11 replies to this topic

[Tom Rogers]

Looking for opinion on how to put together (in Softplan) a townhome building of different plans.  Create a project and copy and paste plan into it or try neighborhood model or some variation of both?  

[Mark Petri]

I think neighborhood would work best especially if each unit is offset in elevation a bit. Otherwise, you could draw them each separate and then add all the plans together into one drawing for each level. It just may get messy. Using a Building Option or group of Building Options might be nice for each unit if all in the same drawing.

[Don Gibbons]

Townhome to me means one building with different units. I think neighbourhood would add a complexity that may not be needed. When I do mine, I treat them as any other project, all main floors on one drawing, all foundations on another, etc. This can reduce the scale so they fit on one page. If that happens, I create additional drawings that have each unit blown up to 1/4" scale. 

[Keith Almond]

I agree with Don, a Townhouse Group should all show on a single Floor Plan, as a single building. Even if the grade elevations change, the design should incorporate that in a single set of plans.

 

OR as I've see before ... a set of separate plans for end units and mid units showing the relevant construction if you are going to build them multiple times, and a single foundation plan showing how they fit together.

[Steve Haarmann]

I am working on one now but there are multiple buildings with a mix of plans.

It is more efficient to create a "combined elevation" and "combined floor plan" but to leave the individual units as stand alone.

If it was a single townhome structure built several times with the same mix of units then I would model it as a unit.

[Jon Davis]

I worked on one not long ago, created a bunch of custom wall types for fire rated walls, and had 7 "units" in one model (Drawing) All 1 large structure mind you. It was tedious but, worked. 

[Tom Rogers]

I am currently doing what  Mark, Don and Keith are doing as well.  And I agree with Mark that the drawings can get messy.  I have each unit set up as building option, and each building I do a "save project as"  and repeat and move units around as needed.  

[Rannie Kean]

Tom,

I suggest you refer to the International Residential for One and Two Family Dwellings, Chapter 3, Building Planning and Construction before you begin putting your various units in place. 

 

This would be the place to start, either creating your different floor plans or modifying your proposal to your client if you haven't too far. 

 

You should be able to get further guidance from both your local Building Official and Fire Marshal on how to proceed.

 

I was a residential plans examiner for a period of time.

 

If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to get back in touch with me.

 

Rannie Kean

 

 

 

Looking for opinion on how to put together (in Softplan) a townhome building of different plans.  Create a project and copy and paste plan into it or try neighborhood model or some variation of both?  

[Tom Rogers]

Tom,

I suggest you refer to the International Residential for One and Two Family Dwellings, Chapter 3, Building Planning and Construction before you begin putting your various units in place. 

 

This would be the place to start, either creating your different floor plans or modifying your proposal to your client if you haven't too far. 

 

You should be able to get further guidance from both your local Building Official and Fire Marshal on how to proceed.

 

I was a residential plans examiner for a period of time.

 

If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to get back in touch with me.

 

Rannie Kean

Thanks Rannie.  I appreciate the reach out concerning them but I'm not questioning how to do Townhomes. I have been drawing townhomes for over 20 years.  Just looking for a better way of assembling them within Softplan (3D model, building options, softlist, door and window schedule) etc.  

[Michael Collazo]

  I made each unit their own drawing and annotated them as if they were their own plans. I had (3) unit types. Base End, Base Interior, and Corner Unit. So I made (3) unit plan sheets and made a plan set for all common draiwngs.

 

I had to separate the assembled unit plans (Building) from the rest of the plan set. This allowed me to have different building clusters, i.e. 5 unit, 6 unit, 8 unit. I used multidrawings and used a custom mode to display the units  as I saw fit. I dimensioned the overal lengths of the building over the assembled units using the host drawing and added notes as needed. Moving them around was clumsy, nothing like using xrefs. But I did fine using align to edge. I snapped the the centerlines. 

As for exporting to pdf, it took an extra step. I exported the entire plan set then batch printed the multidrawings with review, and combined them into the plan set at the end. It was tricky at first, but it is great for the life of the project because everything is live and updates.

 

I really wished multidrawings worked better with plan sets.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Tom Rogers]

Thanks Michael.  I did not think about using multi-drawings or a combination of those with plan sets.  I moved to plan sets long ago and forget about multi-drawings.  I will have to look into that.  

[Mark Petri]

It would sure be nice if we could use multi-drawings and plan sets together and have much more control over how each plan/drawing references and aligns with another. Why it's been made to be so cumbersome and difficult is beyond my understanding of how programming works. I suspect it is a big task to correct it, or SP would have worked that out a long time ago.