Spastic wall joins

[patricks]

I have some failry complicated joins on this project I'm working on (the "messy" church project in Revit), and seems like no sooner do I get the join to look correct, I'll do something somewhere else and then come back a minute later and the join is all screwed up again.

I have this one wall with an edited profile attaching at a right angle to another un-edited wall. I got the join to look correct, then when I went over nearby and changed some wall types on another wall, I came back and it was messed up again. Is there any way to "lock" a wall join together so it doesn't change, or at least will flag you if you're about to do something that will change it?

[cosmickingpin]

I have been in your situation, and I have found it neseccary to alter the way I would tend to model complicated plan layouts just to avoid this. Are you using architectural columns? Those tend to help instead of multiple walls to simulate columns and pilasters. Are you stepping wall heights and brick ledges, are you using multiple walls to represent brick ledges and other stepping. I have found these to be no-no's in avoiding the kind of 3d salad you are describing. you may have to use work sets to model these complicaed things accurately (wioth all my altering wall types and heights) but have a simplified version for your plans, so in theory you will double model something so it should be used as a last resort. Plan regions at some of these troublesome corners may help as well.

If you are already have done these things, then go ahead and call revit support and have them talk you through some of these issues, you may have an actual bug here ( I doubt it but you can kinda milk them for some free training that way) Good luck with that and let me know how it plays out. Wow we have the same number of posts at this moment- tag you're it!!!



I have some failry complicated joins on this project I'm working on (the "messy" church project in Revit), and seems like no sooner do I get the join to look correct, I'll do something somewhere else and then come back a minute later and the join is all screwed up again.

I have this one wall with an edited profile attaching at a right angle to another un-edited wall. I got the join to look correct, then when I went over nearby and changed some wall types on another wall, I came back and it was messed up again. Is there any way to "lock" a wall join together so it doesn't change, or at least will flag you if you're about to do something that will change it?

[aaronrumple]

My current project has numerous wall joins that I pretty much have to redo before each printing. I can adjust them, close the file. Reopen the file and all my work has gone away. I've also seen joins where I move wall end "A" and the join on end "B" changes. Just plain sucks. I'm concerned as some of these are fire walls and shafts that absolutely have to be drawn right.

Revit needs to simplify the whole wall join issue. The ADT "priority" thing blows chunks. Revit only manages to get it right maybe 80% of the time. The remaining 20% of problem wall joins take more time to manage than if I had to manually edit all 100% of wall joins. There has to be a better way.

[patricks]

I have been in your situation, and I have found it neseccary to alter the way I would tend to model complicated plan layouts just to avoid this. Are you using architectural columns? Those tend to help instead of multiple walls to simulate columns and pilasters. Are you stepping wall heights and brick ledges, are you using multiple walls to represent brick ledges and other stepping. I have found these to be no-no's in avoiding the kind of 3d salad you are describing. you may have to use work sets to model these complicaed things accurately (wioth all my altering wall types and heights) but have a simplified version for your plans, so in theory you will double model something so it should be used as a last resort. Plan regions at some of these troublesome corners may help as well.

If you are already have done these things, then go ahead and call revit support and have them talk you through some of these issues, you may have an actual bug here ( I doubt it but you can kinda milk them for some free training that way) Good luck with that and let me know how it plays out. Wow we have the same number of posts at this moment- tag you're it!!!

For wrapped steel columns, I always try to model it as it would be built, i.e. a structural steel column family, wrapped with furring, which is one of my wall types.

My issues are where I have 3 or 4 walls coming together at odd angles, some of them having edited profiles, others do not. Some of them are attached to a floor or roof above, and some are not. Some of the walls run up multiple floors.

The problem I was describing above was just 2 simple stud walls, both on the 2nd floor. One of them had an edited profile to follow a stair stringer down below the 2nd floor level, but the other wall was not edited, it simply sits on the 2nd floor level. Where those 2 walls join (both are fire rated with a gray fill when cut in plan), I also have a 3rd wall that comes in and runs from 1st floor all the way up, and it is not rated. I want the gray fill of the fire rated walls to run continuous around the corner, and simply have the un-rated wall show as butting into the corner. It's quite a pain.

In many places I think we are only going to be able to approximate the condition in the model, and use plan details to show the actual corner condition. I'm thinking we are going to have a TON of plan details on this project.

[cosmickingpin]

For wrapped steel columns, I always try to model it as it would be built, i.e. a structural steel column family, wrapped with furring, which is one of my wall types..

