Shouldn't elements created on a particular floor height recognize that the floor hieght has been adjusted ?

It is great that it  is so easy to adjust the levels of floor heights in the Floor level manager, but a complete nightmare having to adjust the base elevation of walls, slabs and other elements such as toilets and urinals to suit the new levels.  It is criminal that the elements don't recognize that the floor level has changed and are not tied in intelligently to the level they were created on.  . . . . . Unless of course I am wrong  and there is something I have not switched on or done right.  Or is this a new one for the wish list?

  • I would hope that if you took the time to set the elevations of your floors then any element you would place on the "active" floor should know where it is supposed to go, right??  I haven't played around with that yet but I had assumed that that is what would/should happen.

    John K.

  • John I'm afraid you might be in for a slight surprise.  I set up the floor elevations using the Floor manager and as all designers do I changed my mind and decided I wanted a particular floor at a different height.  This left the walls and furnitre floating in the air.  Howwver I admit that I may be doing something incorrectly

    Regards

    J.

  • Yes this is a major drawback in BA.

    In other cad packages the top and bottom of walls can be linked to floors, but not in BA. in BA they are just 3d objects that float in space.

    Once a wall is placed in a model that is where it is, unless you move it.

    If you change the RL of a floor you have to move all the objects accordingly that have already been drawn.

    Microstation and BA are a solid modelling cad package and not database type parametric building model.

    Walls and objects are not dynamically linked to the floor manager in any way. The floor manager is basically an extension of a Saved Auxiliary Coordinate System(ACS) and that is all.

  • I've just tried Floor Manager once, and I didn't find it useful at all.

    On the other hand, I don't understand how you guys are working with floor heights at all. On the models we are working at I'd struggle even to find a reference plane which I could use on the. Maybe the top of the floor is the same all over a floor, but the floor construction often is not decided until much later in a project. In addition architects tend to want different floor constructions in different parts of the building, so I'd have to adjust slab positions and thicknesses quite often.

    Right now I'd think the Floor Manager would make things more complicated that working without it. I can live with the fact that walls don't update automatically. The only thing I know in Microstation which should update itself automatically - associative dimensions - doesn't work at all and we don't use it.

  • The Good thing about Bentley products is that they are not rigid in proporting a work method like other programs.

    The program is however written to suggest a sort of best practice procedure for designers which you may or may not choose to follow.

    I dont think associateive dims are supposed to update in that sense.  I didn't appreciate the power of associative dims until I saw someone else use them to monitor (rather effectively ) changes in the drawing, if someone else on the team (ME !! ) moved or deleated something that they shouldn't have.  Personally however they drive me nuts so I avoid using them.

    The floor manager on the other hand as mentioned above combines features of the Saved Auxiliary Coordinate System as well as the  Set Active depth tool.  ( One which I find not a lot of people use or are aware of.)  The floor manager saves you the Agro of having to reset the active depth to lock to a new plane because you can preset several active depths in one model. Setting the active depth can be a "mare" if you have lots of elements in the drawing but I loved the control it gave over placement of elements.  Combined with the view clipping planes it can be a real bundle of party tricks.

    if you have lots of working planes on a floor level ( which you normally would) It also allows you to create sub levels within a level, (a feature Andreas may find very useful).  for example if you had to include a lift pit within a slab then top of the slab, the base of the lift pit and the base of the sump would all be levels and sub levels within the floor level. Additionally you can have several buildings within a complex all with there own levels and sub levels.  I cannot however defend Bentleys omission of dynamic linkage of objects to the floor manager but seeing as it is a tool that evolved from a view settings point of view I can see why this happened.