Curtain wall not accepting panels

[nancy.mcclure]

We had a strange situation recently - a curtain wall with custom multi-story panels (so the wall is divided only by vertical grids, and full-height panels placed) had it's panels defaulted back (user pinned the panels, instead of pinning the wall itself). Unpinning the panels and reassigning the custom panels received a "cannot create the element" warning, but no real reason provided. Only the option to delete the new panels and revert back to the default. Nothing wrong with the panels, as they were still happily in place on adjacent CWs.

Anyone else run into this, and/or know what may have caused it? thanks in advance.

[Alfredo Medina]

What is the reason for pinning & unpinning to assign wall types as panels in a curtain wall? It seems to me that it can be assigned in the type properties dialog, without doing anything with pins.

[nancy.mcclure]

The default panel is set in the type dialog. When we change select panels, we have to 'unpin' the panel from the default setting and assign a new panel type. If that panel is repinned, it 'pins' back to the default panel type.

[Alfredo Medina]

Maybe that's the issue. The sequence. You are starting with a curtain wall that has the Curtain Panel parameter set to something. When it remains set to None, you can change any panels to any wall type, without unpinning.

[jsteinhauer]

Nancy,

What you're looking at is a predefined infill panel curtain wall type. A user defined what the panel material was supposed to be by type, and that makes it pinned. If you're going to have many different types of panels in this wall, do not define the panel infill. I'm not sure why re-pinning it forces it back to the type defined style, but it does. We have started to use curtain walls to a much higher design level then previous projects, and we quickly discovered this limitation. Just train your users well and major issues shouldn't be an issue at all.

Cheers,
Jeff S.

Cheers,
Jeff S.

[nancy.mcclure]

Agreed, but then you HAVE to set each panel. By setting a default, we only change out selective few. But that's not the issue. Only in one incident did this cause an issue, where ALL the walls panels were accidentally reset to the default, and the system did not permit changing out selective panels. We ended up replacing the wall, and have not seen the issue again, but I'm wondering what the cause was...

[jsteinhauer]

As my IT Department would probably say, 'User Error'.

So when the wall was reset to pinned, all the panels were reset to the default type value. You were not able to un-pin them, and change the panel type? That sounds weird.

[nancy.mcclure]

No, when the WALL is pinned, things are fine. The PANELS were repinned, which changed them back to default. The oddity was when those panels were unpinned, the system would not allow those panels to be changed to the custom type.

[nancy.mcclure]

yeah, since I've not been able to recreate the issue, and we've since resolved it by recreating the wall, 'user error' is as likely a culprit as anything else...

[Alfredo Medina]

Agreed, but then you HAVE to set each panel. ..

I suggest to start with the "curtain wall 1" type, which does not have any specific settings. Create the grids. Then, select all the panels at once, to set the general type. Then, select the panels that will be different and assign a different type of panel. No problems with this workflow. No need to pin/unpin. No 'reset to default' issue.