Location settings, wall heights, & facia distance

[Mike D]

I have my location settings for ground floor at:
Floor Level 3'
Head Height 8'
Ceiling Height 10'
Wall height 10'

My question is; Is the top of my exterior walls 13' above 0' or 10' above 0'

Assuming the wall tops would be 13' above 0' I set my facia distance @ 12'-6" and it is higher than wall top height.
I placed a new "test wall" under the soffet, and set it's height to 13' and it comes right to the soffet........ I assumed that with a floor 3' above the ground, and a 10' wall, that the wall would be raised to the floor level, but it looks as though it's wrong.

Mike

[Allan Chesney]

Mike,

I am not at a PC at the moment to check but have you allowed for the thickness of the floor. By default it is about a 8" - 12" above 0 from memory and I think you will find the walls sit on top of that.  Maybe this is throwing your calculations off.

Allan

[Mike D]

what you are describing is how I thought it worked, but like I said....if I build a separate 13' wall outside my building, the top of the wall is 3' higher than my buildings walls. They appear to be @ 10' above 0'. Your reply makes me think you are understanding my question backwards.

It's not that the walls are a foot higher than I expected.....it's that they are 3' shorter above 0' than I expected.

I have a floor thickness of 1'.
Floor top elevation of 3'
Wall height of 10'

I would think that would put my wall tops 13' above zero, but it appears that they are 10' above zero.

Mike

[Mike D]

OK, I think I've figured out what my problem is. Zero I appears to be a relative elevation. I assumed zero was ground level, but again it's relative to the location, so it appears that in this case zero means floor level, and under roofs>basic tab the setting for facia distance is not the distance above the ground, it is the distance above the current location.


Mike

[Allan Chesney]

Mike,

From a Location perspective Zero is fixed as the Terrain (green gound plane). With the floor at 3' and the floor 1' thick, the bottom of the floor is 2' above the ground (0) andthe top of the floor is 3'.  The 10 ' wall sits on top of the floor, so the top of the wall is 13' above 0.   If you insert a 13' wall its top will be 16' above zero as its bottom is still at floor level for that location which is 3' above 0.

If you have a second floor it will be 13' +1' for the floor thickness so the second floor location would have a floor level of 14'. With another 10' wall its top would be 24' (obviously) to the top of that wall and the roof.  The roof facia however will still be measured from the floor of the wall it is sitting on.

On the roof dialog (or cabinets etc dialogs) any height meansurements is from the base of the cabinet or base of the wall so in these dialog boxes zero is the floor.  You could have a roof on the ground floor level and a second floor level too, so you would have two facia heights.  Likewise the height of cabinets is counted from the floor on which they sit.  The floor is the bottom (0) of every Location and likethe walls and cabinets etc the roof has to be on a location so really it can only be measured from the base of the location it is on.  The locations are independent of each other and they just get put together in 3D based on the Location 'stack' that we have chosen.

I suppose you could say there are too zeros. The ground is total zero and never changes, (basements become a minus figure) and it is the zero on which all locations are stacked but each Location also has a zero too which is the floor of that Location.

Having typed all that I probably could have expressed it in about half the words but it is too late (nearly midnight) to start again so I just hope you can make sense of it.

Allan

[Doug.S]

One big caution....the green terrain is set to 0" height level by default....

BUT it is adjustable and if you change it in settings/program setting/terrain, you could be in for a surprise later if you have forgotten the terrain level setting

Why would you change the terrain level height?  to make a terrain design start at a different position or to correct the terrain if you built your house at the wrong level and don't want to change the whole house to fix its position relative to the house.

Also you can change the terrain slope so it is not level to make it like a real piece of land....so best to not assume too much about the green terrain if you have ever adjusted it....check it if in doubt.