I.
II.
Raising a Slope - Using this fact (about the slope arrow), you can raise or lower the grass level locally when a slope is defined by moving the base of the slope arrow uphill (lowers the grass) or downhill (raises it).
III.
Elevation - All objects (walls, floors, 3-D, roofs, etc) measure their elevation relative to the zero plane to their bottom (place of lowest vertical extent), and it may be positive (above the ZP) or negative (below). This is as most people would intuit, except for floors, which people tend to measure from their top, not bottom, so watch it. In particular, increasing the thickness of any floor by an inch appears to cause objects formerly resting on it's surface to "drop" an inch into the top of the floor as it actually rises around the objects. [The "elevation is bottom" rule is violated with an option on roofs for either the highest of lowest elevation, and for wall accessories which elevate to the highest point. Go figure.]
IV.
Ceiling Heights - Most people consider the ceiling height to be the distance from the upper surface of a floor to the ceiling above it; you might call it headroom. Punch! doesn't see it that way, though. The Default Ceiling Height (set with Design->Default Ceiling Height) is rather from the bottom of the floor to the ceiling, which is a way of saying from the ceiling of the floor below to the current ceiling. The difference is, of course, the thickness of the floor. I use the term "Punch! Ceiling Height", with the caps, when referring to this definition.
V.
Embedded Object in Walls - A few objects that are embedded in walls (windows, doors, electrical plugs, etc) have elevations measured, not from the zero plane, but rather from the base of the wall they are embedded in. With autofloors, this can be perplexing (see door below). Objects created in the 3D workshop have their default elevation defined by the builder in the shop (for example, the recessed lights are placed 96" above the floor's working elevation), but may be adjusted (for the object as a group) in the plan.
VI.
Exterior Walls and AutoFloors -
Like nearly all Punch! objects, exterior walls are measured from the base of the wall. The complication is that an autofloor, if its thickness is non-zero, raises the wall by that amount. A wall's height doesn't measure from the same place it's elevation is measured at, as the figure shows. Here is a 96" exterior wall with a 12" autofloor, elevated to 0. The bottom of the autofloor is at 0, the top at 12", the bottom of the ceiling at 96", the top of the ceiling (and the wall) at 108".
VII.
Reiteration - The thickness of the autofloor adds to the height of its wall to give a true external height for the wall. This means that if you add one inch to the thickness of an autofloor, its wall will increase an inch in apparent height even though the height property for the wall does not change. Note: Punch! will tell you the wall is 96" high, but if it has a 12" autofloor, then it's really (3D visually) 108" high. (This is a restatement of Commandment #VI; should it be separate? God only knows.)
VIII.
Manual Floor - A manual floor, having no wall to be a part of, is entirely independent of any but its own properties. You can increase its thickness, but this affects no other objects. If you do so, it's top will rise, since you have not changed its elevation, which is measured from its bottom, of course.
IX.
The 1/2" Mystery - The problem of the mystery 1/2" starts with autofloors. The 1/2" is the default thickness of an autofloor. Autofloors have two effects controls: there is a switch to turn the autofloor on or off, and a measurement of the autofloor's thickness. When autofloors were invented in 4.0, the two were decoupled: the switch could be on or off, and the thickness could be any value. The effect of the switch is simply to turn the floor itself on or off. The thickness has several uses:
- it defines the autofloor's thickness (obviously), assuming the autofloor is turned on;
- it extends the height of a wall, even if the autofloor is turned off; and
- it defines the height of trim attached to the wall, even if the autofloor is off.
X.
Walls Aren't Real - Above all, remember that this is not the real world. There is no reality check for inter-penetration (no delicate way to put this, folks). Computationally, such a check is extremely difficult to do in the general case. Walls can live inside each other, tables can be bisected by walls and not fall apart, objects can be elevated into the thin air and left there, plants can have parts appear inside when planted close to a wall, etc. There is sometimes no way of telling, visually, whether a wall designed to rest upon a foundation is actually doing so, or whether is is actually resting 6" lower. If measurements don't work out mathematically, try moving things around and see what "pops out of the woodwork".
XI.
Exterior Walls and Elevation - The member walls of an exterior wallset may each have an individual elevation (though not usually). The autofloor takes it's elevation from that of the lowest wall of the wallset.
XII.
Split Level Houses - Split levels can be accommodated by a separate set of external walls for each, with the common walls co-located. The common wall associated with the lower floor is of a height to reach only to the other floor; above that it's mate on the other wallset takes over. If there should be no wall between the two floors (they're open to each other), make the second wall short enough to be embedded inside the floor. When doors or windows have to straddle a floor, the door can be placed and elevated in one of the walls, and an uncased door opening placed in the other, to open that wall for the part of the door or window.
XIII.
Working Elevation - Working elevations (WE) are values which define what elevation an object created on a particular floor plan will be set to. Note these are not part of the plan, and so are lost between sessions - in fact, the WEs get reset back to their default values every time a floor is revisited, so they must be set as part of changing floors. This has its upside: the WE can be set to a value to accommodate some special purpose, and if the floors change, it will come back reset to its default value. Also, WEs cannot be automatically set to less than zero (though they can be set so manually with Design->Set Working Elevation..., subject to being reset as explained above), so trying to set one for the floor of a sunken basement is not possible, on the face of it. It is possible to finesse this problem, however, by adding a berm to the whole plan that is of a height equal to the depth of the basement. Then the zero plane moves to the top surface of the basement floor, and a zero WE has meaning there.
XIV.
More on WEs - The WEs are partially determined by another group of values, the floor Punch! Ceiling Heights (CH). These are saved with the plan and are therefore permanently remembered once they are set different from their default 96". These CHs are not really ceiling heights in the common sense; they don't take into consideration floor thicknesses. What they are really used for is to set the WEs. The WEs are set as follows: WE1 = 0; WE2 = CH1; WE3 = CH1 + CH2. The WE supplies the default elevation for any object created on that WE's level. It has no effect on objects that already exist; only those created after the setting are affected. If the CE was incorrect and needs to be adjusted, the new value will only affect objects built thereafter; older object remain where they were created or moved to. The moral (if a commandment can have a moral) is: plan ahead - determine your elevations and such at the outset, and save a lot of re-elevation of objects later.
XV.
Moving Between Floors - I have long wondered (years, this is) why Punch!, in their Move to Floor... and Copy to Floor... commands allow for movement only to "upper" and "lower" floors. Why not allow move or copy to any of the threee floors? Oh, well...*shrug*...
Finally, all has become clear. Rather than simply moving or copying selected items from one floor to another floor, it also adds the current floor's CH when moving up, or subtracts the preceeding floor's CH when moving down. While that is a good idea some, perhaps most, of the time, sometimes it is not. For example, I want to add a basement to a house I drew on the first floor plan. To accommodate the basement, I want to move the stuff on the first floor to the second, and use the first floor for the basement. I move everything to the second floor, and that happens. However, the elevations are also bumped by the first floor CH, so the second floor is now 8' in the air.
This could have been worked around by allowing the user to set the ceiling height to zero before moving the objects, but Punch! arbitrarily doesn't allow the ceiling height to be set below 12", so you have to accept that as a minimum difference that moving something to another floor will entail.
An option in the PlansPlus PowerTool has been added to allow an obect to be moved from on floor to another without any change in its elevation, if that is needed.
