Tutorial 32: Reglets, Brick Ledges & the Masonry Interface

A tilt-up panel with a brick face is two walls: the concrete that holds the building up, and the veneer hung on it. Three cast features make that possible, and all three have to be in the form before the pour — none of them can be added afterwards.

Feature

What it is

Standard

In ConstructiVision

Reglet (flashing)

A cast groove that receives roof or wall flashing

TCA

a feature strip — narrow Strip Width, real Thickness

Reglet (masonry tie)

A cast groove or slot for masonry-veneer attachment

TCA

partly — the same feature strip, one row per course; no spacing

Brick ledge / shelf

A ledge cast to support a masonry veneer

TCA

the Lintel

Two of these three are built today — under names that are not theirs

The catalog calls them reglets and brick ledges. ConstructiVision has never used either word — the user manual contains neither — and that alone is why this lesson used to say the features were missing.

  • A reglet is a narrow groove cast into a face. So is a reveal, and ConstructiVision cuts reveals with Feature Strip Details (Tutorial 29: Feature Strips & Reveals). A small Strip Width plus a Thickness is a reglet. Step 3 is a follow-along.

  • A brick ledge is a horizontal thickening projecting from the face. So is a lintel, and the manual defines one in those exact words — “A Lintel (Corbel) is a thickening of the Panel wall above the bottom of the Panel.” Step 2 is a follow-along.

What is genuinely missing is smaller than it looks, and each step says exactly where: the tie-reglet spacing, the reglet profile, and any naming that would tell a reader which grooves are a water detail and which are decoration. Those parts are marked (planned).

Tutorial 38: Corbels, Haunches & Spandrel Seats makes the same point about corbels. If you take one habit from either lesson, make it this one: before concluding ConstructiVision cannot do something, find out what ConstructiVision calls it.

Note

A browser version covers part of this lesson. Open it here — it lists exactly which steps it does not cover, so you know what to come back to AutoCAD for.

What you will learn

  • Why a brick ledge is a structural feature and a reglet is not.

  • That the brick-ledge control is the Lintel and the reglet control is the feature strip — and how to enter each, column by column.

  • The difference between the two reglets, which look identical on a drawing and do completely different jobs — and which of the two the product can only half place.

  • Why all three are cast, never cut — and what it costs when one is missed.

  • Why a reglet is still not a reveal even though they now share one dialog — and why that puts the depth discipline entirely on you.

  • How the ledge, the tie reglet and the weep holes form one detail rather than three features — and why moving the ledge does not move them.

Before you start

Lesson

Step 1 — One detail, three features

At the bottom of a brick veneer there is a single assembly, and it is worth seeing whole before taking it apart:

  1. The brick ledge projects from the panel face and the veneer sits on it.

  2. Flashing sits on the ledge and turns up the panel face, into a flashing reglet that holds its top edge and keeps water from getting behind it.

  3. Weeps in the first course above the flashing let the cavity drain out.

  4. Up the wall, tie reglets — or individual slots — receive the anchors that hold the veneer back against the panel.

Miss the reglet and the flashing gets sealed to the face with mastic, which is a maintenance item rather than a detail. Miss the ledge and there is nothing to hold the veneer up at all.

Tip

Every one of these is formed before the panel is poured, lying flat in the casting bed. A reglet saw-cut afterwards is a repair, not a detail — it cuts the reinforcement cover, and it costs a crew a day. This is the whole reason the panel book has to carry them.

Step 2 — Brick ledge

A brick ledge is a horizontal shelf cast into or onto the panel that the veneer bears on. It is structural: the weight of every brick above it lands there.

Three values describe one:

  • the elevation of the bearing surface;

  • the projection — how far it stands out from the panel face, which has to suit the veneer thickness plus the cavity behind it;

  • the length, which is usually the panel width but is not always, because the ledge stops at openings.

All three are on one Pilaster / Lintel Details row. Run CV-FEAT-PILASTER and enable a free row — there are 24, six to a page, four pages.

Column

For a brick ledge

Snap To

Leave B unchecked. The manual is blunt about why: “Uncheck this option to create Lintels.” Snapping to the bottom gives you a pilaster running up from the panel base; a ledge starts partway up.

Measure / Distance

Which panel side the ledge is measured from, and how far in it starts.

Elev Left / Elev Right

The elevation of the bottom of the ledge — see the warning below. They are separate fields, so the ledge can step or slope if the veneer coursing does.

Width

How far the ledge runs. 0 extends it to the other edge of the panel — the usual full-width case.

Height

How deep the thickened band is vertically.

Add’l Thk

The projection. The manual: “Enter the actual thickness of the Pilaster or Lintel. This value will be added to the thickness of the Panel.” This is the number that has to clear the veneer and the cavity.

U / D

Which face it projects from. For a brick ledge that is the outside face — which of U and D that is depends on Tutorial 28: Casting Orientation & Yard Layout.

