Deck Spot Elevations

RE: Deck Spot Elevations

Carl Oberg — Wed, 21 Apr 2021 13:58:05 GMT

So I have been experimenting as the best way i have found to check spot elevations thus far is as follows:

Extract the deck top surface using the Solids > Extract Face-Edge tool.
Stitch the extracted faces together to create a single mesh.
Draw vertical lines upwards (Z-direction only) from the spot elevations so that they pass through and intersect the surface.
Use the Surfaces > Compute Surface Intersections tool to create points at each location the vertical lines intersect the surface.

So far this seems to be working. I tried converting the extracted surface to a mesh and then use Civil Analysis > Analyze Points tool, but there appears to be some inaccuracies when the program converts the Smart Surface to a mesh surface. and can be greatly affected by how the surface is meshed.

I am still open for any other suggestions as to how else this could be done.

RE: Deck Spot Elevations

Carl Oberg — Sat, 17 Apr 2021 02:27:16 GMT

Steve,

Thanks for the suggestion but that is not really going to work. The landscaping spot elevations being provided are not at typical locations and correspond to their walkway/curb layouts, which are irregular. I need a way check these spot elevations which are essentially located at random locations compared to the deck/girders. I think i have found a work around, but its not as clean as I would like. Essentially i have to extract the top deck face as a smart surface/B-spline curve, and then from there convert it to a mesh. At that point I am able to use the civil analysis tool in the same manner as i would in ORD. I don't really like having to do it this way, but I cant think of another way to do it at this point.

RE: Deck Spot Elevations

Steve Willoughby — Sat, 17 Apr 2021 01:41:38 GMT

Carl ... Take a look at the Deck Elevation tool. You can generate elevations at typical locations a structural engineer would need. You could use any interval and or offset from any alignment, beam, etc.