Problem when creating a surface with retaining wall...pls. help!

[coolblues]

Hello people! I got some questions to ask regarding my project, I’m working on a driveway that requires me to have a retaining wall. As you can see on the attached file, what I have done first is that I’ve drawn my contour lines for my finished grade and creating 4 different surfaces from them separately (Driveway, RW1, RW2 & RW3) and then I paste those surfaces combining them all in one surface…here comes the problem, after combining all my surface into one, my contour lines got weird (enclosed in clouds). Also, I’ve drawn some feature lines to represent as my retaining wall but even if I add those feature lines (as a breakline) to my surface the contour lines still doesn’t show right. I know that I’m doing it wrong so here's my question…

1.)    Do I have to connect my contour lines running through the walls (I left a gap through the walls and just create a feature line to represent it as my wall) and create only one surface as whole?

2.)    Is my feature line correct to represent as my wall? If not what, what’s the proper way to do it? L

3.)    What’s the best practice or the simplest way to deal with my problem?

Thanks in advance to those who will answer! Have a good day!!

[troma]

Without looking at your drawing or getting too specific, here are a few pionters:

1. Don't use contours to design a surface.  You could use a corridor, but maybe this is a small site.  In that case I would recommend you do your whole design with feature lines.
2. You need a feature line at least at every 'break' in the surface.  For a reteaining wall you will need at least two: one at the top and one at the bottom.
3. You can't have a  vertical face in a surface. If you need something close to vertical, make sure it is not actually vertical.  In other words, the top and bottom of the wall cannot be directly above each other.  There must be some horizontal difference. (I doubt the retaining wall is vertical anyway.)

[jmayo-EE]

Trim the contour lines to the bottom of wall. Keep the contours out of the wall.

[AllenJessup · Accepted solution]

Your proposed Surface is tinning from the back of your ret wall to the CL of your drive. See attached

I don't design with contours. I use featurelines to draw the proposed Features and then create the proposed Surface from them. To create simple retaining walls I create the wall in one site. Then I create a proposed ground line Featureline tight to the wall. I use that Featureline along with the other FLs created for the design to create a proposed surface. Then I use the Featureline I created for the proposed ground line as a mask for the proposed surface. That doesn't show the contours where the wall is.

If you want to show the wall in 3D. You can create a separate surface from the Featurelines that comprise the wall. For accurate quantities you have to create a surface at the bottom of the wall excavation and past it in to a copy of you proposed ground surface.

[jmayo-EE · Accepted solution]

Also check your order of operations for the surface (Surface Properties dialog, Definition tab).

You should only need to minimize triangle once and this needs to be listed under the Add Contour item. Use the arrow buttons to the side to move operations up and down. Boundaries alsmost always need to be processed last and should be at the bottom. Quite honestly I don't think you even need this option for the terrain being modeled.

I agree with the others about contour design but I would not attempt re-designing this project at this point.

[coolblues]

Many thanks to you guys! I realy appreciate it!