Use Structural Column family template for Deep Foundations

I stumbled upon something amazing today. I had downloaded a helical anchor family from the internets (augi forums I believe?) and upon placing it in my model it shot the isolated footing down because it was a Structural Column family. So I’m like.. okay that’s an easy fix.. go into the family and change its category to Structural Foundation. Upon reloading I see that the Base and Top Level/Offset parameters are still available. HECK TO THE YEAH!!

We've been fighting our drilled pier family for ever because we only had a depth parameter. So to get the correct Elevation At Bottom value to populate the schedule you had to do the math with whatever the top elevation was. Painn in the butt... One instance would be wrong and the schedule would just blank out for the Elevation At Bottom...

So I remade our drilled pier family today... Started with the Structural Column template. Modeled all my geometry, added shared parameters, etc. Then changed the category to Structural Foundation and loaded that baby in!

And now.. instead of trying to use my brain to do maths.. I can just type -20'-0" for the base and the Elevation at Bottom is perrrrfffeeeccctt :) 

(yes I am very tempted to keep the name "MoBetta")

 

 

The only issue I'm seeing right now is that when you first place it, it defaults to the current level for the base and level above for the top... this is not a deal breaker for me...

Ooo the "Height:" in the Options bar still shows up so you could change it to unconnected and just a foot or something so it’s not as bad, but again.. easy fix compared to doing math.

 

 

 

Now I have to consider how many of my other deep foundation families I want to update!