Site retaining walls

[patricks]

How does everyone here create a retaining wall in topography when you're trying to grade the site?

Say you have an existing toposurface, and you're going to need a retaining wall in some area. Do you create the wall first, and then do the graded region and place the topo spot elevations around the wall? Or do you just kind of place the elevations first and then create the wall?

Also how do you handle the grades around a retaining wall? I know in reality the topo lines would run very nearly on top of each other. Do you just have to place a bunch of points at each elevation very close together where the wall occurs?

[cphubb]

Retaining walls remain high on our list of things that are difficult to do in Revit. However we have a pretty good solution.

1. Delete all the extra points around the area you are grading. By this I mean all the points that are not on or near an actual contour.
2. Draw your wall and set the top and bottom elevations so you know were to do your grading.
3. Add the "top" points along the high edge of the wall. Add only as many as necessary to move the contour line.
4. Add the "Bottom" points along the middle of the wall. Again add only as many as required to move the contour.
5. View in 3D and section to make sure the wall is "retaining" all the bank.

Walls will "over right" the topo in section and elevation.

Take a look at the attached file. We use it as an internal example of how to model a retaining wall

[bpayne]

Honestly....detail lines on the site plan. I've almost given up modeling anything, but the flatest of sites.

[Tobie]

i have found the easiest method for us is to split surface around the wall. this does two things.
it creates two topo surfaces with points around the wall. you can now select the main surface and change the points next to the wall to show graded area.
it also crates the line between the wall and the topo so it displays correctly on elevation.
if you only have the wall go into the topo no line will display between the wall and topo.
on the first image you can see the little sliver of topo that remains in the wall. you can remove this, but then you will not have a topo hatch in section under the wall. you can just edit the surface and set the point heights to the same as the "graded" area.

[cphubb]

Not to be disagreeable but we have stopped splitting surfaces. Once a surface is split there is no going back, and unless the surface touches exactly the wall there is a gap that is hard to close. Please take a look at the section in my rvt file and you will see that the view is like it should be.

[Tobie]

hi chris.
i do agree, but i always create a topo in the demolished phase, as with grading, to have that backup. i have also done the retaining wall with your method with great success. only problem as i noted was the connection between topo and wall in elevation needs a bit of work i.e. no cut line will show. creating the topo with the difference in the two levels happening in the wall sometimes changes the area around the retaining wall. sometimes we don't have more points to work with and keep the area "stable".

[DanielleAnderson]

Perhaps this is outlandish, and I have not tried it myself, but provided the top of your retaining wall is flat, could you use the site pad tool and just customize your pad so that it's the depth of a wall?

[Dimitri Harvalias]

I use a combination of Chris's and Danielle's suggestions to do the trick. Create the topo and the retaining wall per Chris's example. Using the walls as your guide, pick the wall faces to create a pad that has the elevation set to the top of the retaining wall footing. Hide the pads in section (which I would normally do anyway) and you will have a clean join where the wall meets grade and fairly accurate cut and fill volumes if you do it as a graded region.