High Rise Curtain Wall

[Arnel Aguel]

What is the fastest way of creating curtain wall for high rise building in Revit? In ADT you can create curtain walls with the height extent of the building then just define your mullion layout it then automatically assign that to each level/floor.

In revit it seems to me that the fastest way is to create a typical arrangement of the curtain wall assembly then copy paste to the other level? How are you guys doing this? Am I in the right track?

[Steve_Stafford]

Define your curtain wall to be as high as you want...all the way up if that works for you. Switch to an elevation view of the curtain wall, add Curtain Grids from the Modeling tab...after you have grid lines in place adjust panels as required. Then add mullions from the Modeling tab too. Check out the tutorial, should make sense pretty quick.

[Arnel Aguel]

That is the problem Steve you have to do it manually and for each grid lines. How long will it take for you to complete the whole building? This is not the case with ADT after defining the window assembly in a dialog box it is automatically assigned for all the curtain walls with the same syle in all floors.

[Steve_Stafford]

I see, dealing with the assembly as a whole is what you don't like within the current Revit environment. You'd prefer to do it like ADT with styles.

I've not been "fortunate" enough to work on such a tall structure that I've been frustrated as you are finding yourself. Since you don't want to or it isn't reasonable to create your overall curtain wall assembly you can create one level of it (assuming it doesn't change style) and copy then paste aligned in each of your other levels. Still time consuming, perhaps such an enhancement will be forthcoming, have you discussed this with Revit Support?

[Arnel Aguel]

We have not discussed this with revit support as this is just for practice and not for real production. I intend to model a high rise building and try to link it to viz and see how the file size and link relationship goes. Nevertheless, this i think is worth to be of concern from revit developer side.

[sbrown]

I'm not quite sure I understand the problem since I haven't used ADT. Curtain walls are very simple in revit but like Steve said you can't defined the height of each hor. mullion before you draw it.

You can however align and lock all your hor. gridlines once placed so if you move one up or down as your design changes they update around the builidng, if you look at the loveland medical center project I posted a while ago, it used extensive curtain wall, not highrise but I had all the mullions aligned hor. so changes were easy around the building.

I must admit, I would love a wall style editior for curtain walls. placing the mullions can be time consuming if you go back and forth with mullion types and sizes. SSG or center glazed.

[Arnel Aguel]

I'm not quite sure I understand the problem since I haven't used ADT.


The main issue here is speed in creating curtain walls. Yes revit is very easy amd simple to manipulate but you have to do it grid line by grid line. What if you have a complex curtain wall assembly spanning over 30 storeys. You have to create grid lines manually and individually.

In ADT all you have to do is (say for example you have a rectangular highrise building) create four curtain walls with the same style spanning from ground floor to the top most part of the building then define the frame and mullion assembly in a dialog box apply that style to your curtain wall and thats it. You then have the frame and mullion assignment as per your design from ground to top of your building.

[sbrown]

I would make one wall with all the grid lines, then copy it, or mirror it or rotate copy it for the other four walls, that will give you a good quick start with all the grids in.

[Steve_Stafford]

Do talk with support, even if it is not a real project. This feedback is crucial to the team understanding our needs.

Since I've not invested much time in ADT2004's curtain wall features I can't be certain, but I can't help but think that I could layout a curtain wall even 30 stories tall pretty quickly. My messing with curtain walls in ADTr3.3 found me spending a fair amount of time in the editor.

I guess it depends where you spend the time. Since I tend to design the wall as a whole, the methodology in Revit "works" for me.

I hope your needs get addressed too somehow. Have fun with your practice project.

[Archman]

I can see the need for something like you are talking about Arnel Aguel. Imagine the amount of time involved just clicking all those blue crosshairs to change the mullion intersections on a 30 story curtain wall.

[Arnel Aguel]

Honestly speaking guys i love revit more than ADT, its just that I'm already quite used and comfortable with ADT 3.3 curtain wall system after spending sometime with Aubin's book. In due time i for sure will get used and comfortable with revit's curtain wall also. I'm just hoping that they are doing some improvements on this area.



I would make one wall with all the grid lines, then copy it, or mirror it or rotate copy it for the other four walls, that will give you a good quick start with all the grids in.

