Best practice for setting room ceiling height when vaulted

[GeneDavis]

Plenty of residential designs have this arrangement.  A one-story arrangement, flat ceilings in the side wings where beds and baths and laundry and whatnot go, and a tall vaulted ceiling over the open-plan where kitchen dining living entertaining happens.  See the section here.  The entire roof is bearing on 9 foot walls, and the vault is handled with scissors trusses.

 

 

For purposes of drawing the roof planes, and generating truss envelopes in the flat-ceiling areas, the 9-foot wall (room) height is proper, but my tiny little issue is in the center bay when drawing the upper windows in the gables.  In the pic you can see where the 9/0 elevation intersects all those upper windows, the side traps, and the lowers of the center group.  That means the windows have elevation specs for their bottoms and tops relating to a second floor which is not there.  Elevations like -11 1/2" at the window bottoms.

 

Is it best practice to draw a second floor and specify the center bay with the ceiling vault as open below?  Doing this has no effect on the model, as it is all roofed as needed, and windows are all placed where wanted.  Con docs can roll out just fine.  Framing elevations will be done to specify how the openings are framed, so windows get installed per the design.

 

But I was thinking, is open below any kind of aid for doing the modeling?  To place and size the uppers, I took sections like shown here, used CAD to define the shapes, and placed windows snapping to the CAD, and using measurements from CAD lines to modify the "arch" shapes with tops parallel to ceiling.  The windows are right there where they belong, but open one, and the elevations for sill and head look hinky.

 

 

[rgardner]

14 minutes ago, GeneDavis said:

Plenty of residential designs have this arrangement.  A one-story arrangement, flat ceilings in the side wings where beds and baths and laundry and whatnot go, and a tall vaulted ceiling over the open-plan where kitchen dining living entertaining happens.  See the section here.  The entire roof is bearing on 9 foot walls, and the vault is handled with scissors trusses.

 

 

For purposes of drawing the roof planes, and generating truss envelopes in the flat-ceiling areas, the 9-foot wall (room) height is proper, but my tiny little issue is in the center bay when drawing the upper windows in the gables.  In the pic you can see where the 9/0 elevation intersects all those upper windows, the side traps, and the lowers of the center group.  That means the windows have elevation specs for their bottoms and tops relating to a second floor which is not there.  Elevations like -11 1/2" at the window bottoms.

 

Is it best practice to draw a second floor and specify the center bay with the ceiling vault as open below?  Doing this has no effect on the model, as it is all roofed as needed, and windows are all placed where wanted.  Con docs can roll out just fine.  Framing elevations will be done to specify how the openings are framed, so windows get installed per the design.

 

But I was thinking, is open below any kind of aid for doing the modeling?  To place and size the uppers, I took sections like shown here, used CAD to define the shapes, and placed windows snapping to the CAD, and using measurements from CAD lines to modify the "arch" shapes with tops parallel to ceiling.  The windows are right there where they belong, but open one, and the elevations for sill and head look hinky.

 

 

Place the windows on floor 1 and change the elevations then place them.  Set wall to balloon frame and you are good to go.  No need to go to 2nd floor.