Adding more floors to an already finished project

[newstudio architecture]

The client has decided to go from an 8 storey building to a 9 storey building on a project that is already at 95% of working drawings. The shape of the building steps back as it gets higher and the client would like the additional storey to be inserted between floors 3 and 4: conceptually, changing the current floors 4-8 to be 5-9 and copying floor 3 up to floor 4.

In order to preserve all of the work, sheet layouts, cross referencing, details, etc - my thought was to more all of the levels from 4-8 up, rename them accordingly, and add a new 4th floor level. When trying this, however, even with deleting everything on the third floor to have a physical separation to prevent joins from 'breaking', moving the 4-8 levels vertically results in moving all of the levels vertically, whether I selected them or not. I have a feeling that there is a constraint that is causing this.

Has anyone encountered this and can think of a good way of approaching it?

thanks,
tyler

[damon.sidel]

You could try pinning the levels you'd like to stay put then moving 4-8 up. That has worked for me in the past.

[newstudio architecture]

Thanks for the tip, Damon. It turns out there was an EQ constraint between every floor except the top floor that was causing the mass to move as one. After figuring this out and breaking it, locking the dimensions of the floors I wanted to move up together actually made it easier to have all of it move by changing only one level (thereby preserving stairs and joins).

However, problem number 2: this project seemed large enough to warrant linking separate files for 2 buildings onto a common parkade. The parkade drawing hosts all sheets and details and has levels which override those of the linked files (and are shared between the two buildings). Now that I have an additional floor, callouts that were previously referencing floor 6, for example, are no longer accurate. (callouts are how all of the enlarged unit plans have been shown on the sheets).

This was the 'breaking' of my working drawing set that I was more concerned about, and I hate to think to myself that Autocad's lack of parametric referencing would have actually made this much easier. Adding or deleting floors in a project seems to be a pretty common request when developers arm-wrestle with the Municipalities...