Warning

The bearing surface is the top of the ledge. Elev Left and Elev Right are the bottom of it.

The manual gives this away twice: a value that makes “the sum of the elevation and height greater than the height of the Panel” warns you, and “entering a minus sign before the height value will cause the Pilaster to be drawn upside down — the elevation you entered will be the elevation of the top.”

So you have two ways to hit a bearing elevation the mason has been given:

  • enter Elev = bearing elevation − Height; or

  • enter the bearing elevation in Elev and make Height negative, which flips the reference to the top and takes the arithmetic away.

The second is the safer habit on a job where the ledge elevation is the specified number and the band depth is yours to choose. Whichever you use, read the elevation marker on the redrawn panel before you sign it — that marker is what the yard builds to.

Where the ledge stops. Set Width to 0 for the common case and the ledge runs edge to edge. Openings inside it are already handled: the thickened area is clipped around any opening that falls in it, rather than shaded over. What is not automatic is a ledge that has to stop short of an opening — for a jamb return, say, or where the veneer changes. That is two rows, one each side, each with its own Distance and Width. There are 24 rows; use them rather than drawing the gap by hand.

Tip

A ledge is a projection, so it truly reads only in section — which is exactly how one gets missed. What you get on the elevation is the thickened area shaded and dimensioned, and that shading is the tell. Train yourself to look for it: a brick elevation with no shaded band at the base is a brick veneer with nothing under it.

What is still missing, and it is worth knowing before you rely on the output:

  • Nothing calls it a brick ledge. The band is part of the panel solid, so its concrete is inside the concrete yardage the materials list reports (Generate a materials list) — but the list itemises “form material, fasteners, chamfer, feature strips, pick points, brace points, braces, extensions, and embeds”, and a ledge is not one of those lines. A mason reading the panel book sees a thickening; nothing tells them it is their bearing.

  • The cavity arithmetic is yours. Add’l Thk records the projection you decide on. Veneer thickness plus air gap plus tolerance is a sum you do before you open the dialog.

Recorded, not certified

The projection, the band depth and the elevation you set are recorded and carried consistently to the drawing and the schedules. ConstructiVision does not check that the ledge is adequate for the veneer it carries. That is the engineer’s calculation.

Step 3 — The two reglets

They look the same on a drawing — a groove in the face — and they have nothing else in common.

Flashing reglet

Tie reglet

Job

receives and holds flashing

receives veneer anchors

Where

one, at the ledge or roof line

many, up the wall

Placed by

position

spacing, like weeps

Runs

horizontally, continuous

horizontally, in courses

If missed

flashing gets mastic’d — a leak waiting

veneer has nothing tying it back

In ConstructiVision

one feature-strip row

one feature-strip row per course

The flashing reglet, today

Run CV-FEAT-REVEAL. Feature Strip Details opens as a grid — 48 strips, eight to a page, six pages. Enable a row and work across it:

  • Horiz/Vert → H.

  • Elev Left / Elev Right — and here the convention is the opposite of the ledge you just placed. The manual measures a strip’s elevation “from FF to the top of the Feature Strip”. Read that twice if Step 2 is still fresh: the ledge row is dimensioned to its bottom, the strip row to its top.

  • Strip Width — how tall the groove is on the face.

  • Thickness — how deep it is cut into the concrete. This is the field that makes it a reglet rather than a scribed line: “Enter the thickness of the material used to form the Feature Strip.” It is a droplist, because form material comes in stock sizes — which matters more here than it does for a reveal, and Step 4 is about why.

  • Distance and Length — where the groove starts and how far it runs. A Length of 0 runs it to the panel edge.

  • On Face → the outside face, per Tutorial 28: Casting Orientation & Yard Layout.

Confirm and the panel redraws with the groove formed and dimensioned. It is real geometry, not an annotation: the manual’s own warning against hand-drawn features is that “Custom Features will not be subtracted from the Panel solid” — feature strips are, which is precisely the difference between a groove the yard forms and a line somebody drew.

The tie reglets — real geometry, entered by hand

The same control places them, and the geometry is right: a horizontal strip at each course that carries ties, at whatever Strip Width and Thickness the anchor needs. Forty-eight rows is a lot of courses.

What the row does not have is a spacing. There is no repeat and no array — you enable a row per course and type its elevation, so a twenty-course ladder at 16” is twenty rows and twenty elevations. The drawing then dimensions all twenty individually rather than carrying one typical dimension and a count.

If the specification calls for discrete slots rather than a continuous groove, a short shallow Recess / Blockout with a Thickness greater than zero is dimensionally the same thing — Add a recess or blockout, and Tutorial 30: Blockouts Beyond the Rectangle for the shapes. The same limitation applies: one row each.

