Objects Heights From F.F.

[Anonymous]

It seems to be at the current time that Windows, Doors,etc. header heights (or other objects relating to a wall) are based on the bottom of the wall instead of the actual finished floor heights found in the Stories settings. It would be nice to have the object heights based on the Story settings instead of the wall bottom. If I put in a window at 7'-0" A.F.F. with a wall bottom at Zero, it works fine, but if I have to lower the wall bottom to 1'-0" below F.F., that same window is now at 6'-0" A.F.F. We have to lower walls for a lot of reasons, and the current method throws everything off.

Thanks.

[Djordje]

SCSCadMan wrote:
We have to lower walls for a lot of reasons, and the current method throws everything off.

Why do you have to lower the walls? It might be that your implementation should be different?

[Anonymous]

The book describes making the floor joists by using the magic wand to make a slab, then assigning it a material to match the walls above and below it. We have to many different materials on a house to do it that way. One wall might be stone, the next brick, etc. That would mean making a bunch of different slabs to fill in the gap between floors. So...we pull the walls down from first floor to the floor below to fill in the gap. Also, on a basement floor, if we set the walls to "0" for that floor level, there's not enough wall to move down to grade level to show up in Elevations correctly. So, we pull the walls down for that as well since once again, we have too many wall types to justify one slab of the same material to fill in the gap. It just doesn't make sense to have the windows based on a moveable thing like a wall bottom. The windows and doors should be set to a fixed number like what is located in the Stories settings. Why is the Stories option even there? I hadn't figured out yet what is connected to this except for making different plans for each floors. What in ArchiCAD is actually connected to the settings in the Stories vs. the wall bottoms?

[Anonymous]

draw it as you would build it

slabs (of whatever construction) never extend to the outside face of the external walls. draw them to align with the appropriate point in the external composite wall (magic wand the walls and offset from the pet pallette would be the quickest way)

draw your walls full height, ssl-ssl

seo the slabs from the walls if necessary for sectional views

window/door heights could well be more logically related to storey heights than base of wall

bill

[Anonymous]

The following link shows (hopefully) the "normal" kind of projects we work on and shows the various reasons why I've requested certain things. Notice there's different wall materials on each wall (defeats using the magic wand vs. pulling the walls down. This also shows the need for split walls,etc.

http://www.stonecreekstudio.net/House.jpg

[Anonymous]

ok, can see your problem now

heres how i'd do it, fwiw (but staying with the idea that slabs shouldn't extend to the outer face of external walls)

draw external walls using a composite for everything except the outer veneer

use the wall accessories>battered wall to apply the outer veneers (using the overhang settings to set its height)

this will automativally put in openings for doors/windows (so you don't have to use empty d/w's where the wall type changes within a storey)

put each veneer type on a different layer so you can choose whether the plan is cut at high or low level

if you edit doors/windows then you can update the veneer by selecting it, opening it's settings dialogue (as an object) and ok'ing it (well, usually, seems a little flakey sometimes)

hope it's of some use

bill

[Mark Wallace]

This has been one of my suggestions for almost a decade....all the software is doing is setting a reference point. AC's default seems to be the bottom of the wall, however one could tweak the code and enable the setting of the reference to slab, or story or whatever.

Should've been done a while back....& I'm amazed with all of the Beta testing, this has never come up.

While I agree to a point that we should design a building the way it's built, I don't really design a building by constructing/framing each wall separately by laying it down and measuring from the sill. The analogy breaks down here and I need to work with an improvement that works with the way I design.

This has been an easy fix in the otherwise unglamorous field of construction documentation.

Still productive on 7.

Mark R. Wallace AIA

Mac G3 - 350Mhz, 512 Mb, OSX 10.3.5, ArchiCAD 7.0
-------------------------------------------------------
Mark Wallace Architect
P.O. Box 26537
Collegeville PA 19426-0537

(v) 610-454-9510
(f) 610-489-6585

[Anonymous]

mark

archicad is, as you say, fundamentally and absolutely based on the concept of 'stories'

a lot of the time it works well. when it doesn't there's usually a workaround, ranging from simple to excrutiatingly painful

i'd love to see (at least as an option) the opportunity to just design in 3d and for the software to intelligently extrapolate the plans. it's an oft repeated wish here and it's implementation is probably less to do with any coding difficulties than the need for users to adopt a completely new workflow

bill

[Anonymous]

I had been struggling with the same problem and came to a similar solution. On many of my projects referencing the door or window heights from the story settings would not help as I frequently deal with houses that have as multiple F.F. heights on a single story. My solution, as was mentioned before, to set the reference line for the exterior wall back the appropriate distance from the face of the wall (depending on finish materials) and extend the slab to that reference line, and set the bottom of my wall to the top of the slab, the F.F. for that wall, and pull that wall up to the F.F. of the level above, rather than to cover the slab below. Using a foundation story, or layer combo, to take care of any walls needed to cover up a raised floor on the lowest level. Seems to be working pretty well for me so far.

As for my problem, I am trying to learn to use composite walls, is there a way to set my reference line to change with the type of wall I am using, I like my reference lines to always be a the face of stud, but changing finish materials changes the offset, and so far I just have to remember to change the offset manually, any tips?



Eagerly awaiting my copy of 9.0 to arrive
Scott

AC8.1
G4 Powerbook 1.5 OSX 2Gig

[Anonymous]

What would be really useful, and hopefully quite simple to implement is..

- that the Info Box showed an element's top and bottom as dimensions relative to the storey well as absolute dimensions
- that it also showed the element's height as a single dimension

I often end up opening up the element's Toolbox to edit heights of walls, slabs and objects, which would be much faster to do with the Info Box.