Attn: Aus Users - Building Height Plane

[Mattyt12]

Has anyone come up with a quick way to generate a Building Height Plane in 3D view on a steep site for council submission?

[lbuttery]

Matt:

create thin glass walls around the building

probably on the lot lines or the setback lines

see the attached plan

I set the code height to 30' for illustration - but most localities allow more

Lew

[Doug Park]

I've seen people use 3D Polylines to do this as well.

[dshall]

Has anyone come up with a quick way to generate a Building Height Plane in 3D view on a steep site for council submission?

This can be very easy or very hard depending on the defined "envelope". I think a quick and easy way is similar to Lew's method but in lieu of using walls use fences. Using fences will define the top of fence of varying hts depending on the topo. Another method would be to use a "sidewalk/patio" that is say 30' thick and with a material of glass and possibly convert this into a symbol. This way the top of the the area varies depending on the topography below. The trick part comes into play when your building envelope may slope up at a 45 degree angle from the perimeter restricted area that may be defined as 24' up to a max. 30' . This is something we here in San Diego sometimes need to deal with............ and I do not have a good way of dealing with this.

[lbuttery]

Scott:

I like your idea of using fence or sidewalk to follow the terrain

Lew

[dshall]

This can be very easy or very hard depending on the defined "envelope". I think a quick and easy way is similar to Lew's method but in lieu of using walls use fences. Using fences will define the top of fence of varying hts depending on the topo. Another method would be to use a "sidewalk/patio" that is say 30' thick and with a material of glass and possibly convert this into a symbol. This way the top of the the area varies depending on the topography below. The trick part comes into play when your building envelope may slope up at a 45 degree angle from the perimeter restricted area that may be defined as 24' up to a max. 30' . This is something we here in San Diego sometimes need to deal with............ and I do not have a good way of dealing with this.

The fence does not work, the sidewalk is the way to go, or maybe a terrain wall.

[Mattyt12]

This can be very easy or very hard depending on the defined "envelope". I think a quick and easy way is similar to Lew's method but in lieu of using walls use fences. Using fences will define the top of fence of varying hts depending on the topo. Another method would be to use a "sidewalk/patio" that is say 30' thick and with a material of glass and possibly convert this into a symbol. This way the top of the the area varies depending on the topography below. The trick part comes into play when your building envelope may slope up at a 45 degree angle from the perimeter restricted area that may be defined as 24' up to a max. 30' . This is something we here in San Diego sometimes need to deal with............ and I do not have a good way of dealing with this.

I thought as much, the difficult part that the local regulatories stipulate the height plane shall extend vertically 3500mm from the boundary than splay into the property at 45°. The only other way was exporting the terrain into Sketchup as a 3ds file and manually drawing and importing back into chief and setting a transparent material but as you can imagine this method can be quite cumbersome on a difficult site.

If there was a host sweep tool similar to Revit then a splayed molding could be attached to the fence..... perhaps one for the suggestion forum.

[Ross Young]

What Matt could be after is a visible plane that reproduces the natural ground level (or in some cases the finished ground level) but at a defined height above the ground level. For example, where I work there's a height limit of 8m (about 25 foot) above natural ground level, and eaves have to be below 6.5m. The local council want those lines on the elevations to show what (if anything) protrudes above that plane.

Even if that's not what Matt is after here, I'd be interested in ideas on how to do this in 3D, to explain it to Council more clearly (sometimes the "transgression" is very minor, but can look more on an elevation. The ideal view would be a perspective overview showing the terrain, the building on it, a transparent height limit plane, and some way of defining the bit that sticks above it.

Thanks
Ross

Woops, simultaneous post from Matt that disproves my theory on what he wanted....... Anyway, I'll let it sit as I'm still interested in my question. Sorry Matt if I'm hijacking the tread.

[marty]

Here is a job I am currently working on.
First step is to create a profile of the height plane and add it to your library. Then take a section through the terrain along the boundary then drew a polyline along the ground shape and made it a 3d molding polyline and when prompted select your height plane from the library.

Thats the easy part! What I find difficult from here is getting the molding into the correct relationship to the site. I always end up cheating. I manually draw a height plane at a critical point then move the molding to match it. I always stuggle with this part of Chief include custom gutters.

You will see 4 small dark triangles on the angle plane which shows these buildings do not quite comply. While this method is great for quick designing and getting the basic forms to comply I would not rely on it confirm compliance. It relies on the accuracy of the terrain modelling and cannot match the precision of geometric calculation.

[Mattyt12]

cheers Marty, that actually works quite well