Stacked walls, reveals, complex elevation problems

[Michelle Gibson]

The attached pdf is an elevation and basic section of a typical exterior wall construction we are using. The numbers relate to construction and materials as follows:

1 - split face block on wood stud, fixed height

2 - stucco on wood stud (exterior core face lines up) fixed height

3 - prefinished metal on plywood (applied to exposed end of wood truss - includes an air space and sheathing that line up with the sheathing on wall types 1 and 2)

Right now we have the above as a stacked wall, which is causing some difficulty because when we attach the stack wall to the roof, the core of 2 goes all the way up. To solve this, we have not attached the wall but used the layer extend and pulled 3 up to underside of soffit.

Now we have two more issues which relate to finishes and applications, which are the following materials:

4 - replace stucco finish on wall type 2 above with prefinished metal bonded to plywood - only between windows (same finish material as 3 above and in same plane)

5 -provide a continuous wood band above window frame - not part of a wall type right now

6 - concrete sill is a sweep included in wall type 1

Two questions are:

Should we have such a complex wall or should we just stack 1 and 2 and apply 3 as a sweep (it is not continuous around the face of the building). If so, should the wood band be part of this applied wall type or sweep type? If we do this, then would we take the sheathing and furring for wall type 2 all the way up and just apply the plywood to that face.

We don?t want to introduce another wall type in which we replace the stucco with the panel (type 4), so is there some way we can replace the stucco layer in section and plan or apply it to the elevations as a vertical sweep. What we want to be able to do is have the panel flush with the adjacent stucco.

A little complicated for our first project, but if we can sort this out, we can tackle anything, I think!

Update...

we decided to use a wall reveal to create the metal panel between and beside the window openings. Found out can't place the reveal right beside the window frame and if you want the reveal to continue past the frame in either horizontal or vertical, use centre line for insertion. Not bad so far...

Now I have horizontal reveal above and below window that I want to be continous and I have vertical sweeps adjacent to windows that I would like to but(t) into the horizontal. I end up with an extra piece of sweep where the two cross over each other. I tried shortening the vertical and copying it.

So... is there a way to either have the vertical or horizontal supercede the other or "hide" behind the other material? Or is there a way that when two sweeps cross each other in a cross or grid, that they combine together and join?

thanks again..

...help!

[tamas]

Michelle,

Could you post a simple rvt file which shows your problem with attaching the stacked wall to the roof? I'd like to verify if that is a bug, or just works that way in the current implementation.

Thanks,

Tamas

[Michelle Gibson]

I could send you our stacked wall type and insert some windows and reveals and put the roof on. I assume that you don't want me to send the entire .rvt file? Is there a simple way to send you a few that has everything you might need to reference?

thanks,

[tamas]

You can just copy-paste the interesting part (walls, roof, etc.) to a new document. Use "File/Purge Unused" and upload it here. That is the easiest way I know.

[Michelle Gibson]

Took a little while to get the file small enough to post. A trick is to purge and then save as - the file size drops dramatically. FYI, The side exterior wall that is missing is same as stacked wall, without the plywood extension to underside of roof (stucco goes up). As well, we have more windows beside and above, with a metal panel surrounding. When the horizontal and vertical cross, it creates another panel - we want the horizontal to be continuous and the vertical to stop at horizontal.

Have we created the wall types correctly?

Also note that I included and interior partition to show you that when it butts into the exterior wall I can only clean up the wall join for the bottom section of the stacked wall, not the mid section.

I really appreciate the hellp?

[tamas]

Thanks for the file.

We know about this interior-exterior clean up problem, but have not fixed it yet. It occurs when one interior wall joins to two stacked exterior walls. As a workaround you may split the interior wall horizontally where the two ext walls meet. (To get rid of the split line, use join geometry between the just split halves.)

Otherwise your wall looks fine to me. I do not see any problems with the layers or roof attachment (at least in Revit 8 ), so I am not sure what kind of advice are you looking for.
I am not an architect, so maybe others can chime in.

Tamas

[Michelle Gibson]

Thanks,

Having to split all my interior walls that but(t) into the exterior stack wall will be time consuming. What if I break up the stack wall (less exterior walls then interior!). What is scary is I have a gym wall both interior and exterior that has 3 walls in the stack.

