Creating a stacking diagram

A stacking diagram provides a floor-by-floor representation of the total amount of area taken up by all the spaces on the floors. It is useful for balancing the allocation of spaces among several floors.

A stacking diagram is inserted into a drawing automatically when an adjacency matrix is imported (see Importing  an adjacency matrix spreadsheet). A stacking diagram can also be inserted manually with the Stacking Diagram tool. The stacking diagram is based on spaces and space relationships currently in the file.

To insert a stacking diagram:

Click the tool.

Click to place the object, and click again to set the rotation. The first time you use the tool in a file, a properties dialog box opens. Set the default parameters. The parameters can be edited later from the Object Info palette.

The stacking diagram is created.

The layers are “stacked” on the basis of their layer elevation values, which can be changed in the Organization dialog box (Tools > Organization).

If no space objects currently exist in the drawing, a stacking diagram place holder is created.

Like the adjacency matrix, the stacking diagram dynamically shows what is in the drawing. The stacking diagram updates automatically when spaces or space links are changed. In addition, fill attributes assigned to spaces are reflected in the stacking diagram automatically.

The Rotation, Height Scale and Width Scale parameters of an adjacency matrix can be edited from the Object Info palette. In addition, the Gap Scale parameter controls the distance between the stacking diagram rows. Show Totals toggles the display of the total amount of space used.

The stacking diagram is arranged in rows that correspond to the layers of the drawing. The spaces present in each layer are shown in separate rows; the layer name and total area used are displayed to the left of each row.

Spaces in the stacking diagram are grouped by Department name (set for each space in the Object Info palette). Adjacent spaces with the same Department name are separated by thin lines.