Elevators and Stories: a divorce waiting to happen.

[Anonymous]

Elevator objects in the main libraries are great, we usually use them, until we reach a project where we have to use different Z heights for their doors for a multitude of reasons. For instance, if we have different buildings with different heights on them.

And as much as we tried, we couldn't figure out how to divorce the height placement of these doors to the stories that are defined in the project. Using hotlinked MODs don't even work (!!!). This is crazy, because it feels it should be incredibly easy to add this option for every door in an elevator object, and what we do now is utterly stupid. Basically, we have to explode it into a morph and then move the vertices around.

So, my question is, how long do we have to wait until we get this incredibly small update to the elevator?

[sinceV6]

Hi.
I signed the divorce papers a long time ago

The elevator objects, as clever and complex as they are, work well with simple projects. I scripted an elevator object that models the shaft (with pit and overhead) and then used with SEO to cut slabs. It is just placed where the elevator starts and set in which story it should end.

Elevator walls and doors are then modeled in each level as regular walls and sliding doors. This allows for control in details and surface per door per level basis, and can be scheduled.

The downside with a scripted object that references story heights is that it breaks when used in hotlinks, as it will use the heights of the host file, but walls and door placement will be ok if the correct settings for hotlinks are used.

The array that keeps story level information shouldn't merge with the one in a host file. They should be independent arrays. Changing this could allow, for example, for a second array that has sublevel reference planes information for each file.

Hope that helps you a bit.
Best regards.

[Erwin Edel]

I could never get these things to work to satisfaction. I just model the shaft + doors too. The cage I either model with a few walls or just leave as 2d polyline.

Maybe the way forward is to have the cage as an object with proper story sensitivity.