Terrain help

[Rbonett]

I am trying to show the terrain for a house that we are building that has a walk out basement. But when I put in my terrain lines and elevation I can't get the terrain below my garage doors. When I build the terrain it is just not turning out the way that I want it to. I know that I am not familiar enough with building terrains but I am trying to do a presentation for a variance that I can submit to zoning officials.
Is there a tutorial or thread that I can find that will help me out on working with terrains?

Thanks
Rick Bonett
Dallis Designer Homes, LLC.
Fairfield, Oh.

[Larry Kumpost]

Can you post a screen shot to show the problem? You will need to keep it under 100k. Perhaps 2 screen shots: One of the plan showing the elevation data you have entered and One 3D view of the results that show the problem.

[Rbonett]

I have been doing some reading on this subject. i don't know how to change my building pad elevation. Here is a picture of creating the terrain permiter and not changing anything to do with the elevations or terrain.

[Curtis Johnson]

You can move your terrain elevation up or down by unchecking "Auto Calculate Elevation" and entering a different #. In elevation view (cross section) you can drag the siding on the left side of your wall up to match the front side. Looks pretty good so far.

[slatta]

that auto cal;culate button that is checked.
uncheck it and change it to 24, it will lower it 6 more inches.

you can raise up your garage doors in elevation views

[Allen42acj]

Checkout the retaining wall tutorial..
http://djpdesigns.net/html/tutorials.htm

[Rbonett]

This is what I got so far after making a couple changes to the terrain features as suggested.
Now what I need to do is slope my terrain to the rear left of the home for my walkout. I will work on this again and do some reading up on it and post pictures again.

Thanks for the help so far.

Rick.

[Larry Kumpost]

For the walk-out basement you will need to set lower grades. These would need be negative numbers if you use elevation 0 for the main floor of your house.

As one alternative you can set you house floor (0 default for the first level) to a site elevation of say elevation 100.0 feet and then set your grades from there. Another option is to use actual elevation above sea level if you want just make sure you set the house at the correct elevation, as described by Curt and Neal, for the method you select.

[louis]

By far the easiest way to work with terrain is to have your main floor at 0 and your building pad at 0 and adjust the terrain relative to 0.

[Rbonett]

this is what I have gotten to work out so far. It needs more work but it will work for the purposes intended.
Thanks everyone.

Rick Bonett

[Rbonett]

here is another shot.

[Larry Kumpost]

here is another shot.

It looks like you are getting the general idea but it looks to me like you might want to place a "Retaining Wall" or "Terrain Break" over by the garage and adjust the grades in that area.

[Larry Kumpost]

By far the easiest way to work with terrain is to have your main floor at 0 and your building pad at 0 and adjust the terrain relative to 0.

I really don't agree with this at all. Setting the relationship of the main floor level to terrain is only a relative number between main floor level elevation to the terrain elevations. All you are doing is changing the numbers you use to something more useful. It does not really change how things work.

No matter what you set it does not change the fact that the main floor elevation (level 1) will be 0 zero and all building elevations in the Chief model will be relative to that.

Truth is that even this main level default, and non-adjustable setting, of 0 (zero) is not in keeping with normal architectural drafting convention. Normal convention would be to set the main level at elevation 100'-0". This would give you 100 feet below that for foundation levels without getting to a negative number. A bit more than you would need for the average house, to be sure, but convention just the same.

[Allen42acj]

It doesn't mater what the main terrain is set at,just what you want it from the floor down.
After you set the main terrain,it is really 0 to all new terrain data set..

[Larry Kumpost]

I should clarify my previous post.

Each person has a different reality based on the type of work they do and even the area they work in. Using 0 and negative numbers may work fine for Louis (I know he is in Texas and assume he is probably working with relatively flat sites most of the time).

Not so the the Rocky Mountains where the lots can be fairly large and have grade changes from high to low that exceed 100 feet. You can spend way too much time translating actual grades to what they need to be to relate to a main floor level of 0. Much easier to relate to actual grade somehow.

First, if you import your terrain data from a 3D topography prepared by an engineer you may not want want to convert all of their data, which is probably based on actual elevation above sea-level.

Another option is one where you relate to the nearest 100 feet of actual elevation above sea-level. I have one now where I set the actual elevation 8,000 feet to equal my site elevation 100. Then I just set Floor 1 to the elevation I need to relate to that grade. This way my site elevation 97 feet would = Elevation 7,997 above sea-level and my elevation 110 feet = 8,010 feet above sea-level.

Just open a DBX change the number display to "decimal feet" and your all set. Piece of pie. Easy as Cake... and no real conversion necessary