Trimble Business Center

Just curious how everyone is creatig their BOF models. Currently we use the track region command to speed up the clean up process of having one continuos footing line as opposed to the join command or drawing a new line and snaping to existing data. For elevation, we are entering in vertical nodes for every step, footing, and column pad in the running footing So for one column pad in the running footing we could be creating eight vertical nodes. which, depending on the design, can be a lot. 

So I thought I would throw it out here to see if anyone has a better workflow to speed things up in this area to apply thickness and creat the steps in a streamlined process.

I generally create templates for the centreline of footing, copy and transform by points to position and allign, then I use break line, edit the elevations manually, trim the lines by 0.002m then join them back up instead of creating vertical nodes individually. I then offset the lines, trim them up and rejoin them around the internal walls which allows me to model bottom of void level below the slabs as well as finished ground level on the external.

I then surface each footing individually before adding them to a master surface, as this reduces confusion for the machine drivers when choosing a design.

I attached a few screenshots of one of my recent BOF designs, not many steps in this one thankfully.

This ends up taking me about 10 minutes for a simple footing with no steps but closer to 20 minutes if there are a lot of steps.

Britton

I am not sure that i 100% understand the question. If you have time we could do a Web Meeting on this to review the need and how you are going about it and I can see if I can suggest a better work process for you. If you want to do this please email me at alan_sharp@trimble.com and we can set up a Date / Time to do the meeting. 

Meanwhile our industry colleagues seem to be giving us some input from their perspective which I hope helps you.

Alan

I still do steps adding vertical nodes. To add thickness to the footings I use the MSI manager and add the footing schedules in there, then use identify site region in Take-off/Site region area. From there you can use the FD with subgrades adjusted model.

Hey Britton

Thanks for the quick chat this am - I used one of your CAD files and these are the rough steps that I took to create a Subgrade Adjusted Model of the Building Footings

1) Import the DWG

2) Find the Layers that you need for the Column and Footing Outlines - Hide them using the Hide Layers of Selected Objects (at top of View Filter manager

3) Invert the Layers so you can only see the layers that you hid

4) Explode all the Blocks to get them to Linework

5) Run Project Cleanup to eliminate Duplicate Lines in the selected data

6) Elevate all the lines to an elevation of 100' using Text (create a piece of Text that says 100.00 and then Elevate all the Lines using that Text  - Benefit here is that it Elevates all the Lines and converts them all to Linestrings - the Nov Release will have a Convert Polyline to Linestring function that makes this a little easier

7) Change the Property of all the Linestrings to SHarp and texture Boundary

8) Edit any Linework Issues, Autoclose (In Linestring Properties) unclosed rectangles etc

9) Make an FG Model of the Linework. Set the Surface Property for Build Method to Build By USer (so that it doesnt rebuild the surface each time you add a SIte Improvement

10) In MSI Manager create a Material Called Footing Material

11) In MSI Manager create Site Improvements for Column Footing, Wall Footing etc. Use the Material Footing Material and give them each the depth that you need

12) Use the Site Improvement Command to assign the Different Depth Subgrade Site Improvements to the FG Model (this places a dot in each area) - for the Columns, the Wall Areas etc.

13) Use the Create Subgrade Surface - you can either build it for Bottom of Engineered Materials if you want to have a surface that covers the entire area of the building that is Subgrade adjusted out at the Columns and wall footings etc. or you can select by Bottom of the Footing Material and it will give you a "Patch" surface where you only get a box out in the areas where the Site Improvements are placed and not in between - that way a HEX would not have a surface to cut to outside of the footings

The enclosed video shows the result. 

I took one of the 4 CAD files you sent over and did all of the above in ~10 mins - I didn't try to do this fully but it would not take more than 15 to 20 mins to do the entire CAD file once you have all the cleanup work done to get the lines that you need for the footings

Hope that this is useful - Let me know how you get on

Happy Faster Modeling ....

Alan

Alan-

This worked great, I think it will help us moving forward, thank you for the chat and a new way of looking at this. Cleaning the linework will take the most time, using the track region command worked for the running footing to create the rectangles. The column pads in the footing had lines that were looping back on the themselves, even after running a project clean up command, so track region was not working in those areas. But I was able to draw/trace two of the column pads and use the copy/move to speed that process up. Still in the end speeding up our process! The center column pads I was originally just highlighting and elevating using the elev command, but I do like the aspect of filling in a finish floor in between the pads by using the site improvement function. I'll get back to you on if the vertical line conflicts with the machine control, but my feeling is like yours, I don't think it will impede anything.

Thank you again and everyone else that commented on this. One question, 4 different ways to do it!

Britton

Don't Forget that a Site Improvement doesn't need a closed polygon, just an area enclosed by linestrings in the reference surface that have the Sharp and Texture property - so you don't actually need to use Track Region to create all the Polygons at all unless you need that for some other reason

Anyhow - let me know how this works out as you move forwards

Alan