Scott your technique seems to be very nifty, will this also work if you have a combination of straight and curved wall?

[PeterJ]

Scott your technique seems to be very nifty, will this also work if you have a combination of straight and curved wall?

If the straight walls are the same width and height and the curved walls are similarly clones of one another.

[sbrown]

The align and lock will work on curved walls or straight we have both in my job. As for copy/rotate etc I don't know how you would change a straight wall into a curved on after the fact. There is another way to do this however I'm not sure we'd like the results. it would be to create a workset called curtain grid elevations(off by default) place levels for each hor. grid, then make on curtain wall going between these levels, then place the horizontal mullions on just the bottom of each curtain wall then copy paste from grid level to grid level, then a change to one of these levels would adjust everything. Just an idea. YOu could also create a partial elevation view of one wall and use it to control all the mullions from.

[Wes Macaulay]

While you can't array curtain grids (tragic) you can copy them. So once you have four or five of them selected you can copy up the building to lay out more grids than just doing it one at a time...

[philip.123375]

I'm not quite sure I understand the problem since I haven't used ADT. Curtain walls are very simple in revit but like Steve said you can't defined the height of each hor. mullion before you draw it.

You can however align and lock all your hor. gridlines once placed so if you move one up or down as your design changes they update around the builidng, if you look at the loveland medical center project I posted a while ago, it used extensive curtain wall, not highrise but I had all the mullions aligned hor. so changes were easy around the building.

I must admit, I would love a wall style editior for curtain walls. placing the mullions can be time consuming if you go back and forth with mullion types and sizes. SSG or center glazed.
Scott--I benefited from your answer on corner mullions on another thread--noticed your reference to SSG here---I am struggling with getting panels to close over a trapezoidal offset mullion---since you mentioned SSG, I wondered if you had success in getting panels to fill to grid with an offset mullion.

[Fishmonger]

Wes am I missing something? I can array Curtain Grids vertically and horizontally.
I've set a curtain wall grid layout on one side of my multistory building (arrayed vert and horiz) and then Arrayed that up the side of the building.

[sbrown]

You would just need to build a custom curtain panel for the corners that had an extension parameter(the glass extending past the gridline, in elevation). then swap out your corner panels with this one and adjust its extension parameter as needed to get to the corner. This is a very old thread, prior to curtain systems so alot of this is no longer needed. However I haven't had to do SSG glazing in 9.0 so I'm not sure if it handles it better. I did a quick test and it worked well for me just to modify the mullion shape and the glass automatically joined to the sealant line as I'd hoped it would. I haven't tried the corners.

[Steve_Stafford]

...Wes am I missing something?...Just that this thread started in 2003 :smile: and Wes' post is from back then.

[captainbunsaver]

Surely I am missing something here...
If I use a "Curtain Wall" I can set the horizontal and vertical delineation of grid lines to suit the project needs, such as
Fixed distance
Fixed Number
Max/Min Spacing
All this for any hieght wall. Does this not provide what was being requested in the original post?

TC

[Arnel Aguel]

Surely I am missing something here...
If I use a "Curtain Wall" I can set the horizontal and vertical delineation of grid lines to suit the project needs, such as
Fixed distance
Fixed Number
Max/Min Spacing
All this for any hieght wall. Does this not provide what was being requested in the original post?

TCYeah you surely missed something captain my original post was way back version 5 that was 3 years ago and curtain system was not available at that time. ;)

Curtain wall then was done manually for every grid line and the only way to speed up is by using the copy or array command there were no other parameters then (i.e. fixed distance , fixed number etc.)

[captainbunsaver]

So now it's a non-issue, yes?

TC

[greg.mcdowell]

Well... the specific question originally asked is a "non-issue" but using Curtain Walls for high-rise projects may still be questionable as Revit will take an enormous performance hit.

A better idea is to build as much of the curtain wall as a CW Panel family...

This is one of my new hot-issues as we're doing a lot of this sort of work lately and it's critical for us to get it right.

[olakahahola]

The main issue here is speed in creating curtain walls. Yes revit is very easy amd simple to manipulate but you have to do it grid line by grid line. What if you have a complex curtain wall assembly spanning over 30 storeys. You have to create grid lines manually and individually.

