Monolithic concrete structure, renovation

[damon.sidel]

I'm soliciting opinions: We are working on a building with cast-in-place concrete structure, very 70's in style. The building is like the top half of an octagon extruded. It has 11 shear walls running east-west on a 30' grid that each have part of this profile, so 45-degree angles, and they are like swiss cheese. See attached:
103332

QUESTION: How best to model these walls?
A. Walls with profiles.
B. Walls with an In-Place wall opening to cut an otherwise rectangular wall.
C. In-Place model of category wall.
D. One of the above, but in another project file and linked in.
E. Other.

More background...
The existing conditions model was created from scan data. These walls were modeled in two ways:
1. Walls with profiles.
2. Walls with an In-Place wall opening to cut an otherwise rectangular wall.

While I got the model ready for design, I standardized all the walls to be walls with profiles, thinking that that had the fewest steps to modify. Some portions of the walls will be demolished and we will add some openings, so I wanted to be able to cut it into pieces later on. For existing and demo, this seemed to work.

Now that I am modeling the new construction. Every time I add a wall near almost any part of the wall, of course Revit tries to join it. In some cases, I am modeling a wall that completely encapsulates a portion of the wall in order to show cladding on each side and on top of the wall. In a lot of these cases, the new wall joins are changing the shape of the existing wall, even sometimes changing the 45-degree angle. I would like to make sure that these walls are not inadvertently modified.

I appreciate your thoughts.

[bt.commenter343255]

Create a loadable void family to create the openings. You can make other shapes as needed.

like attached (2016 file)

[Craig_L]

You can also use reference planes (these are magic for multiple purposes)
Make a reference plane (or in this case a series of them) and simply "attach" your wall to the reference planes and it will cut for you at the angle.
Just make sure you choose the correct option "top" or "bottom" for which end of the wall you are attaching.

[damon.sidel]

Create a loadable void family to create the openings. You can make other shapes as needed. like attached (2016 file)
Thanks, bt.commenter. This would indeed avoid most of the wall join issues I'm having, but then my wall would be a wall with a bunch of openings. I like to think of my objects in Revit like what they are in the real world, and for some reason I conceptualize CIP concrete walls as objects not with openings, but just as a shape. I wouldn't want to have to manage all those openings.


You can also use reference planes (these are magic for multiple purposes) Make a reference plane (or in this case a series of them) and simply "attach" your wall to the reference planes and it will cut for you at the angle. Just make sure you choose the correct option "top" or "bottom" for which end of the wall you are attaching.
Thanks for the reply Craig_L, that is an interesting idea, but like the openings, then I'd have to manage a bunch of reference planes, and this would only take care of the angles, not the other openings in the walls. A good solution, but only a partial solution.

For now, I'm going with In-Place families of the Wall category. They are relatively easy to edit in the project (don't have to open the family editor) and they are static. The problem this creates is that elements like doors and windows will need to be NOT hosted, so that I can place them where no wall exists, like in an opening that was created by the shape of the wall.

We'll see how this works!

[Craig_L]

Not entirely sure it would work but you could perhaps model the existing odd shaped structure as a component (ie "create new" "component") and model it in the component editor, then use void families to create your new openings?
Either way its messing around to get your result...

[damon.sidel]

Not entirely sure it would work but you could perhaps model the existing odd shaped structure as a component (ie "create new" "component") and model it in the component editor, then use void families to create your new openings?
Either way its messing around to get your result...

This is what I ended up doing, but instead of creating openings, I would copy-paste in the same place the wall, edit one to create an opening, edit the other as an infill, then demo the infill. That makes the demo plans work. Then I draw a regular wall and place a door in New Construction. A little clunky, but gets the job done.