A common situation that occurs on sloping sites or older properties is the need to produce different floor levels on a single storey of a building.
With the Arcon Evo CAD software we have the maximum flexibility to be able to produce complex split level designs to cover all requirements. The process of creating a split level building combines some of the other advanced techniques which make use of multiple buildings and adjustments to wall heights.
1) Start with your main part of the building in place on the project. This initial part of the building has been drawn with the default floor settings as you can see from the floor properties.
2) What we need to do now is add a second part to this storey. It will be a separate ‘building’ enabling the floor to have different height settings’
3) Navigate to the Floor Selection drop-down menu on the top toolbar and click to view the options.
4) Click on ‘New Floor’ and from the dialogue box that opens choose the option ‘In a new building’. Click OK. Enter a name for this building which will help you identify this part of your design.
5) You will now be presented with a new floor properties dialogue box. We can label the floor and then change the floor height and/or height above ground floor level. For example, set the ‘Above floor level’ to -1 to set it a metre below ground.
6) We are now using our ‘new building’ so using any of the normal drawing methods, add in the room. (Users of older versions of Arcon will notice we do not need to use a virtual wall here).
7) You now have two parts of a building with different levels. The only remaining issue to resolve is that we currently have overlapping walls where they join.
8) In Arcon Evo we can adjust each wall height independently. Firstly, we select the wall (if your walls are linked, use the green bracket icon to break them apart) and go to the ‘Wall’ options on the top toolbar.
9) Click on ‘Levels’ on the left and in the list of variables select ‘Other’. There is an option here labelled ‘Use different floor levels’ which by default is marked X (i.e. No). Click this option to mark it ticked (i.e. Yes).
10) Now click on the diagram at the top of the levels dialogue. Select the ‘left wall height’ arrow icon. We can now set the offset (in this case -1.75m) to drop the top of the wall down to meet the bottom of the adjoining wall
11) And that’s it. We now have two rooms with no overlapping walls but different floor heights. You can now add doors, steps etc as required.