In ADT all you have to do is (say for example you have a rectangular highrise building) create four curtain walls with the same style spanning from ground floor to the top most part of the building then define the frame and mullion assembly in a dialog box apply that style to your curtain wall and thats it. You then have the frame and mullion assignment as per your design from ground to top of your building.

The best way to make a high rise curtain wall in a curtain wall system that does not change much is create the plnel layout for one floor and then group it. If the mullion pattern is differnt on all sides or if you have a changing patern then you just create, a group for evey difernt pattern. Then paste alligned by level to all respective levels. therefore if you have changes you change the group once and it changes on all respective floors so you don't have to do the work over, and over again. If speed is the issue..for working with your curtain wall...and your wall is really heavy, i would create the mullions within the panel family so that revit doesn't have to keep regenerating the panels and then the mullion grid for your curtain wall. you can even give your panel family a parameter for the mullions so that when you to to ViewVisability under the panel option you will have a mullion option to turn it on and off. therfore you don't loose the ability to control your mullions apart from your panel. hope this helps....
let me know
ola

[Arnel Aguel]

This is a very old thread ;)....the issue then was speeding up the creation of the curtain system for high rise building though this issue has been resolved since version 7.0 if I'm not mistaken however it is still very relevant today with still outstanding and major issue which is performance hit.

If you have this kind of project you need to have a pre planning what is the best approach to deal this issue some say you can do it just using curtain system tool, some say you need to create curtain system for one floor then group and copy to the foors above, some say you need to create the curtain system in the panel family etc.....

I guess we really need to hear the best advice from those who have already experienced this scenario and what was the approached that really worked and did not put the project into crawl.

[sbrown]

I have personally used the panel method and it seems to have no performance issues. Where many curtain grids and mullions have a huge performance hit. You also get many benefits using it that you can't get with the curtain system tools. Ie you can defined multiple horizontals and verticals, vs. just one major. The problem with the panel method is if you need a panel on a curtain system, curtain systems only accept system panels. The other method that I know of being used / recommended by highrise architects is to create the curtain wall in a sep project and link it in. This works well because curtain walls dont need to join to any other geometry so you get the benefit of un loading it without any graphical issues.

[Arnel Aguel]

Thanks a lot for that great insight Scott as always you are one of the men that makes this great site a huge help to everyone. Cheers:beer:

[truevis]

... The other method that I know of being used / recommended by highrise architects is to create the curtain wall in a sep project and link it in. This works well because curtain walls dont need to join to any other geometry so you get the benefit of un loading it without any graphical issues.
Is it true that 'Disallow joins' on the endpoints of curtainwalls help things, too?

[Wes Macaulay]

The main benefit to linking the curtain walls in from an outside file is that the database does not need to record all the mullions and panels in this database -- so it's just that much faster because of it. Video performance is not altered -- just editing performance of the overall project, and save to central times.

[WYSIWYG-BIM]

The main issue here is speed in creating curtain walls. Yes revit is very easy amd simple to manipulate but you have to do it grid line by grid line. What if you have a complex curtain wall assembly spanning over 30 storeys. You have to create grid lines manually and individually.

In ADT all you have to do is (say for example you have a rectangular highrise building) create four curtain walls with the same style spanning from ground floor to the top most part of the building then define the frame and mullion assembly in a dialog box apply that style to your curtain wall and thats it. You then have the frame and mullion assignment as per your design from ground to top of your building.

Yes I think I understand what you are saying.. one can not create a pattern curtain wall grid that is not in even grid modules. Usually I will start with creating a curtain wall type that is the size of my most common size, e.g. 5x15, Level 1 to Level 50 or whatever, then go back in in elevation view and divide whatever I need into smaller grids by using the grid tool. Faster than doing it all from scratch.

also if you touch the CW grid and touch the tiny 4 gridded icon it will give you tiny little spacing and angle where you can manipulate the grid. You can alo unpin the grid and move the gridlines around in elevation view.

clear as mud?

define your CW grid as a type then use that type for the remioning wall or copy, paste, rotate.