Design a Retaining Wall with Naviate for Civil 3D

• This first post is about creating a retaining wall with stepped profile
• The second post is about retaining wall elements to solids
  And in the third post you can read about using match properties to apply information from the retailer to the solids for retaining wall

Naviate have commands that can help you design a retaining wall after a manufacturer's standard sizes. There are some steps to get to the final result, summarised it will look something like this;

1. Insert and modify the retaining wall subassembly
2. Use Naviate command Stepped Profile to create a top and bottom profile for the retaining wall. With this command you can adjust the lengths and the heights of the retaining wall elements to match the retailer's standard sizes
3. In your Corridor Properties, set the targets for the top and bottom of the retaining wall and rebuild the corridor
4. Fix potential rendering troubles in Civil 3D. If you don’t have any, lucky you! Otherwise follow the steps in this blog post

When you are finished with your design you can export the retaining wall elements to solids. That process is covered in the blog post 2/3 on Retaining Walls.

Let´s go through the steps!

1. Retaining Wall Subassembly

To import a retaining wall subassembly, go to the Naviate-tab in the Ribbon and in the Corridor-Panel find Insert Subassembly.

You’ll find the retaining wall subassemblies in the standard folder, ready for use both against lanes or against ground, as well as on the left or right side.

Select one of the retaining walls and you will see a description field at the bottom of the dialogue, displaying information about the retaining wall, such as available dimensions from the retailer.

When the Retaining Wall is inserted to the drawing, you can view and change the parameters in Properties or Subassembly Properties as per usual.

As written in the description in the Import Subassembly dialogue, the thickness of the foot, the foot length and the thickness of the wall will vary according to the wall height.

An example of what that means

(If you like to dig in to how the subassembly works, keep reading. If you just want to get the top and bottom height of the retaining wall correct, please go to step 2.)

The Wall height in this example is 2,0 m (see the underlined text in red below).

The Wall Thickness depends on the height. The numbers in the red rectangle means that if the wall is 1,75 m high - the wall thickness is 0,18 m. The format is wall height comma sign thickness of the wall for that height. The vertical line separates the heights. If the wall is 2.5 m height, the thickness is still 0,18 m. Between the heights, the thickness is interpolated. Therefore, the thickness is 0,18 meters for a 2,0 m wall height.

Moving on to the Foot Inner Width that works the same, the green rectangle. For a 2,0 m wall height, the inner width is 1,0 m.

Foot Inner/Outer Thickness is 0,14 m for a 2,0 m wall height, as seen in the blue triangle.

Try to change the height and see what happens with the foot and thickness of the wall.

2. Stepped profile

To set the height for the retaining wall top or/and bottom, use the Naviate command Stepped Profile.

The drawing in the following example contains an alignment, profile and a corridor made with an assembly including a retaining wall subassembly.

Side note: Civil 3D has a problem rendering the 3D view in the third quadrant. How this is solved is shown in Step 4.

To get the retaining wall to represent the length and height of the different retaining wall elements the retailer offers, run the command Stepped Profile.

Alignment: Start with selecting the alignment the profile is connected to.

Add PVIs to Profile: Select an already existing profile or klick New to create a new one. In this example we will do a stepped profile both for the top and bottom of the retaining wall. Start with creating a profile for the bottom. Write a name and select a style and an elevation.

Klick OK and the profile, in this case the retaining wall top is added to the existing profile view.

Back to the Stepped Profile dialogue. To set the retaining wall element (length and heights) for the first part, select start and end station. Start station will be 0 and End station in this case will be the corner. Why is that? Well, the corner elements from the retailer often comes in a piece of 1 m on each side of the corner. Hence why you should in that case check the Last PVI at Distance from End. Interval will be 1 because the retaining wall elements comes with lengths of one meter. In this example the Bison Retaining wall is used, and in the Naviate support files there is a CSV file with information about the elements from Bison.

The bottom profile will be 0.5 meters below the main profile. When you are done with the settings from the start to the corner, click Add PVIs and the first part of the profile is stepped in the profile view.

Next step will be the rest of the alignment for the bottom, from start station 14 to the end station. From the corner, station 14, we want that one-meter element again, so make sure to check the First PVI at distance from start.

The settings under Reference Profiles will remain. Klick Add PVIs and the rest of the profile is now stepped.

When finished with the stepped profile for RW Bottom, next step is to create the top.

Start with adding PVIs from station 0 to the corner, station 14. Don’t forget to check the PVI distance from end. Reference profile will be the existing ground and the top profile will be 0.1 meter above the existing ground. If you exit the dialogue and measure the distance from bottom to top, it will most likely be an uneven number. The standard height from the retailer is 1-3 meters in 0.5 m interval, therefore check the Round heights Relative to RW Bottom, and Round up by value 0.5 meter. Click Add PVIs.

Fill in the settings for the rest of the profile and klick Add PVIs again.

If you want to change a height for an element, klick Raise/Lower button and you can change one step at a time. Here I have changed the highest segment to match the lower one next to it.

The last step for the command is to click the Add to Corridor button. A new dialogue pops up where you will select the settings for the corridor stations. To get the corridor to be built with the correct stations for the stepped profile, fill in the dialogue for the retaining wall top and/or bottom as Profile 1 and 2. Also select the start and end station for the retaining wall and the rest of the settings and click OK.

3. Target the retaining wall

In the Corridor Properties, set the target for the Top Profile to RW Top for the Retaining Wall subassembly (and/ or bottom of course).

Rebuild the corridor. As the stations for the stepped profile for the retaining wall are added to the corridor, you will now see the different retaining wall elements in the 3D-view.

It still looks like there is a gap in the corner, but it is only Civil 3D having trouble rendering the 3D view.

4. Extra tip: Fix the rendering trouble

The rendering problem could be solved via inserting a small radius in the corner. Preferably with the Insert Curve in Alignment command.

Insert a small curve in the corner and rebuild the corridor. The 3D view now looks good.

Note that the stations in the alignment also changes as the curve is inserted. Depending on what's important in your situation, the stepped profile command should be run again on the updated alignment to get it all correct (or of course the curve could be inserted before the stepped profile command was run). Instead of picking the corner as the End Station, pick the first point on the curve. When defining the elevations from the corner to the finish, pick Start Station as the end of the curve.

Want to know more?

• Download a trial on Naviate Road for Civil 3D here
• Read part 2 of the series here:  How to retain wall elements to solids here
• Read part 3 of the series here: How to use property set and match properties to solids for retaining wall