Stepped topography

[scottyermer]

Hi, Does anyone know an effective way to do a terraced topography along the lines of the attached photo?

96086

[rtaube]

you would need two topo lines for each elevation (the bottom of the stop and the top) not sure if you can get them to stack however.

[MikeJarosz]

Maybe they don't have to stack perfectly. Half an inch off might do the trick. Nothing in topography is ever perfectly orthogonal anyway. "Nature abhors a straight line".

[damon.sidel]

This is a total hack, but we've had good luck with it for a variety of reasons...
You could use FLOORS to build up your topography. Import topo lines from a DWG and use tab select when sketching a floor.
A couple tips we've discovered with this hack:
- Join the floors so it looks good in section.
- Use a unique floor type with some Type Description comment to filter in schedules if necessary.
- Put the whole site build-up in an Option Set and it's own Workset.
- Use shafts to cut holes.

This creates a nice work-around for the earth poche / section problem that we run into a lot. You can create the floors so that the basement can have a bigger footprint than the building and still show correctly in section.

I suppose this could be done with an In-Place Family, too, but we liked the ease of using the floor tool and shafts.

[cr_gixxer]

I fully agree with damon.sidel and would use floors as well.

[Maciej Wypych]

Hi,

You can just model this topography as an in-place component. It won't require additional floor types, etc... and also it will allow you to have virtually any form you like.

[scottyermer]

That sounds awesome Damon, I'll give it a go.

[scottyermer]

OK, Taa, I will give that a try

[patricks]

What I do is lay out the elevation points for one level, then copy them over just slightly, such as 1 inch when doing curb and gutter. Then with the points still selected, open a section view cutting through the whole site and move those copied points down by however much the step is. The vertical surface will be slightly off plumb, but any contour lines will pass through there just as they should. We do the same thing for retaining walls as well.