Documentation

VT Planner Building Setup Guide

Guide to defining building geometry, entrances, floor heights, basements, population, and saved building versions in VT Planner.

The building is the foundation of the entire project. Elevator setups and analyses are associated with the saved version of the building.

Building editor — The `Building` tab groups global data, quick actions, and the floor-by-floor table.

Main Data

In Building basics, complete:

Field	Purpose	Recommendation
`Building name`	Internal name for the building or variant.	Use a name you can recognize in reports.
`Building type`	Classifies the primary building use.	Current options: `Office`, `Residential`, `Hotel`, `Hospital`.
`Upper floors`	Number of floors above the main lobby.	Does not include basements.
`Basements`	Number of levels below the main lobby.	Use it if elevators must serve negative levels.

Demand Consequences

Building type is part of the demand model. It can change the traffic profile used later in Calculation, Simulation, and reports. For example, an Office up-peak and a Residential up-peak are not treated as the same demand scenario.

Multiple Entrance floors and their Bias values also affect how passengers are generated. Use Bias as a relative entrance weight: a value of 2.0 receives twice the entrance demand weight of a value of 1.0, after normalization.

Quick Actions

Quick actions helps speed up initial data entry:

Typical floor height: applies a typical height to floors.
Set population all floors: assigns a uniform population to each non-main floor.
Load preset: loads a reference building, if presets are available.

These actions are useful for starting, but you should review the Floor table before saving.

Floor Table

The Floor table lets you edit:

Entrance: marks entrance floors.
Bias: weights the relative demand for each entrance.
Height: floor height.
Population: population assigned to the floor.

The main floor appears as Main. Basements appear as Basement.

Save the Building

Select Save building when geometry, entrances, and population are ready. When saved:

the tab may show Building saved;
Elevator setups creation becomes available;
future analyses will use that building version.

Saved building snapshot — After saving, VT Planner shows a summary of the building used by elevator setups.

Later Changes

You can return to Edit building. If you modify the building after saving elevator setups, those setups may become outdated relative to the new building version. In that case, save an updated setup before running new analyses.