How to Make Walls in Advance Steel

Advance Steel can model simple concrete walls with the Wall tool (Home tab > Objects panel > Concrete Beam > Wall). Pick the start and end points of the wall, press Enter, then set the height, thickness and material in the dialog. For a flat, slab-like wall, use Polygonal Wall.

Steel almost always has to fit around something else: a concrete wall, a masonry wall, a foundation. Modeling those walls lets you see what your steel connects to and check for clashes.

Contents

• Where to find the Wall tool
• Using the Wall tool
• The Wall dialog
• Polygonal walls

Where is the Wall tool?

Home tab > Objects panel > Concrete Beam > Wall

Objects tab > Other Objects panel > Wall

How do I place a wall in Advance Steel?

Start the tool and pick the first point of the wall, then the next point. For a single wall, press Enter after the second point. For several segments, keep picking end points until you’re done, then press Enter. Each segment comes in as a separate wall.

When you press Enter, the dialog opens so you can adjust the walls.

Command line options while you’re placing walls:

• CL closes the loop back to the first point.
• U undoes the last segment.
• CH changes the UCS for the next segment.

What do the wall settings do?

• Length. With one segment, shows its length. With several segments of different lengths, it’s blank. Type a value and every wall changes to that length.
• Height. The wall height.
• Convert to polygon. Turns the wall into a polygonal element, so you can drag the top corners independently of the bottom ones (handy for a sloped top). Unchecked, dragging an end point just changes the length.
• Thickness. The wall thickness.
• Material. Pick it from the list.

What is a polygonal wall?

The Polygonal Wall tool makes a wall that lies flat on the XY plane of the current UCS, more like a slab. Start the tool, pick all the points around its outline and press Enter. The same dialog opens, with the options described above.

Home tab > Objects panel > Concrete Beam > Polygonal Wall

Objects tab > Other Objects panel > Polygonal Wall

Why model walls in a steel model?

• Connections. Embed plates, ledger angles and anchor bolts need something to attach to. Seeing the wall makes it easier to place them right.
• Clashes. Steel that runs into a wall shows up when you check the model or review it in Navisworks.
• Drawings. Erection drawings are easier to read when the walls are shown for reference.

Keep the walls simple. They’re reference for the steel, not a concrete model. Take the wall size and location from the architectural or structural drawings.

What to do when the wall is wrong

• The wall is on the wrong side of the line. Pick the points in the other direction.
• Changing the length moves the wrong end. Uncheck Convert to polygon if you just want to change the length.
• The wall shows in the BOM. Check how your BOM template handles concrete objects.

For concrete beams, see Placing a concrete beam in Advance Steel.