Building Pad

[ejburrell67787]

This may yet qualify for the thickest question of the year award...

I don't know what a building pad is or what it is for - I have read the help files and tutorials etc on Revit but still cannot see the point....!?!?

I have modelled a floor slab and used host sweep to add floor slab edge thickening to the perimeter for a floating concrete ground slab... It shows fine in section etc... should I actually be using a building pad for a ground floor slab? Is that the whole point of it? If so why use this rather than modelling a floor slab? Will host sweeps (slab edge thickening)attach to a building pad?

Enlighten me please....?

Elrond

[PeterJ]

Pads come with a digger and dozer so they will regrade the area beneath.

If you were using a suspended ground floor slab on a sloping site and wanted to express your sub-floor void in the drawings you could make a slab that was DPM topped by 50 mm of sand or lean mix and use that to effectively remove your topsoil and do the subsoil scrape, set if at FFL - 600 and you have your finished floor including screed, insulation, beam and block assembly and a void space of 150 or whatever is left below.

Similarly you can use it to fill around a building for simple landscaping or to raise up thje floor underneath a domestic garage if required. It is slightly easier tool to use than the regrading tool in the site package.

[ejburrell67787]

Thanks PeterJ - so my topo and ground floor slab probably exist in the same space wheras if it was a building pad the topo would be "dug out" to accomodate the pad?

Otherwise does the building pad behave like a floor slab with sweeps etc?

I had previously included DPM, sand blinding, compacted hardcore as layers in the floor buildup but they don't wrap under floor slab thickening so I removed them - how do you deal with this... drafting tools?

Cheers, Elrond

[aaronrumple]

I just use drafting details around thickened slabs. I haven't found the need to include gran. fill with any thickened slab modeling. The topo/building pad provides the compacted fill/earth. The floor the base of gran. fill and conc. or whatever construction is being used. My sweeps go along the floor, not the pad.

[PeterJ]

Unless there is a compelling reason to model them I tend to show these things in one or two sections and then use 'as described elsewhere' and maybe blank over the offending area with a filled region, then in the ones I do need to detail up I use the Edit Cut Profile tool.


Or I put a note saying "foundation appearance indicative only REFER STRUCTUAL ENGINEER'S DRAWING FOR DESIGN AND DETAIL." and let some other poor bugger do the work.

[ejburrell67787]

Aaron - using the building pad as compacted fill under the floor slab sound like a good idea to me - thanks. It should sort out any conflicts between topo and ground floor slab.

PeterJ - I also tend to rope the SE into my notes for foundations etc - however they usually won't have anything to do with DPM so just got to make sure that is covered in my details / spec etc.

I think I am a little clearer now thanks...

[funkman]

I find in most instances, the "building pad" should be renamed to "topo pad" simply because we are grading the topo, and not the building (eg under the basement slab).

This would make clear to some degree the way people think as to what this function is for.

At least until there is a thickness/depth option in that it could be used for building purposes.

And I always leave the SE details to the SE !! <insert smilie>