Tin Terrain and Walkout Basements. Cadsoft software incorporates TIN terrain where exact spot levels can be inserted. The Spot Point command allows you to manually insert specific points by specifying X,Y,Z coordinates. Using the commander you can change the Z coordinate to elevate each point as you insert them. You can also select on each inserted point and move them by dragging or access additional editing commands to move by distance, copy or delete. Access the Spot Point’s properties to change its Elevation and update the terrain mesh and contours accordingly. In our example we have created a site that slopes down 8′ on one side of the building so we will create a walk out basement in that area.
First we will lower the foundation wall down 4′ below the lowered terrain. Select the wall, right click and select Elevate. I am lowering it 4′ below the floor level so I type -4′ and click OK.
The footing is an independent entity so I will do the same to it.
For the foundation walls leading to this wall, I will step them down.
Left-click to select one wall, and then holding down the shift key select the other.
Now both will be selected, and what I do to one will happen to the other as well.
Right-click and choose Properties.
The Top and Bottom tab of the properties of a wall deals with the height of the wall. We will be adjusting the bottom of the wall to step it down to our new terrain level. Select Step, and the appropriate parameters appear. Notice in the diagram the green and red points. This directly refers back to your model. If you look at the model as you draw a wall your start is the green point, and the end is the red point. So looking at this model I want to lower the foundation wall at the red point or “b Stop Point”. I type in 4′ the amount that I will lower the foundation wall at that point. The other parameter I have to adjust is “C Maximum Step”. This is obviously dictated by your local building code, I will use 1′ for simplicity in our example. I then click OK and the wall is automatically stepped down 4′ lower.
I apply the footing using the simple footing to wall routine, and you can see it automatically detects the steps in the foundation and adjust the footing levels.
Next, I want to build a knee wall on our back wall. To do this, I created a building location entitled Knee Wall that is 4′ tall and has a floor level of -4′, which would place it on top of the 4′ concrete wall that we lowered 4′.
I take the wall that will be directly over top of it on my ground floor, and in my right-click options I can duplicate this wall to another location. I select that option and my a duplication of this wall on my Knee wall location. This will stack them perfectly on top of each other.
Now I will switch my location to the Knee Wall location and set the height of that wall to be only 4′ tall.
My Walkout Basement on my sloped terrain is complete. I hope that makes your Cadsoft work one step easier!