Hello once again everyone! Welcome back for another dose of arches and this time water is involved. This tutorial will guide you through the process of making simple arched bridges. I've decided to break my tutorial into two parts as explaining both in one sitting would probably take up too much room on the album. Part 2b will come later and cover the more advanced aspects of layered bridges. Hopefully this will get you off to a good start before I finish part b.

First build a section of foundation that is not too close to the edges of the lot.

Next you will need another section of foundation the same size about 5 spaces away from the first. These will be the ends of your bridge. Being as this is a simple bridge tutorial, I'm using a small bridge. You can however use any size bridge you like when you've gotten the hang of this process.

Now using the "column deck" style foundation, fill in the gap between the existing foundation.

You should now have something like this. If not...then you need more help than I can give you...go to the back of the class! NEXT!......

Select a flooring of your choice and apply it to the foundation. Keep in mind that you may not be able to change the flooring later on without some extra tinkering so choose well!

Add some guard rails to the sides (not the ends!) of the bridge.

I'm sure you've noticed those pesky posts underneath the open foundation. It's time to remove them. Just whip out the pool tool and lay an area large enough to cover the open foundation.

Ta-Da! No more posts. Thanks to SimMasterRalph for showing everyone this trick in his lofty buildings tutorial.

Now delete the pool you just created. Don't try to sneak by trying to use ctrl-z to remove the pool.It wont work. Go ahead ...try it. See....told you so. Now if your done playing around.....

For those of you who jumped the gun and activated the BpCfe (short for Boolprop Constrainfloorelevation) code to false....change it back to true, unless you want some really ugly results. Using the water tool, begin to place a body of water under the bridge. It can be however deep you want it as this wont affect the bridge. Just try not to go overboard and accidentally place water at the ends of the bridge.

Don't worry about making the body of water take its final shape, your still gonna need some room to work and you'll be able to add this later.

For those of you who have'nt read my other previous tutorials....shame....shame on you! Just kidding, but they will help you understand some of the older tricks that will be used from here on out. Now...for those of you who have read them and know what's going on....good for you! Let's build some guide walls.

Two walls on both sides of the bridge that are one tile longer on each end and centered on the length of the bridge.

Place flooring on top of both. As before, I like to use the unlocked number tiles to help me keep track of where I'm at. These can be found at modthesims2.com. also thanks to JadeEliott at http://mysticmusings.typepad.com/arenia/ for pointing out that you only need one row of flooring for each guide wall. Be sure to check out the simple arch tutorial there as well!

Now for something slightly different. Place a square of foundation along the same row as your floor tiles and about 3 squares away.

Place more at the ends of both guide walls.

Remove the wall sections underneath......

and break out that leveling tool. Select one of the stumps of foundation you just built and drag the tool across....

to the opposite diagonal side.

Notice that everything is nice and flat now....this won't last long.

Now it's time to choose...stairs or foundation? You should go ahead decide before going any further to eliminate problems later. Depending on where the bridge, house, and lot edges are you can either place stairs at the end of the bridge to make it lead to the ground or place foundation leading of to the intended building. Choose well! As for me, this is just a tutorial so I'm gonna go with steps. :p

After placing the steps or foundation of your choice, it's time to work on that arch. Raise the area of land under the center of the front guide wall (shown as tile numero 4 here) 6 clicks on all four corners until it's level.

Place the leveling tool on the newly raised tile and drag from front to back only covering the row intended to be raised.

Now raise the land two tiles away from the center (shown here as #6) 5 clicks.