walls with batt insulation

[Justin Marchiel]

how does everyone handle walls with batt insulation? there are 2 things that i would like to do (my workarounds are included). Can anyone think of a better solution?

Example
1/2" gwb both sides of 2x4. 1 wall has batts, 1 wall doesn't. i can't create 2 walls, becasue there is no where for the batt materials so:

1. create a shared parameter (instance) that i would attach to the walls, so when checked it would at least be tagable seperatly from when it is not checked.
2. to schedule, scheudle the studs and rename the schedule to batts.

Did i miss something, or is this the way to fly?

Thanks

justin

[sleimgruber06]

Wow... this is beyond my Revit for sure! But it sure sounded cool ecspecially if you can get it to work! Sorry I'm not much help to you today Justin, but let me ask you a question; Will you be attending AU this year in Vegas?

[Justin Marchiel]

i wish that i could, but probably not. too many deadlines, and too little funds in the development purse.

Justin

[sleimgruber06]

i wish that i could, but probably not. too many deadlines, and too little funds in the development purse.

Justin

I'm sorry to hear that... but hey, just a thanks to you because even though you probably don't quite remember, you've been helpin me out lately with my questions on AUGI so yea...thanks!

[Justin Marchiel]

no problem, what goes around comes around. if i can help someone hopefully they will learn a skill and help me.

That is the great thing about these forums!

Justin

[dbaldacchino]

I don't follow what you mean by "i can't create 2 walls, becasue there is no where for the batt materials". Are you trying to schedule how much batt insulation you have? Why not create two walls that have the same layers (gyp on either side of a 3.5" core) but have a different type mark and type name? Aren't exterior walls supposed to have a finish such as stucco, brick, metal panel, siding, etc? I'm trying to understand your issue.

[david.fannon]

I think I am with David on this one. I don't understand why two wall types, each with a 3 1/2" core, one with the core as material "air space" one with a material "batt insulation" and each with its own type, mark etc. If you are really concerned about it, you could make new materials called "Studs @ 16" o.c." and "Studs @ 16" o.c. w/ Batt Insulation."

I am probably missing something obvious here, but this has worked pretty well for us, we have a bunch of types in the office which are variations on a basic theme. In Revit we just make them all as unique wall types and swap in and out as required.

[Justin Marchiel]

the reason that i didn't want 2 wall types is that it start to bloat the file. as you can appreciate, there will be double the amount of walls, because the batt insulation will just be a copy of the original, but with batts.

I am still looking into the problem, and have not come up with a great solution, but i am working on it.

Justin

[dbaldacchino]

I really doubt it will bloat your file.

[Dimitri Harvalias]

Justin,

I think all the Davids :lol:are right on this one. Just create different materials for the cores. Not all your walls will be insulated so just a few new material definitions should do it.
Studs-wood
Studs-Wood-Insulated

This approach also allows you to create wall types where you have double studs with only one side insulated. You can also define the materials with a different cut pattern to have them visually identifiable as insulated in plan or section.
I'm sure by 'bloat' you mean a more crowded type selector not actually increased file size, right?

[Justin Marchiel]

My intent was that i had a basic wall, and it's description would be WF3A (wf = wood framed, 3 = 2x4, a = 1/2" gwb each side). if i wanted a rated wall i would add x to the end (to designate type x). then i thought that this would be easy to have a parameter that when activate could put the letter i next to the wall tag. this way some walls could have it, and some not, and i would not need a third wall type (1-WF3A,2- WF3Ax,3- WF3Axi, 4 WF3ai).

Does this make sense? I could have 1 wall that has 4 different functions. now i will need 4 walls. jsut more to manage, and more for my users to change and get wrong.

I have been exploring the different cut materials for my studs and this makes sense. i was just asking everyone if there was a way that i could get this parameter to work.

I feel the pressure and will bow and use the 4 walls types with different cut materials.

Justin

[robert.manna]

My intent was that i had a basic wall, and it's description would be WF3A (wf = wood framed, 3 = 2x4, a = 1/2" gwb each side). if i wanted a rated wall i would add x to the end (to designate type x). then i thought that this would be easy to have a parameter that when activate could put the letter i next to the wall tag. this way some walls could have it, and some not, and i would not need a third wall type (1-WF3A,2- WF3Ax,3- WF3Axi, 4 WF3ai).
Concpetually an interesting idea, however at this time, yeah, you're stuck with multiple walls. Even if you could concatonate some text into a tag with a parameter, I'm still not sold on the idea yet, as so much of the other possibilites with BIM, is based on the ability to do qaunitifaction and scheduling of what you've got. At this time, Revit is built around the assumption that for each unique construction "object" you're going to have a unique type. If they set-up the walls families slightly differently, more like families, you could sorta of do what you want, but even then, at the end if the day a user at somepoint would need to "pick" in some way, what type of wall you've got, whether its an instance parameter property of a basic wall, or just selecting the right wall from a list.....

