Ability to Change Story Levels Without Moving the Elements

[Damijan G]

Please add the ability to adjust Story Levels subsequently later during design process with keeping the elements linked or associated with in their present relative positions. Reasons: tidying up the project, better control of Floor Plan Cut Line setting which i.e. cannot be set negative, so in the case of a misplaced Story Level (too high) one can only change the design by manually moving all the linked elements back to their modelled place, which can be tedious and error prone work also in smaller projects.

Thank you for your great work!

[Xandros]

You can right-click an element and choose "Relink Home Story". This should do the trick.

https://help.graphisoft.com/AC/26/INT/_AC26_Help/040_ElementsVB/040_ElementsVB-4.htm#XREF_90811_Reli...

[Damijan G]

Xandros, thank you for your reply, however the Relink Home Story is a tool for linking the elements to another story which is not what I want. The problem is when elements are on a correct story only the set height of the story is wrong because sometimes in the initial stages of the design we are not so carefull of the Story Height Setting or the design changes so there occurs a need to change the Story Height Setting while keeping the model as it is.

Fixing this can be a lot of work as elements can loose their relative positions if you change the Story Heights and sofar one can only manually put elements back into their proper positions whick can lead to a lot of errors.

[4dProof]

ultimately, this sounds like a modeling error. If an element is intended to be 0' to home story, it should be set to that, regardless of story to story settings.
if an schematic design model has story settings at 12' floor to floor, but the modeler places a slab at 10' above project 0, changing the story settings later will move that slab to 8' when story settings are changed to correctly reflect the design. So rather than focusing on the 3d model and placement of elements, the modeler should be managing the entire BIM model. 
When I do training, I refer to this as "future proofing your design". The same applies to where your reference lines/planes are located in each elements settings. Model with the notion that the model will need to change, then use methods that allow for big sweeping changes as effectively as possible.
if the floor to floor should be 10', set it to that before you start your model. Or model at 0' to home story with the unerstanding that top linking and home story relationships will change globally with future updates and alterations to the story settings.

Big picture for me is that the model should always be associated to story settings. The ability to disassociate element placements from their story settings is a modeling error in most cases, and a global disconnect would lead to a LOT of tail chasing and prone to cascading modeling issues for most people.

[Damijan G]

I agree with, and as experienced Archicad user am aware of, everything written. We could call it an error or just design freedom, which I think is the goal we are all striving towards (or wishing for) with new technology. Sometimes there is not enough time for "future proofing the design" in the initial stages of the project and not all the users within the office are  inclined to be mindfull of these issues under stress. I think this feature is repeatedly finding its way back on the wish list for a long time now. Is it really too hard to program Archicad to recalculate the relations to Stories within the Edit Story Levels operation without losing element associations? Perhaps it is...

[Barry Kelly]

If you or others are just placing elements based on their position in 3D, ignoring the storey levels, then place all elements in the one (ground) storey - ignore stories altogether.

Then maybe when you have figured out your final storey levels, you can re-link elements to each storey.

Storey levels are a reference level, so of course any elements placed in that storey should move if the storey level is adjusted.

Barry.

[Damijan G]

Thank you all for your comments, which are all known solutions to us. Of course these are all the workarounds we use to prepare the project for the permit or construction documentations phase, and of course some time is alloted for this preparation, but as said in any case it proves as (even hours of) unnecesary work and frustration with drawings falling appart after the modifications: changed relations to floor plan cut levels, inverted elements, SEO operators on hidden layers being misplaced, sometimes we have to move the whole building to a different height because the datum elevation has been decided later, the list goes on... It is most common on small and medium size projects where the budget does not allow for much "management" time and where BIM is not even a requirement. And you eventually do want to have a tidy model when it comes to detailing... It is all fixable, it just feels that we sometimes put in more work in dealing with the nuances of Archicad or managing the BIM model than actually designing.

Of course if the wish is impossible its impossible.

And I guess we are not the only ones with this wish:

https://community.graphisoft.com/t5/Wishes/Moving-Levels-without-moving-associated-objects/td-p/2732...

https://community.graphisoft.com/t5/Wishes/Option-to-NOT-move-elements-when-adjusting-Story-elevatio...

https://community.graphisoft.com/t5/Modeling/change-story-hieght-but-do-not-move-elements/td-p/41639

...

[Lingwisyer]

One of the guys in my office modelled a two storey house recently, but then decided to change which second story floor to reference which resulted in his lower roofs and canopies also moving. Did not take too long to fix given the size and simplicity of the project, but it would have been convenient if such a function did exist.

Ling.

[Barry Kelly]

Maybe I just don't understand what you are doing.

To me a storey is a floor level or some people set them up for ceiling levels (which I don't think is necessary but that is another story (sorry 'story' is not supposed to be a joke)).

People work differently to each other in Archicad, so maybe you are doing something I wouldn't even consider.

If I model something in a storey then I am using that storey for a reason and I would want the elements to relate to it.

If I adjust the height (position) of that storey, I would expect the elements to adjust as well.

If I want an element to always be in the same vertical position, then I would model it in the ground floor (storey 0 (or 1 in the USA)) and set it to be visible on relevant storeys (which I can't say I have ever had the need to do).

Even if at design stage my storey heights have not yet been determined exactly, I would still want any walls, slabs objects etc., that I place in that storey to adjust with it.

I would hate to adjust a storey height and then find all of my cabinets floating above the floor or buried in it.

Barry.

[Damijan G]

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@Barry Kelly wrote:

I would hate to adjust a storey height and then find all of my cabinets floating above the floor or buried in it.

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Barry, it is usually the other way arround. The "cabinets" get modelled with an offset to a storey (due to haste negligence mostly) and then you later want to put the Storey line to its proper position (with three clicks preferably).
I can be a bit British about it too, even though I am not 🙂