Landscape Design Software - Adding a Pool Wall

Landscape Design Software

Adding a Pool Wall

Realtime Landscaping Architect supports straight, curved, and variable height pool walls. Pool walls can be placed around the swimming pool, on or off the pool decking, and even inside the pool itself. Pool walls are useful for decorations, partitions, and other applications that require raised bond beams.

To add a pool wall:

1. Click Add Pool Wall.

2. Draw the outline of the wall. Press Backspace to remove the last point. Press Esc to cancel.

3. Right-click at the last point when finished.

4. The pool wall will extend to one side of the outline. If it was not built in the direction that you intended, click the Switch sides property to change it.

The following pool design uses a curved pool wall with an elevated center point. The water is coming from the Spillway waterfall object (described below).

Adding a Spillway

A popular design is to create a spillway where water flows from an opening in the wall into the swimming pool.

To add a spillway to your pool wall:

1. Click the Water Features tab, and click Add Waterfall. Select Spillway and click OK.

2. Place the spillway object along the edge of the wall. Adjust the elevation, size, and rotation angle as needed for proper placement. During a realtime walkthrough, the arrow will be replaced with flowing water.

Adjusting the Pool Wall Height

The height of the wall can be adjusted, either for the entire wall, or at each point. This allows you to add pool walls of many different shapes and sizes to your pool designs.

To modify the wall height:

1. Select the pool wall.

2. Click Edit points to enable editing of the pool wall's points.

3. Select a point where you want to adjust the wall's height. (You can add additional points if needed for finer control.)

4. Set the desired height. (You can also use the mouse to adjust the height of the selected points by holding down Ctrl while moving the mouse up and down. See Editing Points for details.)

Editing Coping

Pool walls come with built-in support for coping. Coping is added to the entire wall by default, but can be turned off per-edge.

To turn the coping on or off per-edge:

1. Click Edit coping to enter edit-coping mode.

2. Click the edge(s) where you want to turn the coping on or off.

3. When done, click Edit coping again to toggle it off and leave edit-coping mode.

Matching the Outline of an Existing Swimming Pool

Suppose you want to design a pool wall that matches the outline of your client's existing swimming pool. Of course, you could add a new pool wall and move the points to match the swimming pool. An easier method, however, is to use the Save and Load shape commands.

To add a pool wall that matches the outline of an existing swimming pool:

1. Select the swimming pool.

2. Click Save shape.

3. Enter a file name for the new shape. You can use any name you want. However, in cases such as this where you will probably only want to use it once, we suggest using a name such as "temp", and overwriting the old file (if any) with the new one. This will help prevent your shape directory from getting cluttered with files.

4. Click the Add Pool Wall button.

5. Click the shape options button and select Load shape from the drop down menu.

6. Click Edit points and edit the pool wall as desired.

Tips:

• The wall is built to one side of the outline. Click the Switch sides property if you want the wall to be built on the opposite side.

• Adding pool walls is easiest in the plan view.

• Be sure grid-snap is enabled, or it will be difficult to build your wall using exact dimensions. See Snap Settings for more information.