Best practice for levels?

[WolffG]

I have a house on a sloped site with a first floor elevation of about 600' above sea level and a lake at about 440'.

For purposes of designing and detailing, am I better off setting the first floor elevation at +/- 600' or should I keep it a 0'0" and then reset the levels when I get to site work and rendering?

Or should I set the base elevation of the site at 0' -0" (+/-) for the floor elevation and then adjust the contours to relative elevations from there? That would be a bit of a pain when it comes to final documents

Thanks.

[renogreen]

You can change your base elevation at any time so do what you like. If you prefer to work at 0'-0" do that. How are doing site work? Are you importing a civil topo? Google earth? Either way, you'll probably want to change the base elevation when you get to the site work.

Personally, I prefer to work at 0'-0" until I have a reason to switch, then I switch. It's so easy to do that it isn't an issue.

[The Monk]

I have a house on a sloped site with a first floor elevation of about 600' above sea level and a lake at about 440'.

For purposes of designing and detailing, am I better off setting the first floor elevation at +/- 600' or should I keep it a 0'0" and then reset the levels when I get to site work and rendering?

Or should I set the base elevation of the site at 0' -0" (+/-) for the floor elevation and then adjust the contours to relative elevations from there? That would be a bit of a pain when it comes to final documents

Thanks.

The approach I have engaging for several years is to building the site model in one file (it later becomes the host file for the project building) and the project building as a separate Revit project file. This allows you to link the building project file into the site file. From there you can move the building as a unit to the elevation level you desire. In your site Revit file establish where you want your base finish floor (or structural floor level for that matter) elevation value. Move the levels to the location. If you have identified several levels I would dimension them and lock the dimensions. This will allow you to idenify the base elevation value and have all the level move together.

This approach allows for modeling the site without damaging the building file and vise versa. Additionally, you can report the coordinate system from the site project file to the building file once you have the building where you want it. Each time you open the site file the building will always be in the correct place for both horizontal and vertical controls.

I use the site file as a host and it becomes the file I generate all my construction documents. Schedules, details, sheet set up, and notation are all in the host file. Works very well.

One additional step I take these days is to make ALL my projects as Worksharing. This provides redundency to protect the work. Backups can only be so good. I have a spare computer which is nothing more than a storage server for projects. That is where I have my projects Central files located. And of course I have separate back-up hard drives (mostly portable - they are incredibly cheap these days). I know this is not part of your question. But "best practices" can encompas additional processes.

I hope you find this helpful,

John