Split Wall Horizontally

[Tom Weir]

Good day all,
On 2 occasions in the last week I have tried to split a wall horizontally. Each time I do the split the upper part of the wall disappears. Anybody got any ideas on what's happening?

Have a great day....

Tom Weir
Los Angeles

[Scott_Bloss]

Tom,

I have tried what you are describing several times and I am unable to recreate the disappearing portions. I would suggest that you trying sending it to support and have them take a look at your file. Other than that I do not have any other suggestions.

[sbrown]

Is the wall attached to a roof and its actual top of wall constraint is lower than the elevation you are spliting at?

[Tom Weir]

Here is the wall in question which I isolated in a new file, and the top still disappears when I split it. Does the same happen to you? I am splitting at 9'4 above the finish first floor, right at the top of the opening

Tom

[Dimitri Harvalias]

No problems here Tom. Is there some other wall which it might be conflicting with?

[Tom Weir]

OK, I just discovered something. When I went into 3d view on the file I uploaded, the split wall was there. The properties of the split portion were changed from "bearing" to "non-bearing". As soon as I changed it back to bearing it became visible in the elevation.

Must be a structural thing since I am the only one experiencing the situation....

Thanks for the help.

Tom Weir
Los Angeles

[aaronrumple]

Your elevation view discipline is set to Structural. When you split the wall the lower half is bearing and the upper half returns to non-bearing - and so only shows in Architectural or Coordination.

[Tom Weir]

Aaron,
A definate mistake in the program. Just because a wall is non-bearing does not make it non-structural. In my structural set I must still account for those walls as well. And obviously the split portion sould maintain the same properties.

Thanks and have a great day...

Tom Weir
Los Angeles

[aaronrumple]

"Just because a wall is non-bearing does not make it non-structural. ..."

Ummmm.... yes it does, by definition. The concept is that structural view allows you to quickly isolate the objects which hold up the building.

If you want to see all walls - you can use Architectural or a Coordination view. Just because a view is set to Architectural doesn't mean only architects can use that view.

Another method that works great is to tun on an underlay. The non-structural wall will be halftone. The bearing and shear will be black.

As for the split portion returning to just a partition, that is debatable. If it is split off and no longer holds up framing - is it still structural?

[Scott D Davis]

You could have a non-bearing wall still be structural. A buttress wall? A retaining wall? There may not be anything bearing on top of it, but it could still have other structural properties.

[Tom Weir]

When we say it is "structural" I think that we mean it is the responsibility of the structural discipline, not that it necessarily holds up the building.

The program is presented as "Architectural", "Structural", and "Construction" components which to me means those areas of responsibility.

In my case with this wall it still is a bearing wall. The top split portion though is projected out 7/8" from the lower face.

Tom