Garage Doors / Foundation Height

[5plex]

Anyone know how I can make the garage doors meet the terrain or how I can have different heights of foundations/unexcavated? I can't seem to figure this one out...

[DL Drafting]

five plex
I usually don't build terrain until the first floor plan and the garage and the foundation are done, or close to it. Then I open the terrain perimeter box and make the perimeter. I next stretch around the house an elevation spline, set it to 0" elevation, then click on concentric, make copy and stretch the spline about another 10 or 12 feet. I set that elevation spline to -12." With camera overhead render view, I look all around the house and at the garage doors with the terrain drawn on auto first to see if it's what I want. If not, then I go back to the terrain specification dbx and under the general tab there is a section for the building pad. Uncheck auto calculate elevation and type in your own. My standard garage floor drop is 16 inches below the height of the finished floor on floor one (Chief's 0 elevation), so to compensate for this I set elevation to a figure of about 30 to 32, depending upon the topography I have drawn into the plan. You will have to experiment by taking a back clip cross section view of your garage doors using the different elevations. There are probably easier ways and more scientific ways, but that's what works for me.

I'm not sure what you mean by unexcavated area, unless you mean the area in the center of the garage which may not be entirely excavated, depending upon local soil types. Chief will show the garage floor slab, but there is no provision that I know of in Chief that automatically will produce an unexcavated area. Before I rattle on, you might let me know exactly what you mean. Have a great day. Dan

[5plex]

Here is a picture to make things simple.

1) I want to reduce the elevation lets say another 18" all around (flat) then what it auto sets when I build the terrain

2) I want the garage door to penetrate the foundation to meet the terrain

Please let me know if you have anymore questions.

[Tim O'Donnell]

open the terrain dbx>general tab>building pad...uncheck auto calculate, then add 18" to the elevation value


if you place a garage door before you build the foundation and set the floor ht it will sit as you show, place it after you have built the foundation and set the floor ht and it will cut the foundation wall as you want...you can also over ride this as you have it, by selecting the door in an elevation view, hold down the ctrl key and pull it a bit below the foundation top, then release the click, regrab the door and drag it to the floor ...releasing the click will make it stop at the floor,,, if you continue to hold down the ctrl key as you drag it, you can drag the door below the floor...

[5plex]

Thank you Genious

[DL Drafting]

5plex,
Looks like Tim has you scoped out. If you follow that advice you should get something to look pretty much as I have shown here in the next three attached views.

[DL Drafting]

And also, I noticed that you have a brick veneer. Did you go down to the foundation after you built it and change the definition of your foundation wall to one with a brick ledge, and one that would resize to the upper walls. Often times we overlook changing the foundation from the standard 8-inch wall, and get too much brick hanging over and occluding into the garage doors as well.

[DL Drafting]

As Tim said, if you place the door after you've done everything else, it automatically will rest in the right place. That's what I did for all these views. As you can see, sequence is pretty important. Dan