precast wall panels

[Alvin_Alejandro]

Yeah......this is the only way our firm does it...absolutely no probs

OK...but how do you put chamfer on the plan in every joint? It is by Edit Cut Profile...?

[ejburrell67787]

Can you make a mullion as a void object with the desired chamfer shape?

[kpaxton]

My vote? Curtain walls!

After seeing this demonstrated at AU this year, I thought to myself... WOW. That's pretty darn powerful! Once you get the hang of making your panels, and then aligning your grids where they need to be. Hit APPLY and Bang.. you're almost done with your project.

OK... well not really. But you get my enthusiastic point. By the way, we don't do any Tilt-up here in the offfice, but I know some friends who do. I bet after I tell them, they'll switch from ADT.

Also - Yes, there are many ways to do the same task in Revit - walls with sweep voids, walls with model patterns, etc. The hardest thing to do is figure out the right tool - and it sometimes boils down to which is the right tool for you!

Elrond - Yes, in your curtain Panel - add Voids to cut your patterns, whatever that may be, out of your wall. When you place the panel, make sure the spacing is right and your cuts will show up perfectly. This also will work great for those Tie Holes we architects are so fond of! Void away!

Kyle

[Scott D Davis]

You can also use curtain walls and create 'wall panels' that are real revit walls. Draw a curtain wall, select a curtain panel and swap it's type to be a wall type. You now have a peice of wall that can host windows, be cut in plan, etc.

Using wall panels gets you the panel joints 'for free' and allows you to manipulate the overall wall more easily because the panels are all 'driven' by the master curtain wall.

Wait just a second.....isn't that what I said about 6 posts previously???

[Justin Marchiel]

My vote? Curtain walls!

Elrond - Yes, in your curtain Panel - add Voids to cut your patterns, whatever that may be, out of your wall. When you place the panel, make sure the spacing is right and your cuts will show up perfectly. This also will work great for those Tie Holes we architects are so fond of! Void away!

Kyle

I tried using curtain walls in adt to cut out the holes for the tie pattern, but found that it really slowed adt down. does this work much faster in REVIT? I like the idea of showing the ties, but if it slows performance down, i would just make a pattern.

Justin

[kpaxton]

I tried using curtain walls in adt to cut out the holes for the tie pattern, but found that it really slowed adt down. does this work much faster in REVIT? I like the idea of showing the ties, but if it slows performance down, i would just make a pattern. Justin

Well.... I don't think I'd necessarily compare one function in ADT with a similar function in Revit. Curtain walls in Revit, once you get to know how they function, are quick and relatively simple. I wish I would have had this tool years ago. The fact that you can pretty much do anything in a panel family is pretty amazing. I won't say the voids don't add anything to the 'overhead', but it's negligible from what you gain. If you've got a decent computer to run Revit, then you won't have a problem. Besides, there are too many things to worry about in your drawing than the performance or overhead created by predefined panels (which again is negligible). Now, if you create something wild with alot of sweeps and curvy things... yeah, you might notice a little performance drop. If you know this might come.. it's easier to deal with. Love to see a sketch of what you're thinking about needing.

-Kyle

[Justin Marchiel]

We do a lot of cast concrete walls, and i always found tie patterns to be a bear in adt. I end up using hatch, because subtrating, or using and interferance condition to show the ties made a small drawings supper slow.

I use curtain walls a lot in adt so i am glad to hear that they offer lots of versatility. i guess my question was if it i should be finding a work around (like in adt) because a simple 3d orbit would tie up the system. I found that moddeling most things was pointless becasue of the time that you lose in other areas. so far revit has worked fairly quickly and i want to learn from other experience, instead of doing some job and spending time modeling something to find that down the line i need to erase it to improve performance.

Once i get a concrete job into revit i will for sure post it.

Justin

[rhunter.97108]

This works really well for a project I'm just starting. I wish I known about it a week ago! My question is two-fold. Can you add another curtain wall to a curtain wall, i.e. a storefront entry to a tilt wall panel? I've tried a couple of things and found that unless you align the mullions with the face of the curtain wall, you can't see the storefront in elevation.

My other question is how do you add a recessed area to a freestanding wall panel that has an opening in it? I've tried the void tool with no success. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Heitman Architects]

rhunter.97108:
The answer to your first question is yes; you can embed one curtain wall system in another.
The answer to your second question (if I understood it correctly) is creating an in-place family object to create a void. Before completing the edit (which it won't let you do because the void isn't cutting anything), use the cut geometry tool to select the wall you want that void to cut. Once you finish the in-place family, the wall will take the void cut.

We do a lot of tilt-up precast in this office. As such we were looking for extremely well-modeled panels to cut down on drafting and detailing time. In some people's opinions we may be 'overmodeling', but this is something our firm decided on.

As such, we have tinkered with all possible ways to create precast panels. Although the aforementioned (rod.74246) single wall with non-joining ends worked fairly well, we were looking for a more automated way to create the building's shell. The final choice was curtain walls.

We have gotten it all to work fairly well. Some of the glitches we have run into:

1) Door and window curtain wall family templates take their respective view levels with them into the host file. Regardless of where the host file's view levels are set, you will always see the embedded panel at the level it is cut inside its own file.
2) When using the method of embedding a door or window object inside a wall panel, control arrows do not follow to the host file. Flipping a door in the host file is impossible, making it necessary to create panels with both left and right-hinged doors.
3) 'Painting' panels using the paint bucket tool can be difficult once a panel face has been broken up by reveals.

This is an ongoing process for us as we deal with precast panels in almost every project we do. Any input is appreciated from firms dealing with the same systems.

Until Revit comes up with a Precast Panel Tool, we will forge on with our custom parts!

[mccurdyks]

Attached are two projects with the exterior walls done completely in curtain walls. Everybody thinks curtainwalls for precast, but I've also found it extremely valuable for horizontal banding to get wall sections streamlined with less drafting.

Talk to Autodesk. They have a tool for segmenting a straight wall with which you can set the gap to whatever you need. It's handy if you are real fussy and want precise panel/gap layout. In 8 it didn't work well on curved walls, which is why we went to curtain walls in the project shown.

For a glazed area inside a curtainwall, a curtain wall embedded in a curtain wall isn't the way to go. In the main wall, create a panel that the size of your rough opening and assign an empty panel to it. Then create a new wall in the same location. You can tweak it in section/elevation to put it where you want in the opening, and then it behaves (and can be elevated very easily for frame schedules) independently from the main wall.

We had trouble in 8 with some "bands" not being by doors and windows, but this seems fixed in 9.