AC20 - Roof plan - visibility issues

[Anonymous]

I'm new to Archicad so I'm hoping that I'm missing something simple but I'm having trouble with the visibility settings for my roofplan.

I've looked at different sources for how to adjust the settings but seem to be getting in a muddle.

I have a number of roofs at different heights and I've created a level that is just above the highest ridge. On that levels floor plan, all I want to do is have everything visible below i.e. roofs, parapets etc. Just a typical birds eye view/site/roof plan.

For some reason in my view I can see the roof but not the parapet that is above it (the top of the wall basically).

Any guidance would be much appreciated.

[Erwin Edel]

Roofs themselves are 'easy', you can set them to 'custom', link them to the story you'd first want to see them on and then pick 'all stories up'. For this reason I generally model the parapet covers with roofs, however if you do want to see walls, the trick is to set up the floor plan cut plane properly for your saved view. You want to set it up to show down the amount of stories (and perhaps with a certain offset to the story). Any walls and such that are set to be projected on 'all relevant stories' should show up.

For things like gutters, I either use the library parts or I draw the profile with a 0 thickness shell that I extrude (works great for zinc gutters). Shell can be set up the same way as roofs for showing on all stories you want to see them.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Erwin, from what I read it seemed that modelling the parapet cover might be the most straightforward option, I just want to make sure I have a proper understanding of how to control it/what the best practice is.

The problem I had when I set the 'show down to' for displaying the walls was that it then displayed other walls that I didn't want to see i.e. ones that are below the roof

[Erwin Edel]

This is a problem indeed. You can either try to hide the layer on roof plan or set the walls to 'home story only', you will need to split them up per story for this to work.

You can also hide them behind the roof if you give the roof a cover fill with a white or the 'window background' pen.

As a last resort I sometimes draft a few fills to mask out what I'd like to see or hide.