The Story Bar

The Story Bar displays the current active building and its stories.

About Story Bar

Offers an overview of all stories in the currently active building.

Makes it easy to identify floor levels as you scroll through them.

Shows which story is active, if any.

Allows you to activate or deactivate a story.

You can handle multiple buildings in one project, even if their stories are completely different.

  • Click the building icon to open the Spatial Locations Manager dialog box to create and edit sites, buildings and stories.
  • Click the building label (name) at the top of the drawing area to open a menu that lets you switch between the available buildings.
Right-click a story disk to open the context menu:
  • Activate story: makes the story active.
  • Exit active story: deactivates the story.
  • Select: selects the entities that belong to the story.
  • Open Story Plan: opens the drawing file related to the BIM section entity. See also the BIMSECTIONOPEN command.
Note: The Story Bar becomes visible when the STORYBAR system variable value is set to 1 or 2.

The 'No Building' mode

When no spatial location is available, the story bar automatically enters the No Building mode and shows one story disk named No story. Left-click this story disk to enter the Top View Mode (TVM) without having to create a spatial location. The story elevation used in this case is UCSZ==0.

Note: If at least one building exists, then one extra No Building item is shown in the list of buildings at the top of the drawing area. Select this item to enter the No Building mode.

Activate a story

Click a story disk to activate the story.

Note: When activating a story through this option:
  • The Top View Mode (TVM) is enabled.
  • The perspective is turned Off, if it was previously active.
  • Two temporary section planes cut the view above and below the elevation. Sliders on the Story Bar allow you to change the position of each section plane inside their story slot.
    Note: The bottom active story section can be dragged above the story elevation.
    Note: The active story top and bottom section elevation are remembered between BricsCAD sessions.
  • Elements below the elevation are rendered grayed out, not highlighted and not selectable. They can be snapped to and magnetically stuck when editing or creating entities above the elevation.
  • The UCS is set to the story elevation.
  • The OSNAPZ system variable is switched On.
  • You can click another disk to move to that story without changing the zoom level.
  • When you select a wall, a window, or a door, the editable dimensions which position the entity are displayed. Also, the reference point of these editable dimensions can be moved to another location.

Activate a story through the story disk context menu.

Note: When activating a story through this option:
  • The view is not changed.
  • Two temporary section planes cut the view above and below the elevation. Sliders on the Story Bar allow you to change the position of each section plane inside their story slot.
  • Elements below the elevation are rendered grayed out, not highlighted and not selectable. They can be snapped to and magnetically stuck when editing or creating entities above the elevation.
  • The UCS is set to the story elevation.
  • The OSNAPZ system variable is switched ON.
  • You can click another disk to move to that story.

You can also use the ACTIVATESTORY command to activate a story.

Deactivate a story

Click the Exit button at the top of the drawing area to deactivate an active story, without any view modification. The UCS, OSNAPZ and perspective (if from Top View Mode) are reset back to original values.

You can also use the DEACTIVATESTORY command or Exit Active Story from the story disk context menu.