archibot finally gave in and built it into my template for for me and it works wonderfully. It doesn't really take long to set up and tweaking is easy. Well worth the time. Now this is all in ver. 10, in 11, you should be able to do this straight away, or was that the one thing Graphisoft couldn't understand and give in on? I can't recall anything except screaming during the demo "How can you give us ghost stories and not let us print them!!", but I digress........

If you can print in color it gets much more manageable. Gray scale can sometimes just add to confusion instead of alleviating it. In the attached screen shot you'll see I include a "pen legend". [This does require you to set up different pen sets in your layout options but once done it pays off triple with clearly defined ghost stories.] Also you can see the "stack of stories in my second floor framing demo. With color you can show more than one relative story at a time, should you want-need to, just taking care to set display prefs for visibality. This helps with the builder but become an invaulable benifit with my engineer!

Re: Structural Plans and Wall Visibility

Anonymous — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 17:26:19 GMT

Jefferson wrote:
..........ghosting separate floors, above and below......

It is a very nice approach but I do not understand why the following single approach is not taken:
1. All framing members of the 2nd floor to be placed in 1st story (on structural layers)
2. RCP view be set
3. A desired pen set for supporting walls to be set up once (thin lines/Gray Scale/Color...)
4. Element (walls columns/Objects) from story (or stories) above to be shown on this plan, to be set in Settings window of appropriate elements.

Am I missing your point?
Thanks,
Joseph

Re: Structural Plans and Wall Visibility

Anonymous — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 18:30:49 GMT

Joseph wrote:
Jefferson wrote:
..........ghosting separate floors, above and below......
It is a very nice approach but I do not understand why the following single approach is not taken:
1. All framing members of the 2nd floor to be placed in 1st story (on structural layers)
2. RCP view be set
3. A desired pen set for supporting walls to be set up once (thin lines/Gray Scale/Color...)
4. Element (walls columns/Objects) from story (or stories) above to be shown on this plan, to be set in Settings window of appropriate elements.

Am I missing your point?
Thanks,
Joseph

That's the approach I take as well, but for step #4 - wouldn't that mean that those upper level elements would then show up on all other plans in addition to the framing plans?

Re: Structural Plans and Wall Visibility

Anonymous — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 20:12:20 GMT

Chris wrote:
Joseph wrote:
Jefferson wrote:
..........ghosting separate floors, above and below......
It is a very nice approach but I do not understand why the following single approach is not taken:
1. All framing members of the 2nd floor to be placed in 1st story (on structural layers)
2. RCP view be set
3. A desired pen set for supporting walls to be set up once (thin lines/Gray Scale/Color...)
4. Element (walls columns/Objects) from story (or stories) above to be shown on this plan, to be set in Settings window of appropriate elements.

Am I missing your point?
Thanks,
Joseph

That's the approach I take as well, but for step #4 - wouldn't that mean that those upper level elements would then show up on all other plans in addition to the framing plans?

True, yet I have Structural (core of) & Architectural column layers (skin & finish) which I turn on/off appropriately. Often when a beam is carrying a column from above is shown on this supporting beam with structural considerations attached to it.
Joseph

Re: Structural Plans and Wall Visibility

Jefferson — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 21:10:20 GMT

Well Joseph, it's just how it works for me. I tend to use RCPs for trim-beam-detail work and lighting. And setting my stories at top plate to top plate heights, I prefer to keep the floor framing with the associated story.

The flexibility is what drove this setup for me. It allows me to set up my layer combinations in more "predictable" groupings and still allows me the output with ghosts. [For me trying to include/exclude pertinent framing to display became overly complex.] And, my work is all residential SFR, so simplistic is the rule if possible, which in effect is the part I think I like best With the ghost views saved in my layout book I can copy and paste them as needed, in any combination, any time, [multiple stories], with any desired layout.

Just another way to go..........