separate story for floor system?

[jbArch]

Tried searching on this topic with no luck...

Is it worth creating a separate story level just for the floor system? I'm thinking especially of typical US residential wood framing.

In the past I've just used a slab for the floor and dumped it onto a regular story, on a "model" layer that gets hidden in plan views.

But lately I've been trying to model every stick of lumber, and it seems tidy to keep joists, subfloor, rim, ceiling, etc. all on a dedicated story level. Is there a disadvantage to this approach that I haven't encountered yet? The story numbers get a little confusing but I can live with that. Come to think of it I can see how this might get tricky on split-level type houses where you want items to display across adjacent stories... hmmmm. Would ike to hear any opinions on this approach.

cheers,
JB

[Anonymous]

when i first started using AC i was doing a separate story for my floor framing.. but i had the problem of not seeing the walls below that the framing was using as load bearing etc... unless i over layed 2 views on my layout (one for the walls from teh story below and the floor framing story.

i moved away from doing this and just used a layer combination that showed only my wals and openings and all teh framing thats sitting above it..

[Anonymous]

whoops. sorry bout the tripple post

[Anonymous]

I see nothing wrong with what you plan. I've been using intermediate stories for my models for years. My stories will look something like:
SF Ceiling
Second Floor
FF Ceiling
First Floor
GF Ceiling
Ground Floor
GF Footing
Basement Floor
BF Footing

Every story can be used as a plan thus cutting down on layers & groups.
With AC12 onwards the power of the Trace & Reference tool makes locating stacked components more accurate and less labourious.