Berms, Collectors, Barriers & Toe Point
Add Rockfall mitigation and reference objects, and understand what the current results interface reports.
Open the Geometry dock's Rockfall group to place the five Rockfall object types. Every tool requires an External Boundary.
| Object | Geometry | Current purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Rock Source | One point | Launches a referenced Rock population. |
| Berm | Three projected points | Replaces the terrain under its footprint with two materialized faces. |
| Collector | Two-point line | Reports trajectory intersections and impact energies. |
| Barrier | Two-point line | Reports intersections, impact energies, and capacity outcomes. |
| Toe Point | One point | Changes how endpoint/runout results are presented. |
Project a Berm
- Choose Rockfall → Berm.
- Enter Berm Height (m) and Face Angle (deg). Height must be positive; the face angle must be between 0° and 90°.
- Move the pointer along the exposed boundary and click a valid projection.
- Select the Berm and assign its Material before computing.
The active editor initially creates equal left and right face angles. In the inspector you can edit Height, the shared Face Angle, Material, fill colour, and fill opacity. Changing height or angle reprojects the Berm onto the current surface.
Both feet must stay on the exposed surface, and Berm footprints cannot overlap. The original terrain beneath a valid Berm is removed from the collision surface.
Toe-relative placement aid
If a Toe Point exists, segment measurements are visible, and snapping has not been temporarily disabled, the Berm preview snaps its horizontal toe distance in 1 m increments. The canvas also draws a horizontal toe-distance dimension.
Under Configure → Project Settings → Rockfall, Trigger recompute on berm adjustment starts Rockfall again after a Berm geometry adjustment. Because Rockfall Compute is an enabled-scenario batch, this can recompute every valid enabled scenario, not just the active one.
Draw Collectors and Barriers
Choose Collector or Barrier, then click two endpoints. Zero-length Collectors are rejected at compute time.
The physics engines retain the highest-total-energy Collector or Barrier intersection for each Rock/target pair, including velocity and translational, rotational, and total kinetic energy. Select a Barrier to choose Infinite or Custom energy capacity in the shared inspector. Custom capacity is entered in kilojoules.
Rockfall Graphs shows a Collector & Barrier Peak Impacts table, ordered by total energy, and reports Barrier records as Retained or Exceeded where the engine supplies that outcome. The solver retains the highest-energy impact for each Rock/target pair rather than a chronological collision history. The on-screen table shows up to 100 peak records; Peak impacts CSV in the Rockfall Graphs footer includes the full retained set and its energy components.
Set a Toe Point
Choose Set Toe Point and click the runout reference location. Only the most recent Toe Point is retained.
The Toe Point is presentation-only:
- without one, endpoint graphs show the final X-coordinate and the solver summary uses travel distance for Maximum runout;
- with one, endpoint graphs show final endpoint X minus toe X and are labeled Runout from Toe;
- the solver summary's Maximum runout uses the greatest trajectory X reached relative to toe X.
Adding or moving the Toe Point does not change trajectories and does not make a completed simulation stale.