Layers, stories, sampling, and transfer of parameters.
With several ArchiCAD projects I have seen lately, students are not working properly
with stories and this is making 3D modeling very difficult. If you have more than one
story in your building, you should use “stories.” In other words, make and show first floor
elements on story one, and make and show second floor elements on level two, etc.
etc.
If you have not used stories and you have all your elements on just one story, or even
worse on just one layer (all walls on just the exterior walls layer for example), you will
find the 3D modeling gets too difficult especially when trying to select things in the floor
plan views. You may also start to lose some 3D elements by accidentally selecting and
deleting something like a floor slab or roof.
For example, if you have all your exterior walls on just one exterior wall layer, set up
more layers for walls as follows:
level one exterior walls
level two exterior walls
Carry through with this for all elements in your project (furniture, columns, slabs, etc.).
Then, in the 3D view window, select elements individually and place them on the proper
layers.
Then, in the plan view (story where you built everything) turn off the layers you will NOT
be copying to another (higher) story.
Copy the elements (for example, level two exterior walls), then delete them, and then
move up another story in the floor plan view using the navigator, and paste (select
original location when you paste). Repeat this for objects, columns, etc.
Then, check how things turned out in the 3D window. You may find the walls are too
high elevation wise (distance to project zero) and not connected to the tops of the first
floor walls. Select one wall, elevate it (up or down) to the proper position, and then
sample it after elevating (alt click on the PC). Then, transfer this wallʼs parameters to the
other level two exterior walls using alt control on the PC and all these walls will then be
at the correct elevation.
If you use stories properly and make your 3D elements on the correct stories, you will
save yourself a lot of grief. It should only take an hour or so to reconfigure your model in
this way. Keep using both layers AND stories! You will need both as the model gets
more complex.
If anyone needs a demonstration of this, I can show you how to quickly reconfigure
things.