Slabs visibility (Site Plan) - how do you make slabs appear on some stories only

[cathsophie]

Hi guys, this is a thing that has been getting on my nerves lately: slabs visibility. I have a very complex model with 7 levels each of which contains different roofs and terraces.

It's either a nice site plan where we can see all roofs/terraces below - but that requires slabs being visible on ALL storeys, which makes my plans look weird (we see everything that's below), or it's nice plans level-by-level and no possibility to make a site plan (where all roof and terraces are visible). 

I'm desperate enough to think about changing all slabs that need visibility in the site plan to meshes... 

Anyone? 

PS 1: Site plan from 3D is not an option, I need the plan view for many reasons. 

PS 2: I don't know why GRAPHISOFT always makes this so hard for us. Why just not add the "show on all RELEVANT stories" to every tool? Why do we always see limited possibilities with these tools? A slab isn't necessarily always a slab. I really don't get how their imagination can be so limited. 

[Steve Jepson]

Show all slabs on all Stories - Control what you see with layers or graphic overrides of some kind. 

[Barry Kelly]

Create the plans so they look correct.

Then create a 'Site' view of each storey.

Now over-lay (stack) these views as drawings on a layout (make sure the drawings are set to have a transparent background).

You can add just the storeys you want to see.

Does that help?

Barry.

[cathsophie]

Thank you guys, I thought about both your solutions already, I think they are unnecessary mess in the project. Maybe someone will have yet another idea. 

[Erwin Edel]

I agree that the whole floorplan visibility thing should be unified among all tools.

The only thing I can think of is using 0° pitch roofs instead, but they do not offer the same automatic connection as slabs.

Assuming they are 'flat' roofs, we actually model the top layer with roofs, since they ussually need a slight slope for dealing with rain etc and then use these as the fill you see.

Same goes for end 'caps' on walls etc. Roof and shell tool are very versatile for dealing with these things.

[cathsophie]

Thanks Erwin, I do that sometimes too, I use mesh for the slopes though. Same effect. 

That would solve the problem, but it creates unnecessary work. 

Plus I am encountering yet another error as the morph tool doesn't display properly on the stories now. I use it to draw the flat roof's slope lines and arrows signalling the slope/water evacuation. Precisely to have the possibility of showing these annotations on many different stories (and site plan). 

And yet again it doesn't work. It only works if I choose them to show on all upper floors (but that's not what I want). Choosing "show on all relevant stories" makes them completely disappear in all plans. I checked the cut planes 3 times and they're fine. 

A software for 6k Euros that can't display floor plans properly, I'm gonna lose my **beep**... 

[Erwin Edel]

I try to work around the limitations, the other path leads to madness 😉

[Steve Jepson]

You may want to stop modeling Slabs as Slabs in a Site Plan.  Use Roofs.  There is no such thing as a flat slab on the outside of a building anyway. They will all need to have some slope, and almost always be of uniform thickness.   The issue of Stories display is not a problem when you can use them as Levels in the model and not strictly as Floor Levels of the building.