Wall style

[richelleharp]

How much info should I give a new wall? My pilot project is to be built of 11" I.C.F. As we are still to be in design dev for a bit. Do I create this wall in the beginning?

[Matt Brennan]

The more info you build into the wall, the more you can calculate in your "Material take-off" schedule. I would personally include all the finishes right down to the vapour barriers.

[richelleharp]

The more info you build into the wall, the more you can calculate in your "Material take-off" schedule. I would personally include all the finishes right down to the vapour barriers.

Thanks so much for this, I want to use Revit as it is intended.

[cphubb]

I recommend creating as much as possible. Even if this means creating some placeholder materials until the final materials are worked out. We often create a placeholder for a finish such as GWB-1 etc and when we work out the final materials list we edit the walls and do our final wall styles. If you use material or keynotes your notes will update as the materials are finalized

[richelleharp]

I recommend creating as much as possible. Even if this means creating some placeholder materials until the final materials are worked out. We often create a placeholder for a finish such as GWB-1 etc and when we work out the final materials list we edit the walls and do our final wall styles. If you use material or keynotes your notes will update as the materials are finalized

Thank you, this approach seems very logical.

[Matt Brennan]

Be sure to update your Template so you do not need to do this tedious task at the start of every project.

[richelleharp]

Be sure to update your Template so you do not need to do this tedious task at the start of every project.

Thanks. I am on my own and I can see that provided I work in this manner I may be able to continue to handle my projects without outside help. As I set up templates will I continue to import all of these wall styles and families into each upgrade?

[Justin Marchiel]

if you add all this info into your template, you only need to update your template, not each family. if you store your families outside your template, there is a utility that comes on the install cd that will search a selected directory and upgrade all the files in that directory.

THe only word of caustion that i have is that you can't take a revit file backwards. so if you have an older project that you dont want to upgrade (and there will be times when you have a project that is almost done and you dont want to have stability issues) you will need to keep a copy of the previous version families.

Justin

[cphubb]

We save all of our "System" Families in separate templates based on the type of building we are constructing. For instance we have a wall types template for wood frame, commercial, masonry and concrete. All other information is purged from those files and they are stored separately from the default template which is pretty much empty. We do the same with other system families like floors and roofs etc. It simplifies the upgrade process and keeps the templates small and clean.