Converting generic walls to detailed walls

[patagoniadave]

Hey all, I thought about attaching this to the end of the "Design in Revit" thread, but thought it might be it's own topic? In that thread people were discussing the merits of massing for prelim design, vs just drawing walls. I was playing around, pretending I was a designer, and started laying out a house with generic walls. After I had the project lined out where I wanted it, I pretended that it was being passed on to the CAD guy (me) and was ready for cd's. I went to convert the exterior generic walls to a 2X6 wall with wood siding, and it went relatively well, but the siding lined up with the outside face of the generic wall instead of the core (of course how would it know what I wanted?). So I went into the wall properties and selected the exterior face of core as the justification plane, but the walls stayed where they were. I ended up having to align all the exterior face of cores with the basement walls below, which really only took a second.

So my question is, did I miss a step during the conversion that would have eliminated the need to re-align the walls, or if not, should I have my architect please try to rough guess what type of exterior walls he is going to use and stay away from designing with generic walls? Hope the question made sense, thanks for any ideas.

p.s. bonus question
In order to get the siding to cover the edge of the wood floor so that on the 3d or elevation views I would not see siding, the floor, and then the foundation, I made a reference plane at the bottom of the floor joists, aligned it in case my floor changed thickness, attached all the bottom of my exterior walls to the reference plane, and then joined the geometry of the floor and walls. Came out nice, but I am always curious if there is another better way to do something. Thanks all!

[greg.mcdowell]

It sounds like you placed the walls with exterior finish face instead of exterior core face... but your point is a good one. Since the core and finish of a generic wall are the same it's not obvious which one your working with... maybe modifying the generic wall to have an additional component to define an interior/exterior (maybe at 1/3 the overall thickness?) might help...

I have no idea what you're talking about in your bonus question... just can't follow.

[patagoniadave]

It sounds like you placed the walls with exterior finish face instead of exterior core face... but your point is a good one. Since the core and finish of a generic wall are the same it's not obvious which one your working with... maybe modifying the generic wall to have an additional component to define an interior/exterior (maybe at 1/3 the overall thickness?) might help...

I have no idea what you're talking about in your bonus question... just can't follow.

Hey, I never thought about modifying the generic wall, sometimes the simple answers are the easy ones. On the bonus I was trying to get the bottom of the siding to go lower than the bottom of the wall sill, to cover up the the wood floor edge that sits on the foundation (cause I built the wall on top of the wood floor, not the foundation). My way worked, I was just curious if it was the right/best way.

I see you are from Phoenix, hope all is well out there, I have been extremely homesick lately (southern AZ). You watch football? The Cards are playing the Pats this week, can't decide who I am rooting for, very cool stadium they built out there. Anyway, thanks for the response, I'll try your idea.

[Scott D Davis]

Hey all, I thought about attaching this to the end of the "Design in Revit" thread, but thought it might be it's own topic?....... thanks for any ideas.
not that you did anything "wrong" but if you would have laid out the generic walls with the Location Line (in Properties) set to Exterior Face of Core, and then swapped out those generic walls with more "developed" walls, also set to Exterior face of core, then the walls would stay in the same place, along the same Location Line. Of course this can be Ext Face of Core, Int Face of Core, ext Finish Face, etc.

[greg.mcdowell]

Is there a way to graphically display the wall justification line?

In ADT you could place it on a no plot layer and give it a unique color and I found it very helpful.

Also, being able to modify the justification line without moving the wall (or rather an option to do this) would be nice too.

ADT can learn from Revit... Revit can learn from ADT! <grin>

[Scott D Davis]

the Blue Grips at the ends of walls show where the location line is. No other graphical clue is available, yet.

You can switch Location Line as much as you like without the wall changing location, under properties.

[greg.mcdowell]

yeah... i should've known that last bit i guess... okay then, how about the other way? can you relocate the justification line such that it stays in place and the wall moves in or out accordingly?

[patagoniadave]

not that you did anything "wrong" but if you would have laid out the generic walls with the Location Line (in Properties) set to Exterior Face of Core, and then swapped out those generic walls with more "developed" walls, also set to Exterior face of core, then the walls would stay in the same place, along the same Location Line. Of course this can be Ext Face of Core, Int Face of Core, ext Finish Face, etc.

Hey thanks Scott, I never even knew that you could assign core locations to the generics. Very cool!

[rjcrowther]

On the topic of the bonus question:

You can unlock the siding layer in the walls structure:
-select wall
-in element properties select edit/new
-in type properties select preview and choose section
-in type properties under structure select edit
-down the bottom in the area where you can select to add sweeps and reveals, select the modify bottom
-select the very bottom line of the siding layer of the wall in the preview area and a lock symbol should appear - you have to zoom in fairly closely.
-click on it to unlock.

OK everything to get back to where you started.

You should now be able to adjust the height of the siding layer independently of the other layers by grabbing it in a section view and dragging, or conversely aligning and locking to a reference plane.

Is that what you are aiming for?

Regards,
Rob

[patagoniadave]

On the topic of the bonus question:

You can unlock the siding layer in the walls structure:
-select wall
-in element properties select edit/new
-in type properties select preview and choose section
-in type properties under structure select edit
-down the bottom in the area where you can select to add sweeps and reveals, select the modify bottom
-select the very bottom line of the siding layer of the wall in the preview area and a lock symbol should appear - you have to zoom in fairly closely.
-click on it to unlock.

OK everything to get back to where you started.

You should now be able to adjust the height of the siding layer independently of the other layers by grabbing it in a section view and dragging, or conversely aligning and locking to a reference plane.

Is that what you are aiming for?

Regards,
Rob

OMG! That is awesome, I swear I was in there pushing buttons and I couldn't find it. Thank you so much, I really appreciate the tip, I would have never found it.