Top plate reference plane

[Anonymous]

Hello, first time post. I tried the search and could not locate an answer I'm looking for. How would one go about making multiple reference planes for attaching the ceiling, roof & wall top plates to? I'm looking for a way to be able to adjust the individual plates and have their roof, ceiling, etc... follow along. For example, say there are 3 different plate heights on a single story residential building, would I make a story for each of the plate heights, then adjust the display of all roofs & ceilings on each of those stories to show up on the main floor plan?

[Anonymous]

I usually set stories for the main floor to floor heights. For Multiple plate heights I place the roof on the story it needs to be seen on and adjust its bearing ht. manually. That way on the 2nd floor I can see lower porch roofs on that plan.

Other times I'll put all of the roofs on a new story called Roofs and show them on or off on the stories below. If you need to change plate ht. just drag the roof in section/elevation or 3d to the desired ht.

So, if you adjust the plate ht. that is not connected with a story you have to adjust both the wall, ceiling and roof separately as far as I know.

[Eduardo Rolon]

Slab/Roof elevation is linked to story settings so that if you place a Slab on Story 2 at +1'-0" and then change the height of the story the slab will move in "Z" to keep its +1'.

So Mark's suggestion is the best. Either place the slabs/roofs using the main building stories or create a Roof Story and place them there and edit them to be shown were needed.

[Anonymous]

Thanks, I feared that was my option.

I was wondering if it is possible to define custom project variables and use them in lieu of reference planes. That would basically accomplish the same thing except give you an option to raise/lower the "planes" on plan. Something like the Revit family parameters.

[Laszlo Nagy]

sabaka33 wrote:
Thanks, I feared that was my option.

I was wondering if it is possible to define custom project variables and use them in lieu of reference planes. That would basically accomplish the same thing except give you an option to raise/lower the "planes" on plan. Something like the Revit family parameters.

There is not a similar thing available in ArchiCAD that would provide a further parametric vertical division within a Story.
However, what you wish to accomplish can be achieved rather easily. Whenever you wish to change the vertical position of a group of elements you can just select them and change their height value. You can do this in 2D or 3D, you can use and hide Layers to show only the elements you wish to manipulate. So in practice it is a rather easily performed action.

But I would love some feature like this implemented in ArchiCAD. I know that both Revit and Vectorworks offer this capability.
So I would love to have the ability to define a global parameter like, Door Head Height, which would then be set to e. g. 2100 mm above Story Height. Then I could set Doors to have their head height linked to this Door Head Height value so I could be sure all Doors have their Head at 2100 mm.
And if the design changes, so Door Head Height is changed to 2200 mm, for example, all those Doors would change their heights automatically as soon as I modify the global parameter called Door Head Height.
So it would work like element bases and tops linked to Stories, but would offer greater vertical "granularity" (is that the right word for it?) because element bases and tops could be linked to name parametric height values within a Story.