Story levels best practice

[Strawbale23]

Hi, I have a question regarding setting out stories for projects, having seen a few times people using a story for both floor and ceiling levels. Which effectively mean that the floor itself has a story of its own. I was wondering what are the advantages of doing this? Does anyone use this technique? 

[Barry Kelly · Accepted solution]

Personally, I adopt the one storey per floor approach.

This may mean you need some extra layers if say you don't want to show your ceilings on the floor plan, but you do still want to do an actual ceiling plan.

But that is easy to control with layer combinations.

With extra storeys you can use the same layers, just change storeys to see different plans.

Having extra storeys just complicates elements that can show across multiple storeys, like stairs and railing.

You place them in your 'floor' storey with a break line.

You want the hidden portion to show correctly on the next floor, but it isn't 'one storey above', it could be 2 or 3 storeys above.

To me a storey is each floor level of a building.

Barry.

[Kelly at Kanvi Homes]

We use this technique for typical wood framed single family residential projects and it works great. Some elements need to be modeled on the U/S of floor joist story and set to show on one story above and below, but for the most part it's really straightforward. If our floor joist depth changes, it's really easy to update.

The issue Barry mentions about the break lines for stairs or railings is not a problem for us. I've never been happy with the 2D graphical output of the stair/railing tools and find it easier/quicker to draw them in 2D for plan views but model them in 3D on a layer that's hidden in plan view. 

[Strawbale23]

Thank you Barry, your input is appreciated. This how I handle stories , using layers where required.

About to start a new project with lots of "mid" levels and ceiling beams and I was just wondering if there was a better way of managing levels and split levels

[Strawbale23]

Thanks Kelly. So if I understand correctly, your stories are managed around the floor joist depths, which allows you to modify them during the project without disruption to the rest of the project elements.Is this the primary reason?

Interesting, I sometimes come across this issue with projects using timber framing.

[Kelly at Kanvi Homes]

It's one of the primary reasons. For split levels, we use reference stories, often for a dropped foyer or a bonus room over the front attached garage. I think you can only set two of them under project preferences.

Stories aren't just for floors, ceilings, or roofs... they can represent anything you might want to model. I used to use stories for different options - I created extra stories below the footings, turned them off in section view and modeled options there, however this is no longer needed with the design options feature in AC27.

[Strawbale23]

Thanks