!Restored: Stories

[Anonymous]

I'm reading through the manual as we're working our way through a "test" model of a house.

The manual refers to the foundation as a story.
The the first story (US) would be from the foundation to the top plate of the first floor walls (standard US wood frame construction), let's say 10 feet.
Now I would normally refer to the second story as the distance from the second floor (top of floor sheathing) to the top plate of the second floor wall, let's say 9 feet for that.
Where does the floor joist and sheathing come in, as part of the second story, which would make the second story height a little over 10 feet (figuring about a foot for the floor joists and sheathing), or is it best to create a separate story for that (floor joist and sheathing) space?

In advance, as always, thank you for taking time to help out.

[Anonymous]

It's honestly up to the user's preference, but I personally put the joists on a seperate storey, lets say the first floor from the subfloor to the bottom of the joists is 8', and it's 1' from the bottom of the joists to the top of the subfloor of the second storey, I'll make 3 storeys like this:

3 - 2nd storey 8'
2 - 2nd storey joists 1'
1 - 1st storey 8'

Then when I draw walls on the first storey, I'll make them 9' high, I don't know if others agree with my method of doing this, and I'm open to other options, but thats how I do it at the moment

HTH,
Dan

[TomWaltz]

You can make negative numbered stories, so foundation is -1.

I do know some people who make a separate story for the floor space, but I never have.

My office considers a story to be the space between one finished floor to the next finished floors, with floor slabs going on the story that they support (so top of slab is always at 0 to the current story).

Our foundation walls and footings go on Story -1. Our roofs always go on the story above what they cover, again trying to keep roof pivot lines at 0 to the current story. Most buildings have a separate Roof story.

We usually use composite slabs which contain the sheathing and truss space. We also use composite walls The slab is extended to the inside face of the sheathing on the exterior wall, then use Solid Element Operations to subtract the slab from the wall, so the plywood extends all the way to the second floor, while the stud and drywall stops at the bottom of the floor trusses. Also, if the second floor trusses change size, the SEO is a live relationship and will cut off the studs at the new height.

We usually have a separate story for roofs, with the height set so that the pivot lines of most roofs are at 0 to that story

I posted something on this a while back at:
http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=48294#48294

[Anonymous]

TomWaltz wrote:
We usually use composite slabs which contain the sheathing and truss space. We also use composite walls The slab is extended to the inside face of the sheathing on the exterior wall, then use Solid Element Operations to subtract the slab from the wall, so the plywood extends all the way to the second floor, while the stud and drywall stops at the bottom of the floor trusses. Also, if the second floor trusses change size, the SEO is a live relationship and will cut off the studs at the new height,

That sounds rather interesting.. could you do me a favour, and post a section screen shot so I can see what the looks like?

cheers,
dan

[Anonymous]

Although it seems simpler to me to assign a separate story to the floor truss/sheathing (as I would be inclined to do), from Tom's post it looks like there is a big advantage including the floor truss/shtg in the story below as Tom discusses. I'm looking at your other post..there's a bit there to digest, and I remember another post (maybe yours also) that describes doing the SEO with the slab and walls.

Tom, you mention keeping roofs on a separate story. I typically have roof plate heights all over the place, do I create a separate story for each/all roof planes starting at their respective heights, or ??? (Marc Holt is going to be posting something along this line in the "working in AC" section, so I apologize that this question is somewhat duplicative, but I'm mentioning it here since we're on that general subject.)

[TomWaltz]

Josephus wrote:
Tom, you mention keeping roofs on a separate story. I typically have roof plate heights all over the place, do I create a separate story for each/all roof planes starting at their respective heights, or ??? (Marc Holt is going to be posting something along this line in the "working in AC" section, so I apologize that this question is somewhat duplicative, but I'm mentioning it here since we're on that general subject.)

No, just the most common, or the lowest, or the highest..... it doesn't really matter. Life is easiest when slabs, roofs, and walls can be inserted at 0'-0" to the current story, but there are tons of examples where that is not possible.

I tend to make the most common height my 0.

[Anonymous]

Not to confuse the issue....., but I do not create separate stories for either floors or roof. Note the ability to do a SEO between objects is not dependent upon which story the items are on.

Josephus, I like to set the story height like you said, Plate height + floor aboves Floor Thickness. This way the bottom of my composite floor slab is to bottom of joists. With the second story floor set to 0 on the second story the "joist" in up bearing on the top of the plate of the lower wall. I like to model most of our residences with Trus Joist Objects and I like to have them on same story as the support walls so that the Framing plans display those walls below. Same goes for roofs, yet roof rafters created with the rooF accessory tool will have the ability of being displayed an different stories just like the Roof itself can be displayed on "other" stories.

[Anonymous]

P.S. - I am contemplating adding a Gyp-board layer to the Composite slabs to represent the drywall for those cases that it applies. For these cases (say a 1/2" sheet-rock layer) the Sheet rock would not be included in the Floor Thickness.