Elevations & Levels

Elevation views and the view dock

An elevation is the side view of your rack: the frame, the beam levels, and what sits on them. Each elevation lives in its own view, and the view dock at the bottom of the canvas is how you move between them -- thumbnail cards for the plan and every elevation. Click a card to open that view.

The dock's add button creates a new elevation view: Pallet Rack Elevation or Floor Stack Elevation. Hovering the dock expands the cards, revealing Clone and Delete for elevation views (the plan can't be deleted, and auto-generated elevations can't be cloned). Clone is the fast way to make a variant -- copy, then change the one thing that differs. If an elevation gets too tall for the building, its dock thumbnail carries a warning, and a banner appears on the canvas ("Elevation exceeds building clear height") with a button that jumps you to the offending elevation.

Areas pick which elevation they use in the area menu's Elevation dropdown -- an elevation defined once can serve any number of areas, and the plan's capacity counts always reflect the elevation each area references.

The elevation menu

Open an elevation view and its menu appears on the left. With nothing selected it shows the ELEVATION's own settings; click a level and it switches to that level's settings.

Elevation settings:

• Elevation Name -- the view's name (unique among elevations).
• Frame Color / Beam Color -- colors for this elevation everywhere it renders: the elevation view, the plan (rack drawn in these colors), and exports. Color is how you tell elevations apart at a glance, and the Select Rack tool's override menu uses the same swatches.
• Structure fields -- Beam Length (the bay's clear span), Frame Depth, Frame Height, Col. Width / Col. Depth (the upright post's profile), Spacer Qty / Spacer Len. (row spacers tying back-to-back frames), Anchor Qty (anchors per frame), and Ground Clearance (shown only for tunnels and bottom-beam racks -- pallets on the slab have no clearance to set).
• Show Labels -- per-level labels on the elevation drawing ("Level N" with its max weight).
• Is Tunnel -- turns this elevation into a tunnel: a raised opening that traffic passes through, used by rack areas as their tunnel elevation. Tunnels hide the Bottom Beam toggle and set their opening height via Ground Clearance.
• Bottom Beam -- whether the first level sits on a beam near the floor instead of pallets resting directly on the slab.
• Auto-fill Levels -- see the auto-fill topic.

Changing a structural field that other parts of the drawing depend on -- Is Tunnel, Beam Length, Frame Depth, or Col. Width -- warns you first when the elevation is in use and the change would break per-bay overrides or a tunnel pairing.

Working with levels

In an elevation view, use the Select tool and click a level to select it. Small controls appear beside the selected level: arrows to move it up or down a position (animated swap), a plus to duplicate it (the copy lands right above), and a minus to remove it -- the minus only appears while the elevation has more than its minimum number of levels. You can also drag one level onto another to swap them. The menu's Delete Level button does the same as the minus.

The level's settings appear in the menu when selected:

• Storage Unit -- Cartons or Pallets, per level. A mixed elevation (pallets up top as reserve storage, cartons below for hand picking) is normal.
• Unit dimensions -- Height, Width, Depth, and Weight of the pallet or carton on this level. The quantities across, deep, and high set how many fit. Shrinking a unit re-packs the quantity up to what now fits; growing it clamps the quantity down.
• Beam Height -- the beam profile's face height for this level's beam.
• Lift Off -- the clearance above the carton or pallet before the next beam.
• Accessory -- None, Wire Deck, or Pallet Support, with a style picker (Deck Style / Support Style). Decks rest on beams, so a beamless bottom level can't carry one.
• Set as Default Level -- marks this level as the template auto-fill clones.

Every level shows "Level N" plus its max weight on the drawing when Show Labels is on.

Auto-fill levels

Auto-fill keeps an elevation full without hand-placing every level: pick a template (the default level) and the app clones it upward until the stack reaches the top-of-storage height. Turn it on with the Auto-fill Levels toggle -- if the elevation already has several levels, a dialog asks which one is the default.

While auto-fill is on, a status bar appears on the canvas and the auto-generated levels above the default are locked (the default itself and levels below it stay editable). Edit the default and the fill recalculates: a shorter template adds a level when one now fits, a taller one drops the top level -- both directions are automatic. The Disable button on the status bar (or the toggle) turns it off and leaves the current levels in place, fully editable.

Heights, fit, and the 2-inch grid

Blue Vellum currently supports teardrop frames which have punched holes every 2 inches, so beam positions snap to a 2-inch grid -- nudging a unit height or beam height can move the level boundary by a full 2-inch step, and a small change can ripple upward: every level above rides up with it. We're planning support for different spacing (eg structural rack) in the future.

The frame automatically grows to extend above the top beam and rounds to a sensible height. You can override Frame Height manually -- down to the top beam, and up to 12 inches below the building's clear height. If a manually-drawn stack outgrows the top-of-storage height (clear height minus min clearance), the elevation is flagged: the canvas banner, the dock thumbnail warning, and the plan label's "invalid elevation configuration" all point at the same problem. Auto-fill elevations never overflow -- they clip themselves to fit.