The Level Manager dialog is used to create, edit, and remove Levels in your model.
A 'Level' is simply a named elevation. You can create as many Levels as you want. The levels are saved to your SketchUp model file.
Creating Levels
You can create a new level by clicking the 'Add New Level' button:
The new level will then be selected and ready to modify. Modify the settings as needed and then click the button to apply the changes.
Active Level
You can set the 'Active Level' to lock the DECAsteel tools to the specified Level elevation. This is a powerful technique for efficiently creating structural members accurately at the desired elevation.
Click the 'Set as Active Level' button to set / unset the active level:
A checkmark is displayed next to the Active Level name when it is active.
DECAsteel tools utilize the Active Level setting in different ways:
Build Column Tool - Active Level is used as the initial default Base Elevation value (but can be changed if needed)
Build Beam Tool - Locks beam path points to the Active Level elevation
Build Brace Tool - Locks brace path points to the Active Level elevation
If the Tool utilizes the Active Level, the status will be displayed in the top-left of the viewport.
Not all tools consider the Active Level. For example, the Build Plate Tool and Extend Tool ignore the Active Level.
Example:
Here, we set the First Floor as Active Level with Elevation of 10'. This allows us to build beams at exactly 10' elevation even when utilizing a Top view.
Here is the result shown in perspective:
Removing a Level
To remove a level from the Level Manager, simply select it and click the Remove Level button:
Datums
The Datum is the ground level elevation offset. This allows you to perform your 3D modeling near the ground plane while specifying real-world elevation values.
Set a datum by clicking the 'Datum' button. Here, we have set a datum elevation of 100'.
This means that elevation values shown in the DECAsteel interface will be offset by 100' relative to the actual Z value in the 3D model.
Example:
The selected column is clearly near the ground plane. However, because we have set a datum of 100', ground level is displayed in the dialog as 100'. The yellow outline indicate that the value is being affected by the datum.
The Elevation of the Levels should be based on real-world Elevation values considering the Datum, not model Z-values.
If there is both an Active Level and Datum set, there will be some additional status text shown in the top-left to indicate how DECAsteel is calculating the elevation of the structural member.
In the example below, the Datum (ground level) is set to 100' and the active level elevation is 90'. Therefore, when building beams, the actual model Z-value used is -10' (below the ground plane)
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