Floor Alignment Problem

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Hello,

I'm modeling a two-story building with basement and penthouse and am
having a slight problem (maybe??). First I modeled the shells (one per
floor) and checked "immediately above" each other without specifying
coordinates. The floor alignment was not correct (all floors were
centered with respect to each other) even though I used the background
of the floor below as a reference. To try to fix this I left the
basement as it was without specific coordinates and plugged in
coordinates for the 1st Fl, 2nd Fl, and penthouse. Now the 1st Fl, 2nd
Fl, and penthouse are aligned correctly with respect to each other, but
the basement is not aligned in the 3d view (see below). The basement
appears to be aligned with the 1st floor in the custom building
footprint (see below), so there seems to be a conflict.

Can someone help me align these, and get rid of the floor heat transfer
between the basement and the 1st floor?

Also since I created multiple shells for each floor, do I need to go
into detailed edit mode and delete the underground floor components of
the upper levels?

Also any advanced procedures for what I did above would be beneficial?

thanks,

Nick Couture, LEED AP

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Nicholas,

In detailed mode, under Building Shell tab, click on the floor's icon,
then a window like below pops up. Here you can change the geometry of
the floor to match up with the other floors.

Hope this helps.

Hassan

Zareh, Hassan's picture
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thank you all,

The problem as Jordan Bouchard pointed out was that I set the 1st Floor
at 12 ft thinking that the basement level was at 0. I changed the 1st
floor to 0 and that corrected the situation.

Nick Couture, LEED AP

Nicholas Couture, LEED AP's picture
Joined: 2011-09-30
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Regarding alignment of shells in three dimensions, my practice is
personally to try and nail this potential issue down within the wizards,
before the detailed mode. To do so, I avoid "immediately above" or any
of the other myriad of similar options like the plague when defining
each shell. I always position "via coordinates," and set each shell to
be X=0, Y=0, Z="whathaveyou." This does hinge around having CAD
references which all share the same X/Y origin (normal practice in our
office to begin with for clean xref's during drafting), and a little
extra thought to ensure my "floor-to-floor" heights defined on the
second screen add up correctly to each Z-elevation I define for shells.
The end result however is I don't need to concern myself with
mis-alignment issues - this allows me to lean confidently on the
shared-plane recognition Scott Criswell defined nicely in an email
response this morning to the subject (RE: [Equest-users] Roof monitor
"Open to Below").

To address your last two questions, I'd again refer you to the same
email from Scott where he outlined how shells' floors/roofs should be
handled when stacked on top of each other. You will want to, in
detailed mode after the wizards, change the shared roof/floor areas of
each shell into non-exterior constructions.

Best of luck!

NICK CATON, E.I.T.

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