Explore the process of establishing datum elements in a new project to ensure easier and cleaner modeling. Learn how to set up horizontal constraints or levels, modify them, and add new levels in a project.
Key Insights
- In new projects, it is essential to establish datum elements, such as horizontal constraints or levels, as early as possible to facilitate easier and cleaner modeling.
- Levels can be modified as needed. For instance, the height of Level 2 can be adjusted from 10 feet to 12 feet by selecting the level, then clicking on the dimension or text to edit the parameters.
- Additional levels can be added to the project and renamed using a similar process. One can also opt to create a plan view associated with a level or render it as a datum point without an associated plan.
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Whenever we start a new project, the first thing I always like to do is establish my datum elements. And what I mean by that is I want to make sure that I have the horizontal constraints or levels set up so that as we're drawing walls, we can draw them at an appropriate level. Now, this doesn't mean that these things can't change as we go on, but it is nice to have everything established as early as possible to make it easier and cleaner as we model.
To do this, I'm going to jump over to our project browser and I'm going to go to the south elevation. When we go into the south elevation, you will notice that we have Level 1 and Level 2. Now, these are the two levels that come by default in the template, but we're going to add on to these ones.
So the first thing I’ll do here is modify the Level 2 height from 10 feet. We're going to make that 12 feet. And to do that, if I select the level here, you can see the entire thing turns blue.
And then when I hover over either the dimension or the text, you can see that I have the ability to edit those parameters. Now if I click on where it says 10 feet, I can change it to 12 feet. Once I've entered in 12 feet, I can press ENTER.
And now we have a 12-foot level. Now, for this project, we’re looking to have Level 2 at 12 feet, which we've already established, a roofline at 24 feet, and an overall top of parapet height at 28 feet. And as you can see here, we only have Level 1 and Level 2.
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What we'll need to do here is add those other levels. There are two different ways to do that, and I'm going to show you both of them. First off, what we'll do is I’m going to pan over so that I can see the entire level line, and you'll see why that's important here in a second.
The next thing we’ll do is make sure we’re on the Architecture tab, and we’re looking for Level under Datum. So I'll pick Level. The reason we wanted to see the entire length of this level is because if I bring my mouse over to the left, it’ll lock in the constraint of that endpoint.
And so when I left-click to start it, that point is now locked with the other two. And as I bring it across, it’ll lock into that side as well. If I move any of these level heads left or right, they’ll all move together.
Okay, so there’s Level 3, which we’re going to rename. When I click on it here, you can see the same thing: it turns blue, and I can click on the level to rename the parameter. And we’re going to go ahead and call this one Roof.
When you do that, it will ask you if you’d like to rename the corresponding views. And in this case, we definitely do, because when you look at the Project Browser, we have Level 3 and Level 3 here in the ceiling plan. We're going to go ahead and say yes.
And you'll notice that they change here as well. We only had to make the change once, and it changed everywhere else in the model. The next change will be to set this to 24 feet.
I got pretty close with my guess so far, but we’re going to change it down to 24. And you may have noticed also when I placed that, I wasn’t too worried about its exact location because I knew we were going to have to change it later. So it’s one of those things you can spend the time to try to get it exactly right as you're drawing it, or you can just draw it wherever and change it later, which I find to be a little bit more efficient.
Now for the next level, we don’t necessarily need a plan associated with that, but we do want to have the datum so that we can draw our walls up to that point. And to do that, what I can do is I can draw the level. And instead of having the 'Make Plan View' box checked, I can uncheck that and I can draw the level in.
And if you’ll notice in the Project Browser, we don’t have any of those levels associated with it anymore. Also, I want you to notice that each of these, Level 1, Level 2, and the Roof are all blue. Level 4 here, which will be our Top of Parapet, is just blacked out.
And that’s because this one is actually associated with a level itself. Now, the question that always comes up is, 'Well, what if I wanted a plan associated with that?' It’s very simple. We can just go to our View tab and then Plan Views.
And if I wanted to create a plan view, any of these types associated with Level 4, I would just go into Floor Plan and see how Level 4 is highlighted here and hit OK. And then it creates that Level 4 floor plan for me. And you can see it’s now blue.
So I’m going to go ahead and undo that because it was just an exercise to show you how to go through it, and because we won’t need it for our project. And what I’m going to do is I’m going to show you another way that we could create this next level.
This is probably the simpler way here. But if I simply just click on the Roof level, it’s going to bring up the Modify Levels contextual tab here. And this button might look familiar to you, but this is the Copy button.
So with Roof selected, I can click Copy and then pick a base point. In this case, I’ll just pick the Roof level. And then I know I want it four feet above, so I can move it up and type 4.
And now I have my next level in the same location. We don’t need Level 4 anymore because this one’s already correct. Then I’ll go ahead and rename this one using the same process as before.
This one will be called Top of Parapet. The elevation is already correct, so we know we’re good to go.
