2 Buildings at Different Elevation Heights

[TTaber]

I have an issue with a student group project that needs to design an elevated enclosed walkway between two buildings. The walkway needs to be ADA compliant with ramps, etc.

Question #1. One building is 11'-2" higher in grade than the other. When trying to show them, with terrain features, one building is floating or the other is buried in the terrain. Is their a way to separately control the terrain elevation and the elevation base (grade) of each building?

Question #2. What is the best way to create walls, floors, and roofs that slant to show the enclosed ramp? We have experimented with raked walls, but it didn't seem to be easily manageable.

Any help or thoughts would be appreciated.

[lbuttery]

Yes, use a combination of terrain regions and elevation lines to control the terrain.


There are articles in the help database on CA's website that will be helpful, plus many prior threads on terrain and elevation and ....


If you post your plan someone may volunteer to check it out and offer more specific advice


Lew

[Larry Kumpost]

Question #1. One building is 11'-2" higher in grade than the other. When trying to show them, with terrain features, one building is floating or the other is buried in the terrain. Is their a way to separately control the terrain elevation and the elevation base (grade) of each building?

You can get 2 buildings with different floor level on the same plan by adjusting both the floor and ceiling heights of one of the buildings, which sounds like what you did. You probably just need to adjust the terrain by adding elevation data to shape your terrain to the heights required.

There is always more than one way to do things. Depending on the size of the 2 buildings, I would, probably, draw each building in a separate plan file. Then I would export a 3D file of one building and use that to create a "3D Symbol" in Chief and place that in the plan file of the other building. You can then adjust the height of the 3D Symbol to what you want.

Question #2. What is the best way to create walls, floors, and roofs that slant to show the enclosed ramp? We have experimented with raked walls, but it didn't seem to be easily manageable.

That can be a bit tricky.

I would probably draw walls between the buildings and adjust the bottom and top angles in a Section/Elevation view. Make the room "Open Below" to eliminate the flat floor and use a polyline solid, drawn in a Section/Elevation view, for the ramp floor. The roof depends on the type roof you want. You could add a shed roof to match the slope of the ramp and add a cricket at the low end. If you want a gable roof over the ramp then you can adjust the "Baseline angle" to match the slope of the ramp or top of wall. This will take a little trial and error or, in other words you may need to play with this a little. It will be easier if you have the CAD line "start and end points" set to display (available in X1 but not earlier versions).

I have attached a image showing 2 simple box buildings with a gable roof at an angle for the ramp. The roofs shown were drawn automatically by Chief based on my roof pitch settings and Baseline angle adjustments. I didn't spend any time adjusting the connections at the main building roofs but this will show you what is possible.

I have also added an image of the terrain. The terrain elevation data I added is in red.

Hope that helps.

[TTaber]

Thanks for the quick replies. This newbie will try anything that looks like it works.