Building with a tower with different floor elevations, how?

[gotphish001]

I'm working on a fire station. There's a main building with 2 floors and then a connected tower for training that will have at least 4 floors. The issue is that the main building has floor to floor height of like 15' so the trucks can fit inside, but the tower doesn't need to have that and more floor will be better for training exercises so the floor heights will be probably 10'. The tower is not much more than a stair tower with big landings in between floors. 

How can I do this in project navigator? 

[dbroad]

Having a multitude of levels is manageable in PN but I would suggest using a separate division for the tower. Level Names and ID's don't just to be integer numbers.  You could use T1, T2, T3 etc.  

[gotphish001]

I was going to use a division for the tower. So make the tower lvls like t1 t2 t3 t4 and other levels like m1 m2? When I'm making the construct would I include all the levels in between? Example: if I'm making the construct for tower third floor would I include the check boxes for t1, m1, t2, t3/m2? I guess t3 and m2 would actually be the same lvl if I stuck with 10' and 15' floor to floors.

[dbroad · Accepted solution]

I'm not sure I follow your logic.  I would think Tower Third floor would be level T3, division T.  When working out levels, don't worry about level to level heights, just make sure the absolute elevation of each level is where you want.

[gotphish001]

Yeah it's confusing to explain. I think I get it but let me make sure.

I'll have 2 main floors at 15' between floors. So I'll name them M1, M2. 

I'll have 4 tower floors at 10' between floors. I'll name them T1,T2,  T3(which is really M2 so I won't need this one) ,T4.

When I make the the construct for the third tower floor. I'll check the box to include just T3. What you're saying is it doesn't matter how close the other floors are to it, I just need to check T3 so all my object go in at the right elevation?    Made more sense as I typed it out. There's going to be all kinds of strange floor to floor numbers but they won't matter I see now. 

This is very preliminary design phase so I'm going to be changing this this like 20 times probably. Just trying to set it up smart so I have an easier time later.

I think my concern was that if the distance between floors is only 5' then when I go to place doors and windows they won't show up right and be cut off.  That's why I was wondering if I need to include extra floors in the constructs. I guess the only one would be the T2 level in the tower as I have it set up above. T2 would only be 5' to the next floor. I was wondering if I should include T2 and M2 for the construct for T2 to avoid things being cut off.

It just seems strange you can't make separate levels for divisions. 

[dbroad]

Exactly

[ntellery]

I found it better to override the wall cut plane away from the global cut plane which might confuse the ProjNav which I don't use.

Most of my walls don't have style overrides (control is done per aecMaterials settings) so they all follow their (walls globally) own cut plane (ie whatever height their own baseline is set at, their cut plane is the setting above that).  This allows me to place walls at what ever heights and they will still cut appropriately for their own level.  This would allow me to have the main building and tower levels together but at different elevation heights and still cut fine.  But I do it all in one file using layer names (ie 1- or 2-) to sort levels. 
The problem with the PN and global cutplanes is you have to add overrides to do a typical split level house (ie what you are trying to do) and I got all sorts of pain trying to figure out the best way to set it.  Ie. is it better to have all walls at 0 and project down or up for the odd split level or override the odd walls cutplane.   As I abandoned the PN I might have cut too soon on this and missed something but I did it for other reasons too.

If you follow the correct better method and don't have heaps of style overrides for your walls (and use aecMaterial settings instead) then you could try a quick cut plane override on your standard wall style (assuming all others will follow) and see if that resolves some of your pain.  2 walls in the same construct at different elevation heights should then cut the same because they follow their own level and not the global (universal) level.  Someone else can tell me if this creates other problems (PN?) but for me it resolved many 'world of pain' moments.

As for what to include where, I would just put both 1's together, 2's, then 3 and 4 tower by themselves unless it's more appropriate height wise to leave 2 by itself and put tower 3 with level 2 because of the closer association.