Concrete tilt-up curtain wall

[modulor]

I'm considering using "curtain wall" for concrete tilt-up walls of a warehouse. The main reason is for ease of locating and dimensioning vertical panel joints.
As far as I know, I can't use curtain grids for reveals. "Host sweep" will do for those, I guess.

It seems like curtain walls don't behave well as "bearing walls".

Will this be more problematic than using standard wall types?

[tomnewsom]

Sounds like it. Why not use the standard layout grids to align your walls to?
(you could even use a 'waffle' or 'tartan' grid layout if you need a constant specific gap between panels)

[patricks]

I did a concrete tilt-up building awhile back using just a basic wall of concrete in thickness equal to my panel thickness, and then just placed vertical reveals at the joints. It worked fine.

[Archman]

I am doing a tilt wall project right now. I chose to make a groiup of regular walls for each panel type and copy those groups around the perimeter of the building. So far it is working beautifully. An example of the time savings this has afforded me, is that if I need to change the reveal pattern for the panels, I change it on a half dozen panel type groups and the changes ripple throughout the project. Like I said, so far it's working beautifully.

[Tom Dorner]

I just finished my third pre-cast building using curtain walls.

While it works fine most of the time, I have run into some issues with using them.

Overhead doors that span more than a panel width can be problematic with their openings only cutting one of the panels. You can fix this most of the time by adding an "opening" or editing the curtain grid arrangement.

Moving things like building entrances to a different location can also be problematic. I just had to re-arrange the front entrances and ended up splitting the front curtain wall into pieces so I could slide the entrances down 20 feet. This was because I had custom curtain grid arrangements, embedded store fronts and wall sketches that had been edited in that area. The move worked OK, but then had problems with the pieces of curtains wall ends not reacting properly with each other. They would "join" but be 6" apart or would overlap by 6". You could try all day and not make them work sometimes.

Continuous footings seem to mis-behave sometimes as well. On the last job, I stopped the pre-cast panels and the first floor line and used a regular wall to go down to footings from there.

The next pre-cast building I do I may go back to regular walls. Play with it first with OH doors and such and see if curtain walls work for you.



You can define a custom "mullion" to act as your panel joints. There is one as an example in the attached file.

[BomberAIA]

I am working on one now. I used walls to create the panels. I group sections of the panels w/ reveals and copied the panels throughout the project. With walls, I can add pilasters, wall sweeps, etc. It worked fine. I haven't tried curtain walls for panels yet.

[modulor]

Thanks for all the responses. I decided to use standard wall types instead of curtain.
I created a wall based family for vertical panel joints, which made it easy for placing and dimensioning.
And I'm using sweeps for reveals.
I think curtain walls would've been disastrous in the long run. I was over-thinking it, I guess.

[archjake]

Whats the best place to start when trying to use the curtain wall for tilt-up construction.

One of my problems is that when I change from glass to concrete in a curved wall that should be segmented I get actual curves. I want segments to make up my curve, much like what is displayed when it is glass. Does that make sense?

[aaronrumple]

Whats the best place to start when trying to use the curtain wall for tilt-up construction.

One of my problems is that when I change from glass to concrete in a curved wall that should be segmented I get actual curves. I want segments to make up my curve, much like what is displayed when it is glass. Does that make sense?
Draw your walls using the polygon tool...

[Scott D Davis]

Whats the best place to start when trying to use the curtain wall for tilt-up construction.

One of my problems is that when I change from glass to concrete in a curved wall that should be segmented I get actual curves. I want segments to make up my curve, much like what is displayed when it is glass. Does that make sense?
Don't switch out the whole curtain wall for a concrete wall. Tab-select a single curtain panel, and go to the Type Selector pull down and slect a concrete wall. This will turn the panel into concrete, not the whole wall.

[archjake]

Are people using panel families for the panel, or are people using walls. If you use walls, how are you getting the chamfered edges? The example posted above appears to be using walls, but has no chamfered edges at the joints.

Can you make the mullion families into voids?

[clay_hickling]

In any of the methods mentioned to do tilt walls, would any of them be able to provide a legend of panel type elevations that show the cut openings in the various panel types?
Similar to how you can elevate doors thru the legend components.

[dbaldacchino]

Are people using panel families for the panel, or are people using walls. If you use walls, how are you getting the chamfered edges? The example posted above appears to be using walls, but has no chamfered edges at the joints.

Can you make the mullion families into voids?
I have never dealt with this so far, but I'm not so sure you can make mullions cut the panel families with voids. One way I can think of doing this is to make a panel family with a void in the middle to represent the chamfer. Then in the curtainwall, your grids would have to be located at the centerline of each panel rather than the joints themselves, and the chamfer (void) at the middle of the panel would be the actual till-wall joint. Although with the same line of thinking, you could create a curtain panel with voids at each end and then insert into a curtainwall where the grid would be at the tilt-wall joints. In that case, I'd go for the latter.

[archjake]

Does anyone have some examples of projects or just walls copied into a blank project that have reveals and used the curtain wall method?

Thanks