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

[Aussie John]

I don't think there are issues with this approach. I do this to model the ceiling. Saves on layers and complexion.

[Barry Kelly]

The only thing I can think of that you may have a problem with is some objects (ie stairs) that you want to show on multiple stories.
You can only show objects on the home storey and/or one storey up and/or down, all storeys or all relavent storeys.
This may not suit what you need.
But if you are handy with a bit of GDL even this can be overcome.
Barry.

[Steve Jepson]

I don't use a separate story for floor framing because there is always more than just the joists that I want to show on a floor framing plan.
I may need to show the basement partitions that the joists are setting on as well as the partitions and load bearing points from above.

[Erika Epstein]

I prefer to handle it with layers and layer combinations. Typical architectural floor plans don't show the construction wood framing. Framing Plans, however, do show all the framing.

You can use a separate story, but to me this potentially adds problems such as display of items that want to be shown on Home-story and story above and/or below.

If what you work on is one-story buildings, this may not make a difference.

[Anonymous]

JB,

I do exactly what you're after as standard practice. Here's how:

No separate story for the floor system. Rather, the floor sheathing (normally plywood) is done with slabs or roofs (for decks) on the floor it 'belongs' to, i.e., the second floor's floor sheathing goes on the second story. It's beams and joists go on the story below.

This way, for a framing plan, you have the sheathing set up to show one-story-down, which makes it appear as a dashed outline contour on the floor below. You lay in the beams and joists on the floor below using the beam tool for simple homogenous or rectangular sections and objects for W shapes, TS's, etc.

Also, I have separate layers (and their names in parentheses) for the following:

-Sheathing (3D-FRAM-FLOR-SHTG)
-Concrete topping (3D-FRAM-FLOR-CONC)
-Major homogenous beams (3D-FRAM-FLOR-BEAM)
-Steel beams (3D-FRAM-FLOR-BEAM-STEL)
-Concrete beams (3D-FRAM-FLOR-BEAM-CONC)
-Joists (3D-FRAM-FLOR-JSTS)

I have a analogous layers for roof framing, that start with "3D-FRAM-ROOF-**

I also keep wooden and steel posts on separate layers. When I need to provide steel drawings to fabricators, I can reduce views down to just the steel elements, and view them at will using section / elevation views.

This system allows you to do your framing plans 100% parametric with no cheating and no 2D edits.

Another tip: For the standard beams and joists, have them display with a halftone (or invisible-in-layout mode) pen for their outlines, or even a dotted linetype, and the centerlines with the lineweight / type you'd normally see for a framing line drawing. You can also set up a display option pre-set to make the beam elements show 'centerline only'.

Works like a charm. I wrestled with this over many projects in my early days using AC, and this is where I settled at. With the exception of studs, I usually model every stick in the building, too... No guesswork, particularly when routing drain piping, ductwork, etc.

The only time I introduce an auxiliary story is if I have a truly separate and complex ceiling arrangement... like you'd see in one of Wright's Usonian homes. Even at Taliesen, in the old days, Jack Howe would have the 'boys' (of which quite a few were ladies!) draw a separate plan for the 'deck' (really soffit) framing.

BTW... It's worth seeing some of the drawings those folks produced back in the day... They were truly beautiful. You can also see the hand of other hit makers in some of them. Richard Neutra's hand is obvious in the landscape of some the renderings produced in the mid 20's.

Congratulations for going 'hard core'... That's how you'll harness the real power of this software, which is truly amazing.

Happy framing!

[Anonymous]

One more thing... on layering.

I name my layers in 'military' fashion, from general to specific, with four-letter monikers. This makes them present neatly and logically in the layers dialog box. Naturally, I've got combinations set up for standard views, but while editing, I'll sometimes only want three or four on at a time, and it makes it easy to go through the list and pick out the ones I want to see... I generally have about 100 layers in any given project. All model layers start with "3D-", which allows me separate pure model data from annotation or 2D cheats, which go on layers prefaced by four-letter monikers that denote plan sheet types or views, as follows:

"FLOR-**" Floor plan stuff
"ELEV-**" Elevation stuff
"SECT-**" Section stuff
"SITE-**" Site plan stuff
Etc., etc.

Hope that's helpful, too.

[jbArch]

Thanks for all the thoughtful replies, esp. all the helpful info from Dave Sanders.

Dave, I dread having 100+ layers but it sounds like you have a good system, and the layer-naming idea would certainly make it easier to manage that many layers. When you talk about turning on specific layers for stel fab, that has real appeal.

Also thanks for the seemingly obvious idea of using roofs for decks. I always just use slabs and then live with the fact that they aren't sloped. Amazing the things I miss out on by working solo.

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]

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..