Well Best laid plans of mice and revit there- I absolutely feel your pain and a certain Revit Tech Support guy felt it with me once. Sometimes that is the best approach but when you end up with this kind of 3d salad I would really recomend a different approach at least in your trouble spots. A loaded family component(with steel colomn and furring included, or furring separate) might go a long way to dealing with these steel enclosures at the corners. Too many walls at these corneres has always spelled trouble for me. Try disabeling the wall joins at the furring where it hits the main wall. You really want to limit the number of relationship you are creating at these intersections.



My issues are where I have 3 or 4 walls coming together at odd angles, some of them having edited profiles, others do not. Some of them are attached to a floor or roof above, and some are not. Some of the walls run up multiple floors..

Recipe for disaster there. Use plan regions to set the cuts at the best locations to limit the possible combinations. Avoid building the chaos machine by using less parts. The Dual wall modeling system worked well for me in the past. set all your current walls to a "structural wall" workset, the go ahead and model dummy walls for you plan views, all plans show dummy walls that only need to look right for plan views and then for all your section and other view use the accurate ones. Not the best solution but it will save you time pulling out your own fluids over this.



The problem I was describing above was just 2 simple stud walls, both on the 2nd floor. One of them had an edited profile to follow a stair stringer down below the 2nd floor level, but the other wall was not edited, it simply sits on the 2nd floor level. Where those 2 walls join (both are fire rated with a gray fill when cut in plan), I also have a 3rd wall that comes in and runs from 1st floor all the way up, and it is not rated. I want the gray fill of the fire rated walls to run continuous around the corner, and simply have the un-rated wall show as butting into the corner. It's quite a pain..

Please post a screen capture (more than one please) of this paticular area, that is hard to see with my third eye. as a last resort you can always draw stupin filled region over the top of it all to get by if none of this works you you give up, but that is not very revit like.



In many places I think we are only going to be able to approximate the condition in the model, and use plan details to show the actual corner condition. I'm thinking we are going to have a TON of plan details on this project.

Yes and no. I mean you can't model everything, but you can get very close. Well you would plan details anyway right? I would use the dual wall set up like I talked about before I started to generate a ton of sheets here. Just toggle back and forth between the two setups througout the documents.
Hah, one post a ahead of you, you can't catcch me!!!

[tamas]

When a wall with edited elevation profile misbehaves in joins, it is usually helpful to recreate the elevation profile. Just remove the profile, and add it back again as new. Unfortunately profiles can get a little stale if the wall is dragged around too much.
(You can use cut and paste of the sketch curves if the profile is complex.)

[Wes Macaulay]

Revit wall joins are probably the most annoying, time-wasting problem I can think of on most projects. There needs to be a way to lock a wall join in a particular configuration - and have it stay that way until you unlock it.

[robert.manna]

Since you can't lock wall joins, (which would be nice) there are a few rules that you can follow so that wall joins will behave. Walls that extend multiple floors, and therefore have multiple intersections at multiple levels can cause the greastet headache. While I will typically start a project with core and elevation walls that extend all the way through a building, typically as the design progresses most of these wall get broken down to per floor (even though it is quite possible it would be constructued as a continuous piece). This is based on a reccomendation from the QA team at Revit, and has helped immensley. The second thing that I've found is that breaking walls down to stacked pieces of wall (not "stacked walls") can also help with refining wall joins and plan details. Some might refer to this as "3D soup" however I find that careful management of such situtations lead to very satisfacotry results. Using multiple wall objects can also sometimes avoid the need to use "edit elevation profile" which can be very troublesome as you have found. I have found that sometimes when I think that editing an elevation profile is the solution, I sit back and think, and realize that I actually want to be using two different wall types for the condition, rather than a continuous wall type. As a last resort, when using elevation profiles my experince has been to get everything else working, including the wall to have its elevation pofile edited, and then edit the profile last. The last thing that you can do is use in-place voids to cut a wall, rather than editing the profile. This has implications for the overall project as in-place families can add signinficantly to file overhead, not to mention that cutting the wall with a void can have a different effect on wrapping etc, as opposed to editing the profile.

As good practice based on years of 3D modeling experience in programs beyond Revit I would not reccomend creating duplicate geometry that exists on top of each other. Certinainly I have run into very specific situations where I had duplicate geometry on top of each other, however in a parametric modeler like Revit, where soooo much information is tied to the model and its parts you are asking for unexpcted results and or problems in things beyond simply making your plans "look right". The first example would be scheduling, but other problems could be hosted families, strucutral systems, other geoetry interaction. If you're working by yourself it might not be such a big deal, but if you're working with a team.......

HTH

-R