cut and fill tools instructions

8/8/2019 Cut and Fill Tools Instructions

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Cut and Fill MethodsInstructions

1. Import the drawings and scale the page. Then identify the area of earthwork.(In this example the grey area is a parking lot.)

2. From the toolbar click on New From Template

3. From the Load Template window youll find the Cut and Fill

tools and select 100 Elev Proposed Base.Then click OK.


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4. The Item Properties will open. Fill in the value for your proposed elevation in the value column for Elev1(where it is 100 by default) Then click OK.

NOTE **If theproposed elevation is

sloped you can apply

additional base heightsby filling in values for

Elev2, Elev3 and soforth. If you do this you

must remember tochange the value of# of

Elevations to reflect the

how many base valueswere put in. This allows

the program to calculate

an average elevationand it will generate a

proposed base elevation

based on this average.

5. Create an area around the proposed parking lot.

After the area is created for the proposed parking lot we

need to add in the existing contour lines.

6. From SwiftDepot you need to select 100 Existing

Elev then drag and drop this onto the proposed area.


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Hint: The proposed area will be outlined in blue (see picture below) when you do the drag and drop in step six.

7. After dropping the item from SwiftDepot this window will pop up. Change the value in the Elev to match

the existing elevations on the contour lines. Then click OK.

8. On the keyboard hit the SPACE BAR and that will open Continue Digitizer Recording.


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9. This step is important: Fromthe window Continue Digitizer Recording you must find the proposedelevation and then select the existing elevation underneath it to continue recording with. Click OK.

10. Begin recording each contour line. As you record each contour it is important to stay within the proposed

area that you created in Step 5.

Hint: You will want to have the Ortho button turned offand you will want to toggle the Snap on/offToggling the Snap button will allow you to record contour lines without overlapping.

11. Repeat steps 6 10 until all the existing contour lines within the proposed area are recorded.


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These contour lines should not overlap each other, but should overlap the proposed area.

Hint: If you use 101 , 102 and so forth

you will get different colors foreach existing elevation you add

from SwiftDepot. This makes each

contour easier to read (see picture)

12. Go to Estimating and you should see your items. In this example the proposed elevation was 239

The overall area of the parking lot was 63,947 SF.The sum of all the existing areas should be close to 63,947 SF (if you did it correctly)

The QTY column for each Existing Elev gives us the CU YD for each elev.

The QTY column for the Base Elev gives us the net CU YD which is -1,030.37 yards of cut.

Negative numbers represent cut and positive numbers represent fill. - = Cut and + = Fill.

Hint: If we adjust the height of the Proposed Base Elev we can reduce/increase the import/export.


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Here you can see that we adjusted the Base Elev by one foot. From 239 to 240. This one foot differencein elevation changes our net CU YD from 1,030.37 yards of cut to 228.15 yards of fill. By trial and error

its possible to find the most balanced proposed base elevation which leaves little net cut or fill.

As you can see below the optimum base elevation in this example is 239.818 FT. This gives us a net

of less than one yard of cut or export material -0.89 yards of cut.

Note: If the QTY column is not giving the total net CUYD you need to open the columns for editing.On the Estimating Window Toolbar click the Edit Columns button.


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In the Edit Columns Windowmake sure that the Qty and

Description columns are

checked as visible. Also, forthe Qty column you want to

check it as Totaling and Show

Units.

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