stepped foundations

[Martin P]

I cant take the credit for thinking this one up, and unfortunately I cant remember who told me! on alt.cad.revit :oops:

But it was a top tip anyway!

When you have stepped foundations, it can become quite difficult editing elevations of walls etc etc. soooo.... the best thing to do is instead of using a wall for the foundation, use a floor. This has many advantages - the overlaps at steps are easy to manage, but best of all the walls can be "attached" using the bottom pick button to make them go to the floor component......

bottom pick button!! haha :oops: :lol: :wink:

[tatlin]

Martin,

It's even easier than that. Walls can be attached up to and down to other walls (starting in 5.0). This makes creating things like stepped foundations very easy. Take a look at the included files. In this example there are three stacked walls:

- The top wall is a vertically compound wall that runs the total height of the building above grade.

- The footing is a 3' wide concrete wall placed on a "top of footing" level.

- The foundation stem wall is a 12" wide concrete wall.

Notice the foundation stem wall is attached down to the footing and also up to the vertically compound wall. This give you the geometry you need and at the bottom and also at the top for the brick shelf.


Matt Jezyk
Autodesk Revit


I cant take the credit for thinking this one up, and unfortunately I cant remember who told me! on alt.cad.revit :oops:

But it was a top tip anyway!

When you have stepped foundations, it can become quite difficult editing elevations of walls etc etc. soooo.... the best thing to do is instead of using a wall for the foundation, use a floor. This has many advantages - the overlaps at steps are easy to manage, but best of all the walls can be "attached" using the bottom pick button to make them go to the floor component......

bottom pick button!! haha :oops: :lol: :wink:

[bclarch]

Matt,
Very informative & helpful post.:!: Would you please provide the following clarifications?
1. Did you edit the wall profile of the compound wall or the foundation wall? Would it matter which one is edited or would either give the same result?
2. Was the brick ledge in the foundation wall made using a void sweep or a reveal?
3. Did you create mutiple footing levels of were the stepped footings created from one level with different "offset from level" settings?

And now for the backlash, after all no good deed goes unpunished. :) Based on the discussions on this forum I don't think that most users have picked up on the fact that you can attach walls up and down to other walls. This is a very useful enhancement to the program's functionality. May I repeat an oft heard request from us users? Please provide more thorough documentation on what has been changed / added / fixed with each new release. Surely you must track these things internally for your own records so it does not seem as if it would take a great deal of time to create such a list for distribution to your users. End of rant. Thanks again for the informative post.

[tatlin]

Robert,

Let's see if I can clarify (I could post the rvt file for dissection if you would like):

1. The general idea is to get the exterior wall design the way you like it, then attach the foundation wall up to the exterior building wall. The elevation profile of the vertically compound wall was edited. Editing the 'top' wall will allow you to step the wall in response to the site grade. The bottom extension distances is applied to the elevation profile, creating the masonry that will rest on the brick ledge. This is equivalent to the architect giving the structural engineer a drawing showing where the brick ledges are needed

2. The brick ledge in the foundation wall is made automatically as a result of the attach to the top wall. The foundation wall knows about the layer extension on the top wall and 'forms' itself to fit accordly. No manual creation of voids or reveals needed. The brick ledge also updates automatically if the top wall is changed.

3. You could set up the levels either way, depending on your preference. I just used a single level and an offset for this example.

In regards to your last comment, good point.

Are you familiar with our release notes? You can find them on your CD or online at http://revit.autodesk.com/documents.asp . There is also a shortcut to this link from the application under Help|Documents on the Web that will take to to the same place.

Do you have any suggestions on how we could communicate these changes to reach a wider audience? Maybe a tip of the day?

I just checked and found this text in the release notes, describing changes to Attach Top/Bottom:


Walls Attach to Wall Above or Below
Wall tops and bottoms can be attached to parallel walls directly above or below using Attach Top/Bottom.


Matt Jezyk
Autodesk Revit



Matt,
Very informative & helpful post.:!: Would you please provide the following clarifications?
1. Did you edit the wall profile of the compound wall or the foundation wall? Would it matter which one is edited or would either give the same result?
2. Was the brick ledge in the foundation wall made using a void sweep or a reveal?
3. Did you create mutiple footing levels of were the stepped footings created from one level with different "offset from level" settings?

And now for the backlash, after all no good deed goes unpunished. :) Based on the discussions on this forum I don't think that most users have picked up on the fact that you can attach walls up and down to other walls. This is a very useful enhancement to the program's functionality. May I repeat an oft heard request from us users? Please provide more thorough documentation on what has been changed / added / fixed with each new release. Surely you must track these things internally for your own records so it does not seem as if it would take a great deal of time to create such a list for distribution to your users. End of rant. Thanks again for the informative post.

[Steve_Stafford]

Very nice!! May I suggest a new compound wall tutorial based upon that example?? Can I have it tomorrow? :D (was going to say this afternoon, but I want to be reasonable)

[gregcashen]

Do you have any suggestions on how we could communicate these changes to reach a wider audience? Maybe a tip of the day?