-R

[Melarch]

Interesting! Here is my question: With Justins approach to using a wall tag to differentiate wall types (thats what this is all about and also not bloat his project). Then how are the parameters associated to the wall except by the tag and if you want take-offs of the different walls do you use the tag parameters to filter which wall of the same type contribute tothe lineal lenght or square areas.

[robert.manna]

Interesting! Here is my question: With Justins approach to using a wall tag to differentiate wall types (thats what this is all about and also not bloat his project). Then how are the parameters associated to the wall except by the tag and if you want take-offs of the different walls do you use the tag parameters to filter which wall of the same type contribute tothe lineal lenght or square areas.
Well that is the crux of the problem. You can't. If you could establish a basic wall, but have types under that specific wall, then you could make these "slight" changes, while having only one "wall family", that has multiple types. At some point as I said, the user needs to be able to select the "wall type" but you could drive this with yes no parameters or another "sub" drop down box. Once again this behavior is more like a family, where for instance, I have one window family, but I have multiple type that are all slightly different. Right now we are stuck with three wall families, basic, stacked and curtain, under those three families, we have to define each and every possible sub type. Really what we're driving at here is further another level to the wall hierarchy to make management of similiar, but subtley different wall types easier.

-R

[Scott D Davis]

Yeah, I posted a wish similar to this a while back for Wall Types and Wall Sub-Types. Our wall types work like this:


Type A

4" Non-rated

Insulated
non-insulated

4" 1 HR



Insulated
non-insulated

6" NR

Ins
Non

6" 1 HR

Ins
Non



Repeat for 8". Thats just wall Type A. We currently have "standards" up to Type BBB. Some types have multiple ratings (1 HR, 2 HR), and some have many more "standard" thicknessess. That gives us 389 Types in our Wall Standards file.

[Justin Marchiel]

Good to see that i am not the only one on this thinking!

So i guess there is no way to do what i want and i am stuck with creating the extra wall types. Hopefully the developers listen to Scott's wish and we will see this in a future release!

Thanks for all the input

Justin

[dbaldacchino]

Justin,

I'm in no way saying that your idea is wrong, it's just that at the moment you're forced to do it that way. Since you only have walls available as system families, then each different wall is a new type of that system family, under one tree. If wall families were available as a standalone family with it's own template, that would be awesome, especially because that opens the possibility to even start nesting them into generic models, etc and the possibilities would be endless.

Let me give you another example of what I faced that is similar to your desire to reduce the wall clutter. I had a wall in my project that was to be used in a parapet situation, a gravel-stop situation and in areas with recessed doors (no coping on top). My main wall had a type mark assigned to it (say, type "8"). I added a sweep to the top in the wall type so that coping is inserted automatically. Unfortunately, you cannot remove that sweep from an instance if it is defined within the type so I had to create 2 more walls that were identical, one with a different sweep at the top and one without. Then I was stuck with the problem that Revit gave me warnings about having duplicate type marks (we don't distinguish wall types by whether they have coping or not at the top, so they all needed to be type "8"). So I had to live with a bunch of warnings in my "Review Warnings" dialog. My other route (which I'm seriously thinking of taking next time) is to manually add sweeps to the top of walls as necessary.

[Justin Marchiel]

i can appreaciate your comments. i was just trying to get more out of my families, but like you said it doesn't appear that i can with walls.


Justin

[Michelle Gibson]

I reviewed your previous post (scott's) and downloaded your wall types. I did not have a problem with the number of types, as it gives you a full wall type catalogue from which to "shop". I created our own office standard using structure to differentiate (ie. wood, steel or block) added a few oddities such as plumbing chases and rated shaft walls, then applied the same principal by creating different core thicknesses, one with batt and one without. Took a few days of my time, but our office now has a comprehensive library they plop into each project, select their required wall types and ditch the rest. Most importantly, I now know that EVERY time I place a wall type 6e in a project that has two layers 16mm type x each side 92 metal stud with batt insulation. type 6b is similiar without batt. This never changes, and everyone in the office uses the same library. For this reason alone, I think it is worth keeping the large number of wall types and whittling them down for each specific category.