Floor Plan Cut Plane and Story Settings

[Anonymous]

Hello,
I am having some difficulty understanding
the logic of the floor plan display in AC 10.

I draw a wall 8'-0" high with it's base
at at 0'-0" from story one.
I set the floor plan cut plane height
to 9'-0" from story one.
If I set the "height to next" in the
story settings to 7'-6" then the wall
contours show as cut lines
If I change the "height to next" to 8'-6"
then the wall contours show as uncut lines.

I am unclear about what the height to next
has to do with how a wall is shown as
cut or uncut by the floor plan cut plane.

Perhaps someone could explain this.
Thank you,
Peter Devlin

[TomWaltz]

I think the cut plane has to occur within your current story's limits, but I could be wrong. If you try to place it outside the story, it usually just goes to the closest point within the story, in your case at 7'-6"

[Anonymous]

Hello Tom,
From what I can tell you are right.
That is how it seems to work.
Can you think of a reason why
GS made it work that way ?
Seems to me that everything
would work fine if the "height to next"
had no affect on how a wall is shown
in plan but only on the wall height
and the height of the cut plane.
I respect how GS thinks most of the time
so I'm obviously missing something.
Thanks,
Peter Devlin

[TomWaltz]

I think it's reasonably consistent with with "story" concept, that the cut plane occurs somewhere within the current story.

Otherwise, why not dump stories and just have a bunch of cutplanes?

[Anonymous]

Yes Tom, I have to agree with you.
The "Story concept" is still with us. As it should be.
Thanks for your observations.
Peter Devlin

[TomWaltz]

I could kind of go for no stories and cut plans the way we cut sections.... then you could offset for split-levels and create partial plans.... hmm....

[__archiben]

TomWaltz wrote:
I could kind of go for no stories and cut plans the way we cut sections.... then you could offset for split-levels and create partial plans.... hmm....

two kinds of cut-planes maybe?

- primary, storey-defining cut-planes;
- secondary, user-defined, drawing-type cut-planes.

the first are the natural progression of our current 'storey' concept and necessary to define the true vertical organisation of the building. the way that at least one storey is a currently a mandatory file requirement, so would at least one primary cut-plane.

these might have their relative floor plan range fixed by storey-to-storey heights so that storey-by-storey analysis can be carried out. along with 3D view filtering and the like.

the secondary cut-planes are more flexible, totally user definable and like the cut-planes we already know. being able to set staggers (for split level) and extents (for partial plans) would be a welcome addition though.

the difference between the current storeys & cut-planes and these primary & secondary cut-planes may be very subtle, but i think a necessary progression to move the user base mindset out of plan-view modelling. of course it would have to go hand-in-hand with live, simultaneously updating, model-view windows and improved element creation and editing techniques . . .

dreamin' . . .

~/ben

[Link]

Peter wrote:
Hello,
I am having some difficulty understanding
the logic of the floor plan display in AC 10.

I draw a wall 8'-0" high with it's base
at at 0'-0" from story one.
I set the floor plan cut plane height
to 9'-0" from story one.
If I set the "height to next" in the
story settings to 7'-6" then the wall
contours show as cut lines
If I change the "height to next" to 8'-6"
then the wall contours show as uncut lines.

I am unclear about what the height to next
has to do with how a wall is shown as
cut or uncut by the floor plan cut plane.

Perhaps someone could explain this.
Thank you,
Peter Devlin

Hi Peter

Sure you can have cutplanes outside the current story. That is how framing plans can be created for example, with the 'ghost' of the story below. You can set the cut plane to be say 1'-0" below your current story. It will then show the walls below, whilst also showing the framing of the current story*.

The problem you've found is that this doesn't work very well until those stories are actually created. If you set the cut plane outside the range of the story, and there is no other story in that range, it is limited to the current story.

Your problem makes sense, really. At first the cut plane was constrained by the story at 7'-6" and hence cut through your 8' wall. Then you raised the story height to 8'-6", effectively lifting your cut plane above 8'-0", hence the uncut appearance.

If you did all of that after the stories were created, you would see predictable results.

Hope that helps.

Cheers,
Link.

*Doesn't work so well with beams yet because the centerlines can appear in the story below.

[Anonymous]

Hello Link,
You wrote:
"The problem you've found is that this doesn't work very well until those stories are actually created.
If you set the cut plane outside the range of the story,
and there is no other story in that range,
it is limited to the current story. "

This I did not know.

Thank you Link
Peter Devlin

[Anonymous]

The reason I asked my question is that many
including myself have found some problems with the
plan display system in AC 10. Not that there were
not even more serious problems in previous versions.

Recently, I ran into a problem that is depicted
in the attached image.

In the days of pencil and paper drafting
the floor plan was diagrammatic not littoral
and was intended as a communication tool.
One took liberties with nominal plan cut height
as necessary to show what was needed.
Peter Devlin