Calculate Volume of Site excavations

[Anonymous]

How can I calculate the volume of site excavations created using SEO without a third party app.? Forum search has not helped as of yet

[Anonymous]

Gary wrote:
How can I calculate the volume of site excavations created using SEO without a third party app.? Forum search has not helped as of yet

Make your operator from slabs, meshes, walls or beams (make it so its volume is equal to the volume of earth excavated). Select your operator, then go to Window > Palettes > Element Information. You'll get all kind of information about your elements, including the volume (the last box).

Cheers,
Adrian Tudoreanu

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your response Adrian. The Operators are slabs on grade. operation is subtract with upward extrusion. Making the operator the same shape/volume as the excavation is not effective time management for me. Something in ArchiCAD should allow me to access the volume of that excavation. Any help will be much appreciated.

[Anonymous]

Gary wrote:
Thanks for your response Adrian. The Operators are slabs on grade. operation is subtract with upward extrusion. Making the operator the same shape/volume as the excavation is not effective time management for me. Something in ArchiCAD should allow me to access the volume of that excavation. Any help will be much appreciated.

I see now that "Element Information" recognizes SEO. So, if your terrain is made from a mesh, make a copy of it (without any SEO) and get its volume (V1). After that get the volume of the final result (with the SEO) (V2).
The difference V1-V2 should give you the volume of the excavation.

Hope that helps.
Adrian Tudoreanu

[Karl Ottenstein]

Adrian answered while I was busy creating screenshots. 🙂

I'll post them anyway for a slight variant in case you want to actually visualize the excavation volume. As Adrian said, duplicate your site mesh. Then, subtract the original (reduced) mesh from the duplicate (full) and you'll get a 3D representation of the excavation. The Info gives the volume.

As an aside, variants of this lead to attractive sections. For example, if you add fill (common), then subtracing your original mesh from the modified (filled) mesh gives just the fill - and you can give the fill a slightly different fill (hatch) pattern for section so that the original vs new stands out. I've even applied different grass colors in this case so that in 3D you see the fill as well.

First of 3 screenshots: the excavated site mesh for my own home (as-built).

...

[Karl Ottenstein]

Image 2 of 3: the excavated amount obtained by subtracting the last mesh from a duplicate of the mesh.

[Edit: footings aren't in this model - this is an as-built for a remodel - so the deeper foundation walls extending below the slabs look a little weird. I'll put them in eventually.]

[Karl Ottenstein]

Image 3 of 3: Element Info showing volume of excavation. (Note, this could also be generated by a schedule.)

Cheers,
Karl

[Anonymous]

Adrian and Karl,
Thanks for your help. It did solve the problem. Karl, the screen shots are very helpful. In the future when I model a site, I will immediately record the baseline volume and then anything done after that with cut and fill will be easier to obtain.

Thanks again.