building layout

[Wrongway]

It seems like it would be a good idea to create, and constrain, reference planes as a basis for building layout.
And then align model elements to the reference planes.
And dimension to the (constrained) reference planes.

In the past, I have often just drawn walls and then used those as the references for other model elements.

As an observation, I recall that I always use floor 'levels' for vertical reference. I never just draw a floor and then reference beam, footing, roof or other floor elevations to a model element. I guess it has to do with point of view (plan view, typically), where one just starts drawing walls and doesn't always take time to create vertical reference planes, (and the fact that the Revit model creation input is in terms of floor levels too).

Does anybody dimension to reference planes rather than model elements?

Thanks,

D

[DaveP]

Sounds like a lot of extra duplicate work to me.
You'd have to first determine which reference planes you want (just "major" walls? Every wall? Chases? Closet walls?)
Then you'd have to place then walls
Then you'd have to Align and lock them
Then yo'd have to hope that you didn't move things an mess up your locks.

The rule in our office is "Locking is for Families, not models"

[david_peterson]

We thru in a named a bunch of reference planes and pinned them as a control point for the exterior of a building recently.
The team thought it was well worth while. It help out in section as well as doing in place sweeps with nested detail families so we could simply cut the section and not add all the detail components down the road. That process also helped the team from making accidental changes to exterior wall locations.
I think they even aligned and locked some walls to the ref planes. Move the plane and every wall moves with it.
it was a rather complicated exterior so I think this process made sense.

[marmiketin]

Levels and grids are primarily for structure association. It allows the steel guy to easily determine heights and locations of columns, beams, joists, etc. In my opinion these are the only 'reference planes' you need. You should always be aligning exterior walls using their core so that you can change the facade to anything you like without actually changing the location of the wall. In short, architectural elements should be dimensioned and structural should be aligned to grids and levels.