Since this has become the new new alt.cad.revit.blah.blah.blah, why not post this stuff here...I suppose you could also post it to alt.cad.revit!

[aggockel50321]

Matt,

On your vertically compound wall shown in your first pdf, suppose I wanted the layer above the cmu & concrete ledge (wall sweep) to be wood sheathing & siding, that would be about 1-1/2" thick as opposed to the 4" thick brick? Wall layers seem to want to align to the ext. face, and not step back. How do I get that siding to step back?

[bclarch]

Do you have any suggestions on how we could communicate these changes to reach a wider audience? Maybe a tip of the day?

Matt,

I usually download and install from the web. I must admit that when the CD arrives in the mail I usually don't look at it, I just file it with our other software CDs. I guess that I should at least take a peek at it when it comes in. Perhaps there should be a pop up box that comes up the first time that a new install is opened that says something like "Detailed release notes are available on the CD or on the Autodesk website at www.autodesk....." This pop up should of course have a "Do not show this message again." check box.

A "tip of the day" type thing might be useful as well. Depending on how well they are implemented they can be very useful or just plain annoying. One thing that I have often wished for with "tip of the day" help is a level of difficulty option. That way the user can set whether the tips offered are beginer, intermediate or advanced level. (Or perhaps just two levels beginer/intermediate and intermediate/advanced.) As long as we are given the option of turning it off I would be in favor of having a tip of the day.

Also, bug fixes have been an issue in the past. I have not pushed Revit to its limits as much as others on this group have so this has not been a big issue for me. However, there have been posts in the past on the various newsgroups where users are asking other users for advice on whether or not to upgrade based on whether specific bugs have been fixed. Even though most Revit upgrades go smoothly, I think that most users don't want to risk upgrading in the middle of a complex project if they don't have too. Perhaps the power users could provide more specific comments addressing this issue.

Thanks for listening.

[David Conant]

Release notes for Revit are available for each release as Matt has stated. They generally contain what we internally consider to be "new functionality". This is usually a fairly long list and includes many items that users would consider to be bug fixes. We don't include what we would consider bug fixes because many if not most of them do not correspond to what has been reported in user terms.
A user reported bug often breaks down into several specific projects internally some of which are fixes to existing functions and others that introduce new functionality. In the course of a major release, we fix hundreds or thousands of bugs, many of which are never reported or present in shipped software. We have found that the effort to sort out reported bugs and reconstruct fixes in the terms they were originally reported is very time consuming and at least as confusing as it was clarifying. We do try to inform users of particularly egregious bugs that have been fixed as we ship various interim releases.

[sbrown]

I think the easiest way to keep up with what is new is to allways do the update tutorials and the online class which follows the major releases.

[aggockel50321]

Hey,

Matt (or David) didn't answer my question (prev. post). BTW, I was impressed to see what document format Matt used to post his drawings.

[tatlin]

Andrew,

In response to your question above, it is not currently possible to make the wall different widths by moving the side faces in the wall type. Vertically Compound Walls are currently restricted to be the same thickness. There are workarounds of adding wall sweeps or reveals or breaking up your wall into two wall types. Please call support if you need more info.

In response to your question about document format, here's the dwf as well (notice it's smaller than the pdf?).

Matt Jezyk
Autodesk Revit


Hey,

Matt (or David) didn't answer my question (prev. post). BTW, I was impressed to see what document format Matt used to post his drawings.

[aggockel50321]

Thanks for the quick response, Matt. Smaller dwf file size noted. However, when I double clicked on the dwf file download, AEV 3.1 reported that the file type was incompatable, & would not load it. ??

[Allen Lacy]

I had the same problem with Matt's DWF, but then I right-click downloaded and was able to open it with no problem. Bug?

[christopher.zoog51272]

I had the same problem with Matt's DWF, but then I right-click downloaded and was able to open it with no problem. Bug?

Yes, I think it's a bug with this board, you have to right click download, like Allen said.

Best be would be to zip it.

[tatlin]

Try updating to the newest version of AEV. You can check automatically from AEV under "Help|Check for Viewer Updates"

I used the current version (Ver 3.1 Build Version: 3.1.0.92) to preview the file here and it worked fine.

If you still have problems after updating, there is a newsgroup called "autodesk.express.viewer" at news://discussion.autodesk.com that might be able to help more that we can.

Matt Jezyk
Autodesk Revit





Thanks for the quick response, Matt. Smaller dwf file size noted. However, when I double clicked on the dwf file download, AEV 3.1 reported that the file type was incompatable, & would not load it. ??

[Wes Macaulay]

At this point I have been steering my clients away from vertically compound walls - unless they have good reason to use them. If you want one section of the wall to be thicker, it won't work, as noted earlier.

None of our print shops out here are interested in DWF and only time will prove whether Autodesk will change the format yet again, or make you pay to even look at the format, etc.

And while I'm blazing away with my rant-gun: I keep a copy of the Acrobat 4.05 reader around since later versions are bloatware, and take forever to load. If ain't broke, don't bloat it!