Areas & the Building

The area menu

Click any area with the Select tool (on a plan view) and its menu opens on the left side of the canvas. The menu adapts to what you selected -- a regular area, the building itself, or an obstruction show different controls. It closes when you deselect, and it doesn't open for auto-generated companion zones like a dock's staging area (their shape is managed for you).

Controls for every area:

• Area Label -- the area's name, shown in its on-canvas label. Names must be unique within the view; the building's name is fixed.
• Border / Background -- color swatches for the area's outline and fill (or transparent). Use color to make storage zones read at a glance.
• Layers (not on the building) -- Bring to Front, Bring Forward, Send Backward, Send to Back. Ordering matters when areas overlap: which one shows on top, and which one wins a click.
• Display Options row (icon toggles):
  • Show/Hide Dimensions -- the area's edge dimensions.
  • Allow/Disallow Snapping -- whether OTHER shapes you drag snap to this one's edges.
  • Show/Hide Label -- the name-and-counts label (not on the building).
  • Make Obstruction (not on the building) -- flags the area as blocked floor: columns of storage flow around it and no storage generates inside. Only available while the area has no storage type set.
• Actions -- Lock/Unlock (a locked area can't be moved or reshaped), Copy (duplicates the area, same as Ctrl+C), and Delete.

Storage areas additionally get the Storage Options group -- the rack and floor storage buttons plus the storage-details flyout expander (covered in the racking and layout options topics).

When the building is selected, the menu shows building-wide controls instead:

• Create column grid / Show-Hide Column Grid Lines -- generate the building's column grid and toggle the grid-line display. With a grid present, Column Dimensions sets the steel's length and width in inches.
• Clear Height and Min Clearance -- the building's clear height and the required minimum clearance, in inches. Clear height minus min clearance is the top-of-storage height that caps how tall every elevation may build; changing either reflows all storage.
• Frame Buffer / Beam Buffer (shown once the drawing has rack areas) -- how much clearance the layout keeps between building columns and rack frames or beams. The magic-wand button appears when the drawing has a verified seismic design category and auto-sets both buffers from it and your tallest rack.
• Distance to Rack -- padding between the building walls and generated rack, with an eye toggle to visualize the padded zone. Obstructions get the same control for their own keep-out distance.

The column grid

The building's column grid comes from the wizard (or the building menu's column grid button). Column lines are labeled numbers along one axis and letters along the other, so any bay has an address like "B-3" -- Clark understands those addresses too.

Between column lines, the grid shows its spacing dimensions. CLICK a spacing label to edit that gap: a dialog opens with the distance and a scope choice -- just this spacing, mirror it to the matching first/last spacing, all interior spacings, or every spacing. Column steel dimensions (length and width in inches) are set in the building menu's Column Dimensions fields.

Columns matter to rack: the layout keeps clearance between building columns and racking members (the Frame and Beam Buffer settings on the building). Sometime building columns are embedded (or 'buried') in the rack bay itself, when that happens pallet (and/or carton) positions are lost -- the counts carry an estimated deduction for it. The summary export and capacity views let you choose gross counts (ignore column losses) or net.

Obstructions

An obstruction is any area rack must flow around: an office, mechanical equipment, a mezzanine post cluster. Draw an area with the Draw tool, select it, and click Make Obstruction in its Display Options (available while the area has no storage type). Rack bays that overlap an obstruction are removed from the layout automatically, and the Distance to Rack padding on the obstruction sets a keep-out buffer beyond its edges -- with an eye toggle to visualize it.

Floor storage areas block rack the same way an obstruction does -- two storage systems can't occupy the same floor. And staging/clearance zones from doors can each be flagged as obstructions from their own menus.