Raise All Elevations

[jonnathanames]

Is it possible to change the base elevation of my entire drawing? For example, I want to raise my entire drawing by 12 feet so I can apply it to the second floor.

[Keith.Brown · Accepted solution]

You have a couple of options.  You can select everything in the drawing and physically move it up 12'.  If you are using the project navigator then you can just reassign your drawing from the first floor to the second floor and everything will correct itself.  You could also xref your drawing into a new drawing and then just move the xref up 12'.  This will keep your objects in the original location but move it up inside the xref only.

[jonnathanames]

Hey Keith,

Using the levels feature in the project navigator seems like the best solution. I've never used the project navigator (or the MEP version of autocad) before, and I'm having three issues. First, when I change the elevation of each floor, I'm not sure what units it requires, but it will not accept 12' only 12 (unitless?). Second, once I create my levels, I'm not sure how to assign various elements in my drawing to different levels. Finally, if I change my ground floor evelation to 12, when I view the properties tab of lets say a line in my drawing, the elevation remains the same as before (not raised by 12).

Ideas?

[Keith.Brown]

You should read up on the project navigation system.  The chapter on the Project Navigator from Paul Aubin's book on MEP has been made available for free and can be downloaded from here.

http://paulaubin.com/_downloads/2010_AU/Book_Samples/AutoCAD_MEP/AutoCAD_MEP_Ch03.pdf

To answer some of your questions.

You do not assign elevations to the objects in your drawings.  You assign elevations to each drawing.  Every object in that drawing is therefore at that elevation.  Since each object is linked to a drawing it will always reference the 0 elevation of the drawing.  Even if the drawing is at level 12 which is 144' up.  For the architectural industry this is the prefered method as most elevations reference the floor that they are being built on.  For example.  A sheetmetal working installing duct on the 60th floor of a high rise does not want to see an elevation of 600' on his duct and have to stretch his tape down to the ground floor in order to install the ductwork.  Instead he would rather stretch his tape down to the level he is standing on to install the ductwork.  This corresponds to each object referencing the 0 elevation of the drawing that they are in.

If you really need to reference the ground floor elevation for each object then you could create a property set that uses project based properties to get the level of your drawing and add that elevation to the elevation of the object.  This will give you the elevation from the object to the ground floor.

Finally, once you change the level assignment of a drawing or change the elevation of a level, you will need to shut down the drawing and reopen it for AutoCAD MEP to move the drawing to the correct elevation.  If you really want to see this in action, create a first level drawing and then drag a second level drawing into the first level.  Now when you hover over an object that is in the xrefed second level, the elevation should reference the 0 elevation of the first floor drawing.