Hi Everyone,
I am tasked to check the foundation of an existing structure. They gave me everything I need to model the structure however I don’t have STAAD foundation so I have to check the foundation manually using the support reactions that I will get at the STAAD output. But the problem is I don’t know what height to consider for the ground floor. Should it be from [1] ground level to 2nd lvl (and transfer the support reactions to footing) or from [2] foundation lvl to 2nd lvl? When I do option 1 there is a big difference in loads that my footing will carry compared to option 2. Also during school days they teach us to use option 1 (when we design structure manually) I just want to know if option 2 is possible since it’s faster because I don’t have to transfer loads and I saw some examples modelled the same way.