Placing a MOD with different story heights {workaround}

[Anonymous]

If I hotlink a MOD file into a project, and the multi-story source project has different story heights than the host project, all the elements of each story in the MOD file get positioned at the wrong elevations. See attachment for how this looks: there's a positive offset between the ground floor and first floor, a negative offset between first and second floor, and the roof is too low (FYI, the roof is turned off, and there's an SEO to trim the walls)

The adopted elevation of each element of the MOD appears to be assumed relative to the elevation of the corresponding home story in the host project, not it's own "original" home story in the MOD.

This seems really dumb of AC. Too dumb. Surely there's a different way of bringing in a model of a neighbouring project that has different story heights, that doesn't mess up the model. What knowledge am I missing?

[Ignacio Azpiazu]

raoultittel wrote:
Suggestions that you make a module from the elements in a PLN file and Hotlink them into your master file a risky work-around at best.

Actually the opposite is true. The safest and most powerful thing to do is to set up in your building file 'story module export' views. With an 'export view', you can decide which layers get exported to the module, which not only makes files lighter but also allows you to use the same layer for different content at the site, building (and also unit plan, building component, furniture, and whatever you are using module creation for) levels. Then you create a 'Story module' Publisher Set, which publishes .mods to a 'Story Modules' folder, from which you place your modules on the site plan. It sounds complicated when reading it and it may well sound that doing the opposite is 'simpler', but learning the procedure is a 5 min investment at most, which will pay for itself pretty much straightaway. The only thing I am not sure about yet is how well this works with BIM Server and long-distance work.

[If you are using the same story setup in your site and building file, and the stories are set up before your placement, automatic placement should work in any case. I think, because I only played around briefly with that option when it appeared, and never used it in real life.]

I agree that short concise laconic step-by-step how-to guides for these types of things would save people a lot of trouble. The existing alternative is to just read through the AC-Talk archives, using the Search —all the information is already here.

[raoultittel]

Thanks Ignacio,

You obviously know your stuff.

I was unaware of some of the functionality that you mentioned. I'll look into it as your work path and use of modules sounds quite simple really, and less risky than I initially thought.

Thanks

Raoul

[Anonymous]

This is a constant headache for us when doing a multi-unit scheme, i.e. 99.99999% of our work.

ArchiCAD must surely realise that different buildings on the same site have different floor to floor heights!!! Commercial buildings are nearly always 3500mm floor to floor, domestic housing ranges between 2750 - 3050mm. It's not rocket science. A mixed use development is where the fun begins, throw a contoured site into the mix and viola...

I saw a buddy of mine do this in Vectorworks (he was showing off the latest version) in minutes rather than the hour+ work around imposed on us.

The method that works for us:
What we have is a site model, with topo with "stories" set up to show datums at 5000mm intervals. The site model is dropped in at "Datum +0", the median level of the site.

Into this we place exported SketchUp models from ArchiCAD. It's a bit of a pain and VERY fiddly, especially when the exported SU models only have section points at the outer corners of the model, and are ALWAYS imported mirrored for some inexplicable reason.

Doing this saved a lot of headaches and allows us to produce relatively quick, standardised site sections / elevations. The only issue is loosing the intelligence of section cuts, but it's a loss we can live with.

The fun begins when any of the unit designs change, i.e. 99.9999% of the time.

[felcunha]

IN AC21 the inserted modules with different height stories are corrected imported. I think this is one of the most important new features of this version, maybe more than stairs indeed.