Did you try extending the stack wall or extending the top section of the stack wall up to underside of roof? I can't remember if I eventually got it to work, brain fade...

My bigger question right now is plan of attack in terms of deciding if the metal panel between the windows and above the windows should be a wall type or a wall reveal. I have used the reveal option to do the minor detailing around the windows, works okay but I can't get the intersection of the sweep to join correctly.

For the stacked wall, I created an extra wall type with just the sheathing, space and plywood/panel. What I don't like is when I hit an exterior corner I can't get the wall joins to work correctly at the top of the wall where the skinny plywood wall portion is. We are only going to run this plywood on south and north faces, not east or west so right now the corner looks not too great. Would we be better to create this portion of the wall as a sweep or reveal, and if so what happens to the join wall to roof command if the top of the wall is actually a sweep.

Sorry for the verbosity, but I am hesitating to go any further with stacked wall with 3 wall types... I don't like what is happening to the exterior corners on my elevations.

thanks again.

[tamas]

Breaking up the stacked exterior walls will not clear int-ext joins. As I said, it is a bug we have not fixed yet. It is unrelated to the new "Stacked Wall" type. Instead of manually splitting your interior walls, you may use a stacked wall type for them with similar heights as the ext walls they are joining to. (That saves the manual join geometry as well. ;). I know, this is still a workaround, but could be usable.

Properly joining wall reveals requires great picking skills (snapping helps). The blue controls for their curves must exactly meet for the join. (Implementing trim is in the queue, but not at the top yet.) So you can play with dragging the reveals to meet. You may have to flip them to become joinable. (Think of a picture frame.)

As for the exterior corners of the stacked walls not joining properly: Break up helps, or you may wait for the next build of 8.0. The fix did not make it into the just released build. Sorry.

Using sweeps instead will not stop the wall from extending to the roof. Besides, sweeps have a fixed profile and, as I see, your top sheating needs to adjust to follow the roof slopes.

Tamas

[Michelle Gibson]

Suggestion on stacked interior wall is manageable as it is only in large scale plan detail that you really see it. I only have to split or stack the one interior wall that I am doing the plan detail for, so it is not a 'great' hardship, but not perfect.

With regards to the top exterior corner where one stacked wall with plywood top meets another stack wall type without the plywood (I don't have the exterior wall on the file I sent you) - how do I get the plywood/metal to go around the corner on the other wall type just a bit? Bascically, in order to end this panel type we are going to bring it around the corner and have a metal panel L shape reveal applied vertically to the corner so that the corner trim and horizontal panel meet, then its stucco wall type beyond that.

With regards to sweep or stacked wall with little wall at the top - I will try it again, but I was sure that when I tried to join the wall to the roof that the stud of the middle wall type went up, which I don't want.

anyway, thanks again. We're about six weeks into Revit now and documents are about 35% complete with two of us training. Forums really are invaluable.

HEY!

I spent a lot of time on my exterior walls and interior joints to try and solve this very issue of the stack wall join with interior non stacked walls. What amazes me is that I was able to do it a few times. I am attaching a file to show you as it worked in one instance, not in the other and was not stable (I kept on having to go back and fix it if I made any changes, walls also acted very weird and superceded themselves with either one of the wall types contained in the stacked wall). But right now this join works at both 600 cut and at the 1200 cut!

Take a look and see if you can figure out how I managed to do something Revit 7 supposedly can't! The only thing I remember is pulling walls away hundreds of times, using T join and butt joints in a myriad of combinations (hit and miss as I can't make it work on the opposite side of the same wall!)

let me know if I discovered a solution or cheated somehow!

[tamas]

Glad I could help.

Your good join is not quite the same case as the one you posted first. The problem is there only when the interior wall attaches to the middle of two stacked ext walls. Here it joins to the ends and not the middle.

This condition did not use to be common before stacked walls were introduced in 7.0 because usually exterior walls are taller than interior walls. Now using stacked wall types users can easily create ext walls that have more than one subwalls between two levels.

Wall joins are usually acceptable in Revit 7 even for stacked wall types, but some problematic cases may now occur more frequently than before.

I need to go back to work ;-)

Regards,

Tamas