Fixing the "floor-to-floor height" error

FAQ: exporting geometry into cove.tool

Patrick Chopson avatar
Written by Patrick Chopson
Updated over a week ago

Your floor-to-floor height seems to be incorrect

Double-check your building height and make sure that you eliminate

unnecessary horizontal objects like stairs and site elements.

For help, see these support articles:

The error message seen above on the 3D analysis page indicates 1 of 2 things:

  1. Your building height may be incorrect, or;

  2. You are exporting too many floor objects.

In order to calculate your building's floor-to-floor height for the thermal analysis cove.tool divides the building height by the #of floors according to your geometry data. If this value is less than 8 ft (2.4 m), this will automatically trigger the error message above. To correct your floor-to-floor height, try the following two methods.

a. Re-enter the correct building height

Steps to correct building height may vary depending on which plugin you are using.

  • For Revit - Click the "export height" button and overwrite the value with the correct building height. Steps are shown here.

  • SketchUp or Rhino - The building height is based on the difference in elevation of the highest roof surface and the 0'-0'' elevation plane. You may need to adjust your model's location in the Z-plance to align ground level with Z-0'-0'' elevation, then re-export.

  • Manual mode - Overwrite height manually

b. Simplifying your Floors Export

Beginning by reviewing your Floors 3D view. For cove.tool's analysis purpose we only need the objects with best represents the continuous conditioned surface of the thermal model. Extra objects like floor finishes, landings, staircases, room tags, exterior elements (balconies, overhangs) should not be exported as floor objects. These should be removed from the export view. In the diagram below, we show what a view may look like before and after it is cleaned.

Depending on the platform you are using, you can also use a filter or selection tool to see how many objects are in view. Based on the floor objects count, you can determine whether the #of floors prompts the error again.

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