Levels (like Revit)

[Rve]

1. AC uses stories

2. For every object (wall, door, beam, etc.) you need to set the ‘Floor plan/section settings’ to ‘Home story only’ or ‘one story up/down’ or ‘all relevant stories’

this is not flexible to me. 

my idea:

1. Create as many stories as you want (level 1, rooflevel, ceilinglevel, foundationlevel, infinite choices…)

2. create a checkbox for every story in de ‘Floor plan/section settings’ where you want to see the objects (with multiple checks possible)

This way you can set walls to go from story 1 to the ceiling of story 1, etc. And when the ceiling height needs to be adjusted you only have to change the levelheight. 😉 

This way the stories would be ‘similair’ to levels in Revit but within the AC structure.

[jl_lt]

Hi Benjamin. Has there been any advance on this?

[boatingcow]

Coming from an engineering background, stories, levels and elevations to me are all simply just sections... My suggestion is to combine stories, reference levels, sections and elevations into a better reference/work planes system entirely, just like in other engineering software.

• All planes could be listed in a common dialog - a button/filter could help distinguish horizontal planes from vertical planes. The dialog could be accessed from the "Design" menu to "Create new reference/work plane", or from the "Options" menu alongside the other attributes, or from the project map, just as stories, sections and elevations are currently.
• All planes are relative to the current x,y,z coordinate system (with positive y being North, and positive z being up)
• When managing horizontal planes, we'd focus on the "z" dimension, and we'd define zero as either the project datum and/or offset from sea level.
• I think it makes sense for most ArchiCAD users for there to be a special status for completely horizontal planes, so we can make best use of the symbolic views of objects we have become accustomed to.
• Although, I think it would be useful if horizontal planes could have an angle offset from horizontal and polar coordinate rotated from North, so inclined geometry like roofs, roads, embankments, etc. can be better represented on their own plan (this is currently only achieved with the axonometric projection in a 3D view, but requires a bit of mathematical jiggery-pokery and the resulting projection plane can't be seen in any plans or sections)
• ...and/or perhaps allow vertical sections to be off-vertical too?
• The default project map could simply come with a few default planes like at present, so the old stories, sections and elevations are easy to access for new users (like the suggestion from David Gulbrandsen)
• Any plane could have a view plane offset and a negative and positive limit to better visualise projected and hidden geometry, just like stories only display relevant content between the previous and next stories and different line types apply either side of the cut plane, and similar to how horizontal range in sections work currently.
• Similarly, the view direction would be chosen, positive by default, but could be switched to negative, thus making reflected plans simpler
• You could still make vertical components link to any particular horizontal plane just as they do currently with stories. The ideal situation would be a bit more like Revit, or even Inventor, where we could also link horizontal components to vertical planes...
• I like the idea that a plane could be a child of of another plane, so if the parent plane changes it's position, the child planes would change relative to it. This type of thing would help with changing a site level without mucking up all the storey-linked elements (aaarrrggghh!!!), or multiple-building plans, or linked modules, each with their own stories independent of the site or other buildings

A side wish is a generally better 3D-to-2D projection system - I'm often frustrated that the OpenGL view gives a better "vectorial representation" than the integrated vector engine, and objects which look perfectly reasonable on plan end up as tessellated garbage in any other view! It would be nicer if all of the NURBS objects were represented by their actual bounding geometry rather than their mesh representations. Also, while I understand from a mathematical point of view why ArchiCAD still uses the vectorial engine for drawings, I wonder if an OpenGL "vector" view would be sufficient for most purposes, and might bring performance benefits elsewhere?

Otherwise, ArchiCAD is still my favourite CAD software - keep up the good work!

[Lingwisyer]

Before you can start changing how the Floor Plans work, they would need to update the Floor Plan Display Settings for many of the tools as they would be incompatible in their current implimentation...

Ling.

[jl_lt]

Agree. While all wishes are valid, wanting Archicad to behave like other software is impractical. I liked the OP because he proposed a workflow within current archicad structure.

[Ro-Ra]

I do like the idea of using guide planes as levels as well as having a plane hierarchy set with constraints i.e. parent planes > child planes > ... > child planes of n degree. Physical geometry can then be constrained to these guide planes.

A similar analogy could work for guide lines in the profile editor so that distances between various guide lines can be used/linked to user defined parameters. Currently AC isn't very good at handling complex constraint interaction. This hierarchy system would make it much easier and even better than Revit's constraint system imho.

[Tim Ball]

One solution could be the use of horizontal gridlines.