Still planned: a spacing on the row — an elevation, a spacing and a count that generate the ladder and annotate it with a typical dimension and an “@ n” note, the same convention Tutorial 31: Openings That Are Not Rectangles describes for weeps. Until it arrives, the ladder is buildable and correct; it is just typed.

Tip

Type the ladder once, then stop typing it. A panel whose strips are already set makes a template for every other panel on that elevation — the manual recommends exactly this: “simply use that Panel as a template to copy all of your work to Panels containing similar Features.” Rows can also be pre-defined and left disabled, so a template can carry a full ladder that each panel switches on as far up as it needs.

Also still planned: the profile. A feature strip has a rectangular section — a Strip Width and a Thickness, and nothing else. Reglets specified with a keyed, dovetailed or sloped throat cannot be described on the row. Place the rectangular envelope so the groove is cast in the right place at the right size, and detail the profile separately.

Step 4 — Where a reglet is not a reveal

A reveal (Tutorial 29: Feature Strips & Reveals) and a reglet are both grooves cast into the face, and as of Step 3 they are both the same dialog row. That makes the distinction more important, not less, because the product can no longer make it for you.

  • A reveal is finished. Nothing goes in it. Its depth is chosen for the shadow it casts, so it can be rounded to whatever form material is on the rack.

  • A reglet receives something. Its depth and profile are set by the thing it receives — a flashing edge, a tie — and getting them wrong means the part does not fit.

Look at what that does to a single column. Thickness is a droplist of stock sizes. For a reveal that is a convenience: pick the strip the yard already stocks and the shadow is whatever it is. For a reglet it is a hazard, because the depth the flashing needs and the nearest stock size are not the same number by default. Check the flashing schedule first, then open the droplist — and if nothing on it works, that is a conversation with the detailer, not a rounding decision.

Both are drawn as a recessed line. Only one of them fails an installation when the depth is off by a quarter inch.

Still planned: nothing on the row records which of the two a strip is. On the drawing and in the materials list — which segregates feature strips by size — a reglet and a reveal of the same section are the same line, so a reader cannot tell the water detail from the architecture. Until a type exists on the row, the record that a groove is a reglet is the note you put on the drawing. Put one there.

Tip

A related groove you may go looking for: the drip above an opening. ConstructiVision has a Drip toggle on the opening row, but it places a marker at the top centre of the opening, not a formed groove. If the drip has to be cast, cast it as a feature strip and let the marker say why.

Step 5 — Read the assembly on the panel book

With the ledge and the reglets placed, the panel elevation should read as an assembly rather than as scattered features: the shaded ledge band at its elevation, the flashing reglet just above it, the weeps at their spacing, the tie reglets marching up the wall. All of it dimensions automatically.

One thing about how it dimensions decides how you work from here. The manual states the rule plainly: “All horizontal dimensions included on the final drawing (except for the total Panel width) will be referenced to the Down Face of the Panel. All vertical elevation markers included on the final drawing will be referenced to Finished Floor.”

Every elevation in this detail is therefore measured from finished floor, independently. Moving the ledge does not move the flashing reglet, the weeps, or the tie ladder — they are dimensioned to the panel, not to each other. There is no “3” above the ledge” anywhere in the model; there are four separate numbers that happen to agree.

So make the habit do the work the geometry does not:

  1. Keep the assembly’s elevations as one group — ledge top, reglet top, first weep course, first tie course — and write them down together, not four dialogs apart.

  2. When the ledge elevation changes, revise all four. Nothing will warn you. A ledge dropped 2” with the reglet left where it was is a flashing that turns up into nothing.

  3. Check the redrawn elevation as a picture, not as a list of values. The reglet should sit just above the shaded band, the weeps just above the reglet. If that stack looks wrong at a glance, it is wrong, whatever the numbers say.

Still planned: dimensioning one feature relative to another, so a reglet can be carried as “3” above the ledge” and the detail moves as a unit. That is the version where the software catches step 2 for you. Today, you catch it.

Check your result

You should now be able to:

  • Describe the four-part assembly at the bottom of a brick veneer, in order.

  • Say which of these three features is structural, and why the other two are not.

  • Place a brick ledge through Pilaster / Lintel Details, name the column that is its projection, and say which edge of the band Elev Left refers to — and the two ways to hit a specified bearing elevation.

  • Place a flashing reglet through Feature Strip Details, name the column that makes it a groove rather than a line, and say which edge of the strip its elevation refers to.

  • Name the two reglet types, state which one is placed by spacing rather than by position, and say what you do today for the one that has no spacing field.

  • Explain why a reglet is not a reveal even though both are grooves and both are the same dialog row — and what that means for the Thickness droplist.

  • Say what a saw-cut reglet costs, and why the panel book has to carry it instead.

  • Say what the drawing dimensions every elevation in this detail to, and what that means when the ledge moves.

Where next

A companion video for this lesson is planned alongside the written curriculum. Steps 2 and 3 are followable today.