Create in-place foundation families

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When working with foundations,

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sometimes you will require a custom element that is project

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specific and cannot be satisfied with a loadable family.

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In

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this situation, you can create an in place family.

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When the site is sloped footings must remain level and will need to step,

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the vertical section should be sloped.

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This condition can be modeled with place families.

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In this example,

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a custom pile cap has been created using an

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in place family due to its irregular shape.

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Notice that the in place family can still be joined to other

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foundations and will report on concrete volumes and can host reinforcement bar.

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However, you should only use in place families for these types of situations.

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In this video,

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we're going to create an in place family to

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complete the detail on the footings of our retaining wall

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before we create the in place family. Let's first take a look at the plan view

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in the project browser. Go ahead and open up top of foundation plan.

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Let's zoom up on the right hand side of our retaining wall.

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And you can see here that we have a section

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running in parallel to this section of the retaining wall.

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And very importantly,

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you'll note here that we have a reference

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plane that's named this one's called retaining wall.

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This is going to be very important when we actually

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model the retaining wall as an in place family.

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So let's now begin to model our in place family

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to do this. We're going to open up a section view

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in the project browser under sections, go ahead and open up the view,

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retaining wall footing.

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You can see here that we have our retaining wall sections.

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And of course, here you will notice that we have our standard wall foundations

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to complete the detail. We'll need a vertical section in here that is displayed

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that same section can be used on all of the other situations

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to create the in place family. We'll begin by selecting the structure ribbon

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on the structure ribbon in the model panel. Let's select the pull down on component.

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And here we'll select model in place.

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The first thing we need to do is go ahead and set a family category.

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So in the family category list,

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let's select structural foundations and we'll select OK.

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We can now give this a name, so we'll call this one retaining or footing

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and we can then click, OK.

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We are now ready to create our in place family.

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Let's take a look at the new ribbon structure.

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So now we are temporarily out of our project and in the family editor,

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you can see here that we have a create ribbon with a number of modeling tools.

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Here we have our solid modeling tools and here

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we have our void modeling tools to create penetrations

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in the property's pallet. We can go ahead and select some parameters.

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Note here we have material for model behavior.

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In this case, we want to set this to concrete.

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This would enable our in place family to join with our other foundations.

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We can now start to create our extrusion

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on the create ribbon. Go ahead and select extrusion

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rev

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it needs to understand where to attach this

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extrusion in in place family that we're creating.

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You can see here that we can set a work plan.

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If we go to the pull down menu,

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you'll note here that we can now reference our reference plane, retaining wall.

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This is very important.

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If we hadn't named that reference plane, then we couldn't see it in that list.

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We can then click OK.

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And now on the context ribbon, you'll note that we have a drawer panel.

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We're going to use the line command here and we're

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going to begin by creating our detail in this area here

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to start, we can snap to the bottom left hand corner of this foundation

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will then snap to the bottom right hand corner of this foundation.

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This needs to be 12 inches or 1 ft

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and then we'll create a 70 degree display on the foundation.

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Then we can then go back and close the sketch back to its start position

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in the properties paet.

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You'll note here that we can set our extrusion start and our extrusion end.

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Well,

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we want the extrusion to start at zero that's

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going to be on the reference plane that was created

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and here we can set our extrusion end

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and this example is going to be 3.75

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that will match the width of our wall foundation.

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We also need to be able to set a material

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in the properties paet,

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you'll note here that we have this button to associate a family parameter.

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So we're going to select this here

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and we're going to associate this to a structural material.

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We'll then click. OK?

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And then on the context ribbon,

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we can finalize the extrusion by selecting finish edit mode,

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we can now complete our family by selecting F

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model.

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OK.

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So the in place family is created,

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but you can see here that it hasn't got the right structural material

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to set this. We'll select our in place family

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in the properties pad it, we'll select edit type

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and in the type properties dialog box, we'll set our structural material.

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So let's select by category.

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And here we'll select the browse button

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and we're going to use our same grade

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of concrete that we've used throughout this structure

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to help us find this. I'll just do a search for four

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and you can see here we have concrete normal weight four K si

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we'll select OK to the materials browser

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and then OK to the type properties dialog box,

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we can now clearly see that the in place family has the correct material applied.

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Now, once again,

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we will need to join this in place family to the other two foundations

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to do this on the modifier ribbon. We can select join,

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we can then select the foundation at the top here and then pick out in place family

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and then pick our in place family and select this foundation here.

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You can now see that the in place family has been successfully joined.

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Let's now release the joint command by selecting modifier

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and we can now copy this in place family to these other vertical positions

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to do this. We'll select our in place family

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on the context ribbon. We'll select copy

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on the options bar. Let's ensure that we have multiple selected.

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And here I'll select the endpoint for our copy start point.

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And then we can use that same end point to copy this footing down

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to release the command. We'll select, modify

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and to complete the footings, we can go back and use join again. So we'll select join

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and we can then select our elements to join.

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OK. Let's also take a look at this in the 3D view

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in the project browser under the 3D views folder.

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Let's open up 3D retaining wall fitting.

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Here's our 3D view and we can now clearly see our in

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place family is nicely joined and connected to the other foundations.

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So in summary, we can use an in place family where we can't use standard components.

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However, the in place families should be used sparingly and only when required,

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you should always try and use loadable families if possible.

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As in place families do have some limitations.