Learn how to calculate pile lenghts in Virto.CAD.
After building the Ground Layout of your project you can proceed to insert Piles. The feature called “Pile generator” will be located in the section of Ground Mount in your VirtoCAD ribbon.
When selecting it, a pop-up window will appear where you will be able to customize your Piles.
Here you must insert:
- Distance between edges: Distance from the edges of the rack to where the first and last pile will be placed.
- Max distance between piles: Maximum distance between the piles that will be taken in to account by the software’s automatic placement of them, however you will be able to customize this in the following steps.
- Min pile depth: Minimum depth of piles in to the terrain.
Then you will choose the boundaries for which these parameters of piles will be applied to by selecting them individually on the drawing or by selecting all of those boundaries in your project.
PILE CUSTOMIZATION
You can proceed to customize piling by selecting the drop down of “Custom Piling”. Here you will be able to select the rack and adjust the piling distances and quantity for side and front view.
The software will automatically show enough piles to comply with the “Max distance between piles” inserted at the beginning and they will be equally spaced, however you will be able to customize exact values for the spacing regarding your project needs.
After finishing all customization of piles in each type of rack we can proceed by clicking on “Generate”.
Right away the “Summary Tables” window will open up and you will be able to see details for the piling of each PV Array like Pile Label, Pile Length, Pile Reveal Length and Pile Depth.
If you want to locate an specific rack there is the option to activate “Zoom and highlight selection” and double click on the number of the rack you want to locate on your drawing.
There is also the possibility of having the coordinates for each one of the piles. You can access this by clicking on “Export” and opening the excel file.
You can also add or remove naming labels to each pile in the drawing by selecting the following option.
And by adding this label you will have the following result:
Finally by rotating your view you can now visualize the 3D piles in your drawing.
