Ceiling Plans: methods for creating & managing them

[Anonymous]

I have been inspired by James Murray's wish for better ceiling plan tools to become curious about how other people create and maintain their ceiling plans. Working with many different firms over the years, I have seen many different approaches but have not found a set of workarounds that I feel comfortable enough with to standardize on.

I feel this topic can be useful in two ways:

One is to get a broader view of the various methods that people are using so that we can all learn ways to improve our own practices.

The other is to inform the process that I hope will be underway at Graphisoft (pursuant to James' wish or otherwise) to improve the tools for creating these necessary drawings.

I am making this a poll in hopes of collecting more information than might come from responses to an ordinary topic, and perhaps to inspire people to go into more detail about their specific practices.

[David Collins]

I've found my way around this by using stories: Each floor has two stories associated with it, one for floor plan elements and one for ceiling elements.

The floor plan story has all the walls, columns and slabs representing finish floors.

The ceiling plan story has the structural slab for the floor above, along with its beams, and on separate layers: light fixtures, dropped ceilings, duct enclosures, gypsum trim and cornices. The only catch is that I have to represent the walls from the floor plan with a fill, which needs to be updated every time the walls change.

Ghost stories helped me here quite a bit, though I've been working this way since 5.0. Its easy to see both plans together by toggling the ghost story. I started doing it this way because the construction around here is all concrete with brick and plaster infill. This system gives the structural slab and it beams on one story, which is helps during construction supervision. All the big mistakes happen in concrete.

David Collins

[Anonymous]

David,

Thanks for the response and, even better, an approach I hadn't thought of. I tend to stay away from making extra stories but your approach does sound interesting.

One thing that occurs to me is that you might be able to do away with the wall fills by using a view of the floor below as a background drawing in PlotMaker. It would mean that you would have to rely solely on the ghost story to see the walls in ArchiCAD but this might actually be an advantage. The ghost story display color can be adjusted for visibility and it could reduce some layer management issues.

Is it any trouble dealing with double the number of stories? It seems like a bit of a pain that, for example, the seventh floor would be represented as the thirteenth (US) or fourteenth (EURO) story. (I am guessing you may not be doing tall buildings.)

[David Collins]

Matthew wrote:
David,
Is it any trouble dealing with double the number of stories? ...(I am guessing you may not be doing tall buildings.)

Quite right. I'm doing residential work and rarely see more than four stories. I just toggle up and down through the plans with Ctrl+5/6 and it makes sense to go past the ceiling on my way up to the next floor. The name of the current story appears up on the main ArchiCAD title bar, so I rarely have to think about what number a story has. Obviously I whole-heartedly support the suggestion that drop down menus give story names rather than their numbers.

Thanks for the thought about the floor plan fill in Plotmaker. Its actually pretty easy to view the walls on a ghost story and add the fill at the last minute when things have pretty much settled into place.

[__archiben]

oops.

i just voted on option 2, but in actual fact option 3 is more like our approach - layers combinations and display options. . .

sorry.

~/archiben

[Anonymous]

By and large I use option 3 to produce a reflected plan. Most of the drawing being done with fills to represent the various finishes, the line of the edge of the fill showing changes in levels etc.

I have on occasion used option 1 but after pasting the bottom view ( Taken at 90 degrees Azimuth) I then mirror it about the vertical axis to get a reflected plan... It is useful if you have modelled fancy trusses and struts etc, saves a lot of redrawing.

regards

[Aussie John]

I use the two stories approach. I select the walls from the floor plan and save as a library part for use on the ceiling plan. Open the library part, select and copy the image from the full 2d view and past into the 2d view (now it can be edited if needed). Delete the 2d and 3d scripts.

I can have a story for the site plan too and use the library part to show the building there as well. If I have to show an electrical or service plan I can use the library part to show a simlified hairline view of the walls.