Automating Creation of Wall by Face for Bent Glass

[candle888]

I'm working on a tower facade that is using cold bent glass. The glass is manufactured flat and one corner bent in place on site. My boss wants me to accurately model this in Revit. I've built a mass of panels in Rhino and need to bring them into Revit. I can replicate the curved glass using the wall by face option (I have a glass wall that I apply to the imported surface). This seems to work fine, but unfortunately I must select each surface one by one. I cannot select multiple surfaces as I would if I built a curtain system.

The tower has a few thousand panels, so in order to maintain my sanity, I'm hoping there is some way of automating this process, either through the API, Dynamo, or some sort of importing plugin. I just want to select all the panels and click once, walk away from the computer for lunch, then come back and have all the glass surfaces created. I've already tried using adaptive components and placing them using Chameleon, but with so many, the model is so slow its practically unusable. Importing the mass directly into a family, does not give me the flexibility I need because I'd like to be able to change the material like a normal wall as a native Revit object.

Any ideas?

I'm using Revit 2013

[Dimitri Harvalias]

Hello and welcome to the forums.
Are the panels consistent in shape and/or orientation? Can you create a curtain panel family to do the job? Is it possible to upload an image of the façade so we can have a look?

[candle888]

The panels are uniform in size before bending, but each panel is bent to a different degree. Since each panel ends up to be different, I cannot use a standard curtain panel family.

The basic geometry is simple, a 1.5m line is lofted with another 1.5m line. The top line is rotated slightly from the bottom.

Here's a picture of the basic panel, I've exaggerated the rotation so you can clearly see the twist. Most of the time the twist is barely visible, but will still show up slightly in plan

BasicPanel.PNG

You can see the faint baseline just below the cut line.

Curved Glass.PNG

[Dimitri Harvalias]

Can you post an image of the entire facade? You should be able to do this with native Revit geometry using the conceptual massing tools and pattern based adaptive component curtain panels without it being too slow.

[hadlari]

This should all be done Revit.
Model your building shape as a solid conceptual mass. then divide each surface with reference planes and your levels. Create your panel using pattern based cw family. Apply your panel your your divided surface. I have done exactly what you are speaking of, cold bend cw panel on site facade system. you can add a reporting parameter into your facade panel telling you if any of your panels will be bent too much. very useful stuff.