Currently, I use a zero-thickness slab as a horizontal grid. You can name it and label it

[Ro-Ra]

There are several issues with the current way levels work in AC:

• They are almost 100% symbolic rather than "2.5 D". I've made dozens of posts recently alluding to this. For example, the bottommost steps of a stair that stretches beyond a stair hole in a slab isn't properly shown as hidden lines below the slab. Another example are results of solid element operations not being shown at all in AC. Or how rafters are being shown in plan. As a general rule, everything should be displayed completely in 3D except for: doors/windows, railings and stairs which are displayed semi-symbolically or GDL objects completely symbolically.
• Because the way objects are shown completely symbolically in AC you have to make do with additional settings in ceiling plans which can be cumbersome to keep track of. You don't actually get a "true 3D ceiling plan" but rather a floor plan with many settings to change how doors. windows, stairs, etc. are shown. It would be much more streamlined to simply have the floor plan cut settings in one place as in Revit.
• Many objects' display settings in AC are keyed to how they are shown X levels above or below the home story and are shown purely symbolicaly. This works in most situations but not where there are split level floorplans for example. Or if you introduce new levels between existing levels without changing the existing ones. Handling of split levels is done much better in Revit. Also, the display settings above/below home story in AC isn't consistent. Sometimes, you cannot define how an object appears more than one story above/below the home story.
• One of the things Revit doesn't do well and AC much better is showing contours of overhead slab holes, so having seperate line categories/types (overhead, projected/outline, hidden) would be useful. See wish here.

[Eduardo Rolon]

Just to be a dissenting voice here.😉

There are lot of wishes that can be grouped as "I learnt how to do this in software XYZ but AC does it different so I will not bother to learn AC's way and will push for AC to behave like XYZ…" one old example was the discussions about implementing Autocad's Offset in AC which we got as an upgrade and nobody uses it since AC could do it but with the steps in a different order (https://community.graphisoft.com/t5/Wishes-forum/Offset-Tool-like-Autocad/m-p/35922)

AC is not Revit if you want AC to work like Revit then my recommendation is to use Revit instead. I prefer that GS spends its time making AC better and not copying Revit which is my pet theory for the emphasis in the latest versions for Structural and MEP.

😉 Right now this wish already exists you can create as many cut planes as you want and depending of the plane AC will auto organize them in either Stories, Elevations, Sections and Interior Elevations. You just need to pre-select what you want to do… 😉

If I read this correctly what you  really wish for are for more display options and control of the geometry. That is a better wish based on RVT but not copying it.

[Erwin Edel]

I mostly keep my opinions to myself on these matters (since they sometimes don't feel appreciated by the OP), but I also don't see the problem with walls and slabs and needing to tie them to loads of different levels. Only if you have your structural core building materials with too low strength and your separation wall materials with too high strength.

Building material connections solve 90% of our sections.

Typical slab for projects for us: some thickness of concrete (let's say 240 mm), some thickness of cement floor finish (let's say 70 mm). We model the slab with Core Top at -70 mm. We link all our separation walls below to -70 mm top and home offset. The story heights can vary as you like and the the extra height of the wall is automatically cut by the slab above.

Our stories represent the actual needed floor plans, no 'hidden' stories just to link a ceiling height or something.

But to each their own workflows!

I also don't need AC to be revit 🙂

[4dProof]

Sorry if I didn't read every response, but this is an option:

Create your (unnecessary) extra stories for ceiling, top of joist, bottom of hanger, recessed light fastener, whatever... the walls "home story" is "1st floor plan" and is top linked to "2nd floor plan", spanning through all the extraneous stories in between. You could balloon frame from foundation to roof on a high rise; and just set the walls to show "on all relevant stories" and set the floor plan cut plan to the height from project 0 needed to show windows symbolic.

The ONLY minor inconvenience I see is the inconsistency between floor plan display options between different elements; IE: walls are home story only or all relevant, but slabs can be any number of stories.

It seems that you have a firm grasp of Revit... and they just don't translate through. Once you get a mastery of the floor plan cut plane and element display settings, Archicad is going to end up being WAY more flexible than Revit ever could be. In fact, thats one of the double edged swords of Archicad; its so flexible/versatile, there are often too many ways to handle a needed document/design/model solution. Where Revit may have one way to manage what you are trying to accomplish, Archicad will likely have 5-20 possibilities.

In fact, just managing floor plan display and display range, I can think of at least 3 options; including an iterative renovation filter, graphic overrides, custom GDL solutions, etc. etc. etc.
but the best and surest way is to just learn the way the software was designed to work for you...
As Wesley Snipes put it... 'some ... always tryna ice skate uphill'