115 — Dock Levelers

A dock leveler is the recessed pit in the panel where the loading-dock plate sits. It is the most common opening feature after doors and windows, and it almost always comes in pairs.

Note

This lesson also exists in the browser. Work it in ConstructiVision on the web — same steps, same values, so you can follow either and end up with the same panel.

How many

Across both sample projects — 146 panels:

dock levelers

panels

two

89

none

47

three

6

one

4

Two is the working answer. A dock bay is a pair, so a panel spanning one bay carries two. The single-leveler panels are bay ends; the threes are wide panels catching an extra.

What the feature carries

One dialog covers three related things:

what it is

Dock leveler

the recess itself

Leveler pit

the sub-feature beneath it

Door guard / bollard

the protective post at the opening

You will find all three in the same rows — they are not separate menu items.

The dialog is ConstructiVision – Dock Leveler Details, opened by the Dock Leveler button. Each row has, in order: Enable, Measure (L or R: which side the distance is measured from), Distance (from that side of the panel to the nearest side of the leveler), Dock Elev (finished floor to the bottom of the dock opening), Dock Width, Dock Hgt, Lev Width and Lev Elev (the pit), and two boxes, Drip and Grd (the door guard). Six rows show on a page; > goes to the next page.

Door guards draw. With Grd ticked, the opening gets a guard at each side and a Door Guards label.

Placing them

  1. Enable a row — one row per leveler.

  2. Position and size locate the recess on the panel face.

  3. Repeat for the pair.

  4. OK.

On AAA039 (28’-0” wide, 126.2 KIPS) the seat placed a pair: row 1 Measure L, Distance 4'-0", row 2 Measure R, Distance 4'-0", both with Dock Elev -8", Dock Width 8'-0", Dock Hgt 8'-8", and Drip and Grd ticked. After OK the panel has two openings along its bottom, each with a Drip note and its door guards, and the title block reads 113.6 KIPS and 28.1 Cu. Yd., with 831 finished square feet (970 before).

A drip note worth knowing

Two decoding faults in this area were fixed recently, and both changed what you see:

  • The Drip flag was being read from the wrong position, so the setting was lost or invented when a panel was reopened.

  • Drip text was suppressed on any opening wider than four inches — which is every real door and window, so the label never appeared where it mattered.

If you worked with dock levelers or drips on an older build and the labels looked wrong, that is why.

Watch the lesson

The video places the pair from Placing them on AAA039, with drips and door guards, and shows the redrawn panel. It does not set a leveler pit.