Best Practices - Wall Curb

[blusurfer]

Our firm uses 2-1/2" concrete curbs at all exterior walls and restrooms. The structure of steel stud wall then starts on top of this, with the gyp board running down the curb on both the interior and exterior to cover it and make the wall surface consistent.

How do you draw these? Do you make it part of a stacked wall? Or do you somehow show it as part of the slab?

[dgreen.49364]

I've had to do that once. I drew a concrete curb wall and then drew my steel stud wall on top of that. Not sure if that's the best way, but it's what I did and it worked fine.

[mruehr]

lots of ways
do you need to schedule them ?
Adding a sweep to the Wall type looks the easy way for me

[Dwane Lindsey]

I would vote for splitting the stud region in the wall type and making the bottom portion of the wall concrete instead of stud. Take a look at the attached images...it even gives you the material take-off if you need to get that for the walls.

The other way to do it and make it "part" of the slab would be to use a Floor Slab Edge host sweep. Make a profile that is the height and width you want, load it into the project and use that to make the curb in the areas you need. Once the sweep is placed, you'll have to use the Join Geometry tool to make it appear as solid, consistent part of the slab. The hard part about this approach is getting the gyp. board to go past the curb on both sides. You can do it for one side, but you can't unlock the bottom or top of wall layers that are not adjacent to each other. You would almost have to come back with a gyp. board wall type that only consists of the gyp. board layer. And if you are going to go that route, I would probably make a stacked wall so you don't have little walls all over the place.

The first option isn't probably "construction" correct, but it would be the easiest/cleanest way to represent and model.

[blusurfer]

I would vote for splitting the stud region in the wall type and making the bottom portion of the wall concrete instead of stud. Take a look at the attached images...it even gives you the material take-off if you need to get that for the walls.

Hmmm. So splitting the the stud region is different than making a stacked wall? Will this still work if the location is already a stacked wall? I haven't used this tool before.

mruehr, I don't need to schedule the curbs. Our structural engineer is doing a slab plan and that is where the will be called out. I just need to do something to show the wall/curb situation correctly in my building and wall sections.

Thanks for your help on this, everyone!

[patricks]

I would probably just do the curbs as separate little walls, and then join geometry with the stud walls wherever both walls are shown in a section. You can also join the walls to the slab and it will all look monolithic if the slab and curb material are the same, and you have your floor and wall cut line weights set to the same value.

The problem with splitting the stud layer in the stud wall type is that you'll have thinner line weights between the concrete area at the bottom, the gyp layers, and the stud layer. In reality, you'd probably want the curb to be outlined in the same line weight as your floor's cut line weight.

*edit* nevermind I was able to achieve the same result in section views using both a separate curb "wall" and building it into the wall type.

However if you want to use the same wall type for all your stud walls and not have to do a separate wall type for those with the curb, then you'd probably be better doing the curbs as separate short walls and embedding those into the stud walls using Join Geometry.

[Dwane Lindsey]

Hmmm. So splitting the the stud region is different than making a stacked wall? Will this still work if the location is already a stacked wall? I haven't used this tool before.

Yes, splitting the wall is different than doing the stacked wall method. With the stacked wall, you basically have to make a wall type that is concrete and gyp along with your stud/gyp wall (which sounds like you already have) and combining the two together. Even doing it this way, you still have an extra wall type in your list that you basically don't use outside the stacked wall. Either way you do it, you'll have additional wall types. The one nice thing about using the split method is that you can create one size (let's say 2x4 stud) with the concrete and just duplicate that type to make additional sizes (say 2x6). With the staked wall, you would have to make essentially double the wall types to achieve the same thing...i.e. 2x4 stud, 2x4 concrete and then the stacked wall combining the two, instead of having 2x4 stud and 2x4 with concrete.

Not to say that patricks way of using separate little walls is wrong or anything, but even with the join geometry, you run the risk of moving the stud and not the concrete wall (or vice-versa)...unless you lock them together. Yes, it will let you know via a warning when you "un-join" objects by moving them, but it seems like something that could be avoided with a stacked wall or splitting the region. Also, if you lock the two separate walls so if you move one the other does, you run the risk of locking too many things together as that increases the file size.