Retaining Wall With Footing Help

[CADdancer]

Hello AUGI Members,

I am not very familiar with creating/modifying wall styles so I have been using the default AEC wall style that has an 8 inch concrete wall attached to a concrete footing. However, the particular design of the retaining wall on my project would vary the location of the wall on the footing (centered - right edge - left edge - some offset distance) on various segments of the retaining wall. With this specific wall style if I try to change the wall location on one segment it changes the wall location for all of the walls. I also would like to vary the width of the wall on some of the segments but I can only change the wall width for all of the walls. I can change the wall height for various segments but that is all.

Is there a way this style can be modified (or create a new wall style) that will allow me to change the wall width and wall location on the footing for various segments of the wall without changing all of the wall of that style....?? I have attached a drawing with this wall style for reference.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated......??


Regards,
Vince

[dzatto]

Hello AUGI Members,

I am not very familiar with creating/modifying wall styles so I have been using the default AEC wall style that has an 8 inch concrete wall attached to a concrete footing. However, the particular design of the retaining wall on my project would vary the location of the wall on the footing (centered - right edge - left edge - some offset distance) on various segments of the retaining wall. With this specific wall style if I try to change the wall location on one segment it changes the wall location for all of the walls. I also would like to vary the width of the wall on some of the segments but I can only change the wall width for all of the walls. I can change the wall height for various segments but that is all.

Is there a way this style can be modified (or create a new wall style) that will allow me to change the wall width and wall location on the footing for various segments of the wall without changing all of the wall of that style....?? I have attached a drawing with this wall style for reference.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated......??


Regards,
Vince

Select the wall, right click and choose "copy wall style and assign". This will let you create a new wall style based on the current style you selected. Then it will automatically assign the new wall style to the selected object.

Another idea would be to make a wall style for the retaining wall, and a separate style for the footing. That way you can just move the wall wherever you need it since it will not be a part of the footing. This will also reduce the number of wall styles in your drawing.

If you do it that way, you can also create a wall that allows varying widths that can be set in the properties. This way you don't need different walls for each witdth, either. So basically you will do your entire project with one wall style and one footing style. Much cleaner.

Oh yeah, to do a variable width wall, select the component and set it to 0+Base Width. Then it will let you change the width in the properties.

[CADdancer]

Dzatto,

Thank you for your quick and helpful response......!

I tried to use your input to create a retaining wall style where the base width would control the width of the footing and the wall would be a constant 12 inches width centered on the footing. However, every time I change the width of the footing I need to right click and choose "copy wall style and assign" to create a new style and then modify the edge distance.

Can I impose upon you to help me modify the attached wall style so that the 12 inch wall will always be in the center of the footing regardless what the Base Width of the footing would be.....??

Your assistance would be appreciated...! Thank you in advance.

Regards,
Vince

[david_peterson]

Depending on how you are modeling your footings and such, Steps, changes in elevation, width and thickness, Walls may not be the way to go. It all depends. On very complex foundations I've found it easier to use mass elements. In some cases this is the only way I've gotten them to work. It's a difficult and time consuming process, but you can get better results, again depends on complexity.
If you are using a wall style with a combined footing, you will need to create a new wall style for each footing width, and thickness. There's no silver bullet method to do this, you simply need to go through all the steps.

[CADdancer]

David,

Thank you for taking the time to respond....!

I believe the retaining wall I am trying to create is simple compared to what you described in your post. All I want to do is input the retaining wall (wall + footing) where the base width will control the width of the footing and the wall will be a constant 12 inches centered on the footing regardless of the width of the footing.

Can that type of wall style be created....?? If so can you possible assist and help me edit the style attached in my original post....??


Thanks again for your response......!


Regards,
Vince

[david_peterson]

Hi Vince,
If I understand you correct, I'm not sure that you can make a generic wall style in that manor, and it's been a long time since I've tried to create one. I think you can create a variable width wall (for the footing) then center a 12" wall above (2 different wall objects)
I believe you can create a wall & footing (variable wall and edge offset for footing is always constant say 8" beyond the face of the wall. I'm not sure you can do it the other way, but I'm not that good at wall styles.

[dzatto]

Dzatto,

Thank you for your quick and helpful response......!

I tried to use your input to create a retaining wall style where the base width would control the width of the footing and the wall would be a constant 12 inches width centered on the footing. However, every time I change the width of the footing I need to right click and choose "copy wall style and assign" to create a new style and then modify the edge distance.

Can I impose upon you to help me modify the attached wall style so that the 12 inch wall will always be in the center of the footing regardless what the Base Width of the footing would be.....??

Your assistance would be appreciated...! Thank you in advance.

Regards,
Vince

I was talking about creating 2 separate walls. One for the footing and one for the retaining wall. That way they were independent of each other.

However, after I got to looking at it I thought there has to be a way to get a formula to work for the offset. And wouldn't ya know I figured it out!!

The wall on the left is a single wall component. The one on the right is my original idea of 2 separate walls.

Basically, I set the wall component to be a constant 12". Then I set the footing to be 0+base width, which makes it so you can adjust it with the width property. It won't affect the wall because it's set to be constant.
After that, I set the offset for the footing to 0, and the offset for the wall to be -6" (which puts the center of the wall on the edge of the footing) + base width / 2. That makes it stay centered no matter what the footing width is.

On the example I changed the width in the properties from 2' to 5', increasing it in increments of 6" for each wall in the series. Worked perfectly! Sometimes I amaze myself.

[CADdancer]

Gentlemen,

Thank you for your expert assistance regarding my wall style inquiry.

The wall style that you created was just what I needed and works great....!!! Are there any tutorials or documentation I could look at to help improve my knowledge in creating and using custom wall styles....??

Thanks agani for all of your help....!



Regards,
Vince

[dzatto]

You can search the ATP courses on this site. I'm sure there are a few on wall components. I pretty much learned by doing.

[CADdancer]

Dzatto,

I want to thank you again for all of your help to setup the custom wall style however, I do have a question. Right now the wall has a fixed width and the footing width is variable controlled by the BW option. Would it be possible to make the width of the wall a variable also and still have the wall centered on the footing....??

This would be a tremendous help because as the style functions now I would need to have many styles on my palette each with a different wall width (6" - 8" - 10" - 12" - 16" - etc.) to make this a user friendly tool. Otherwise after a 8" style is placed I would need to do a "copy wall style and assign" for all the walls that I need to change and input the new wall width and adjust the edge offset manually.

Is this beyond the capability of this feature....??

Thank again for your assistance.


Regards,
Vince