Finding Volume of intersecting elements.

[Anonymous]

I have an interesting question, and I think I remember seeing it posted around here at some point, but I can't find it... I have a mesh drawn as my terrain with corect topo points, etc. and the house is sitting down in the mesh to the correct level, is there a way to find out how much volume inside the mesh the foundation is occupying, as in.. how much earth needs to be moved out of the hole?

cheers,
dan

[Anonymous]

I've just figured it out by reading some other posts.. for those who are curious though, this is what I did; created a slab the same shape as the basement, and set the bottom of the slab to be equal to the bottom of the basement. I se the height of the slab to an arbitrary amount, high enough so that it was sticking entirely out of the ground, then I used the element info pallete to find the volume, wrote this down, then used SEO to subtract the mesh from the slab, got the new volume of the slab, found the difference between that and the first, and voi la!

hopefully someone other than me finds that info useful

cheers,
dan

[Anonymous]

I am using mostly Architerra (AT) created mesh object, but this should also work with AC meshes.

Copy Mesh (with AT you can not copy the mesh, but you can create two from the same data), I place this "copied" mesh on a Site (new) layer. With AT I us the Plateau tool to create basement cut ( I use the Road Excavate Tool to Cut Slopes bottoms which are not Flat). With the standard Mesh tool I believe you have to add the New Nodes for the Cut. I do not link that any SEO subtraction is taken into account in the Mesh. I Now Select both Meshes and Calculate > List Elements > Basic. And compare the Volumes. The volumes are usually very large but you are only looking for the difference. If you are using this number for Off-haul amount remember that the Cut amount actually can "grow" in the amounts of 15% doe to Duff. Soil is no longer as Compact.