Walls with varying height wainscot

[patricks]

I have a wall type with 1 1/2" EIFS on the outside, and the lower 5 ft. of the wall will have an extra 3/4" layer with a 45-deg. beveled edge along the top to create a simple wainscot. Now most places around the building the EIFS will only extend down a couple of inches below finished floor. However around the loading dock area of the building, the wainscot needs to maintain that same 5 ft. height above the finished floor, but needs to extend down as much as 4 ft. below finished floor, but varying at different places as the grade adjacent to the building slopes down to the dock.

So should I just create one sweep for this wainscot that is 9 ft. tall (5 ft. above the floor and 4 ft. below) and run that all the way around the building, and just clean it up and make it look correct in details? Or should I have one sweep around most of the building, and a different sweep (and consequently different wall type) around the loading area? Or is there another way to get the different sweeps without having to make a bunch of different wall types?

Or perhaps I should just do them all as wall-hosted sweeps so that I can keep just the one exterior wall type?

[architeach]

Personally, I like to keep my wall styles to a minimum so I would use a wall-hosted sweep. But if you plan to have multiple section cuts on the side elevations were the grade changes it might be easier to just create a couple of different wall styles each having its own wainscot depth. For example, one at the rear/dock to extend to the truck court, one for the side elevations where the grade changes, and one for the front elevation.

[Melarch]

I am not sure what the wall is doing as it varies in height. It seems to me that you could use the Edit Profile on the bottom of the wall as it extends downward and needs to vary and use a Hosted Sweep to establish the continuous wainscot around the walls. Or if there is a foundation wall below this wall then just Edit Profile of the foundation wall and Attach the Base of wall above to the foundation wall.

[jason.combs]

You should consider whether you will be producing a schedule of materials from your model. If you or others downstream of the project may want to do this, then model the wainscot as it would be built.

Where it makes sense, model accurately.

[michael.deorsey]

This sounds like something that could be done in the wall family, by using stacked walls to vary the thickness of your EFIS layer, and maintaining a constance height from some point above so that the lower section can vary. Then you would only need to add a sweep to bevel step.

[kpferrante851725]

Personally, I find the wall-based profile to be a little more temper mental in cleaning up correctly, especially is the wainscot extends past the wall at corners to meet the adjoining wainscot/wall sweep. But sometimes they cleanup right when I have moved them to an assigned wall type. When they dont, the walls can be cleaned up successfully, but require patience and a series of allow and disallow join commands.

In regards to what Jason said, are the wainscot walls scheduled or have a specific wall type? Than maybe using a stacked or basic wall type with the wainscot profile is recommended. Otherwise, I would default to the wall hosted sweep as well, I have had a lot more success with this approach as well.

[patricks]

This sounds like something that could be done in the wall family, by using stacked walls to vary the thickness of your EFIS layer, and maintaining a constance height from some point above so that the lower section can vary. Then you would only need to add a sweep to bevel step.

nope, not gonna do stacked walls, too many problems in my experiences for me to want to deal with it.

I just have 2 main wall types and 2 sweep profiles (2 types of the same family). One extends 2" below finished floor, and the other 4 feet below finished floor, and I just use them in different places accordingly. Then in elevation I'll just show the dock approach sloping down in front of the wall where the sweep extends down 4 feet.