Stories organize your model into levels, and buildings group stories into separate stacks within one project. Use stories to set floor-to-floor heights, add basements and repeat typical floors. Add buildings when parts of a project, such as a podium and a tower or several blocks on a masterplan, need different story setups.
How buildings and stories work
Every project starts with one building, Building 1, with a single story of about 3 m (roughly 9' 10").
Stories belong to a building. Each building has its own story count, story heights, views and base offset (its datum).
One building is active at a time. Other buildings appear as a read-only underlay, which you can turn off in the view settings.
Objects belong to the story where their base sits. Floor slabs, beams and roofs are the exception: floor slabs and beams belong to the story above them.
You only need separate buildings when story setups differ. If every part of the project shares the same levels, keep everything in one building.
Note: Building setups are shared by every design proposal in a project. AI agents don't create separate buildings, so you add them yourself.
Add stories
In the left panel, choose the building from the Building dropdown.
Next to Stories, click +.
Set how many stories you want to add and the height of each one.
Confirm. The new stories are added to the active building, and each one gets its own plan view under it in the Stories tree.
You can also add below-grade stories, such as basements, from the Stories tree in the left panel.
Change a story's height
In the Stories tree in the left panel, select the story.
Type the new height. You can use metric or feet-and-inches values, such as
10'6"or10 6.Confirm the value. The stories above it shift to match.
Story height has no minimum or maximum. A value of 0, a negative number or text shows an Invalid input message.
New spaces are locked to their story height, which is shown by a lock icon next to Height in the Properties panel. Locked spaces resize when the story height changes. If you push-pull, split a face or change a space's height in Program Mode, it unlocks and keeps its own height. You can also click the lock icon to unlock a space yourself.
Note: Changing story heights moves the base elevations of objects on the stories above. Because objects belong to the story their base sits on, an object such as a mezzanine space can end up on a different story.
Remove stories
In the left panel, choose the building you want to change from the Building dropdown.
Next to Stories, click -.
Note: Stories are removed from the top down, and everything on them is deleted. Move any objects you want to keep to another story first.
Duplicate a story above or below
To repeat a typical floor, finish one story and then duplicate it.
Select the objects on the story you want to repeat.
Do one of the following:
In the Properties panel, click Duplicate Above or Duplicate Below.
Right-click and choose a duplicate option from the Right-click menu.
Press
Ctrl+Up arroworCtrl+Down arrow.
The Properties panel stays open after you duplicate, so you can keep working on the selection, and the right panel switches to Areas to show the updated totals.
Note: When you duplicate spaces or BIM objects, you can make them Instance copies (linked copies that update together) or Unique copies (independent copies): choose Duplicate as Instance or Duplicate as Unique in the Right-click menu, or press Ctrl + Alt + Up arrow or Down arrow for a unique copy.
Move objects to another story
Select one or more objects.
In the Properties panel, open the Story dropdown.
Choose the story to move them to. The objects stay selected.
If the selected objects are on different stories, the dropdown shows Varies. Locked objects are skipped, and a message tells you so. The Story dropdown isn't available for CAD files, PDFs, images or reference lines, and the Site Plan story isn't listed.
Note: Doors, windows, furniture and other families belong to the story they sit on. Each family has its own Story field in its properties, where you can see or change its story.
Work with multiple buildings
You can add, rename, duplicate and delete buildings. Each new building starts with its own stories and base offset, so you can set it at a different ground level from the others.
Add a building when part of the project needs its own levels, such as a tower with different floor heights from its podium.
Rename a building so it's easy to tell apart from the others.
Duplicate a building to copy only its story setup or to copy its geometry as well.
Set the base offset to move the building's datum up or down, for example on a sloping site.
Create a Common Building, a shared building within the project.
To move an object to another building, select it and change its building in the Properties panel.
See other stories while you draw
You can show the plans of other stories as underlays to align walls and cores between floors.
In the Stories tree in the left panel, hover over a story's plan view.
Click the eye icon to show it as an underlay. You can turn on several upper and lower stories at once.
The story directly below appears in solid grey and the story directly above in black dashed lines. Other lower stories get their own colors, and other upper stories appear in grey dashed lines. You can snap to underlays, but you can't select them. Furniture isn't shown in underlays.
Tips
Use the Split Volume tool with Split by Story to slice a tall mass into pieces that line up with your story heights.
Filter the Areas tab in the right panel by story to check areas floor by floor.
Related articles
Left panel, views and saved views
Properties panel
Split Volume
Copy, arrays and Families
Design proposals
Keyboard shortcuts