Angled and straight curtain grids and mullions-RAC 2008

[t1.shep]

Is there a way to have combined angled and straight mullions in curtain walls? We're doing custom curtain wall systems that have mullions about 5 deg. from horizontal, but also mullions that are just horizontal and vertical.
I've attached an image that shows a rough idea of what I'm after, but I did it with detail lines. You'll see a curtain wall with an angled mullion, one with both, and one with only horizontal.
I feel like there should be a way to draw mullions however you want, not just constrained to a grid. Is this possible?

[Dimitri Harvalias]

You have a couple of options (probably more, but this is a start )
Create the mullions as in-place families or use another curtain system as the curtain panel, in effect nesting the one system inside the other.

[dbaldacchino]

http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=56264
One solution is to create a custom panel which has the mullion built in as an extrusion. Remember that such panels cannot have sloped edges (that's one quirk of custom panels...they can only be rectangular, unless you build more parameters into the family. In other words, they won't adjust to sloped grids).

The best option is one of the most overlooked features of Revit I think (myself included!)......nest a curtain wall into a curtain wall by unpinning the panel and changing it to a curtainwall. Then you will be able to slope the mullions through the curtainwall parameters. See attached crude example.

EDIT: Uhm, pretty much what Dimitri said! He said "curtain system" and that threw me off :)

[Dimitri Harvalias]

He said "curtain system" and that threw me off :)

I tend to refer to curtain walls with a predefined layout as 'systems' but I guess they should really be called 'styles'. Sorry to throw you off Dave.

For this situation I'd probably go with your custom curtain panel suggestion. Getting that angled mullion to be aligned properly as part of a nested curtain wall might be a hit and miss kind of nuisance.

[dbaldacchino]

NP D :)

I don't think the nested approach should be problematic. The horizontal and vertical grid angles are an instance parameter of the curtain wall, so they should be precise. The key is being able to have a rectangular panel within which your angled mullions would work.

[t1.shep]

Thanks for the tips. I'll be playing around with these today and see which one works the best for me.

Thanks again.

So, I played around with the nesting a curtain wall inside a curtain panel and that seems to work pretty well.
I have had one problem. I'm still a novice when it comes to curtain walls. I have the grid settings set at 1 to define the number of mullions. What happens if I then unpin the grid line and move the mullion and then make a change elsewhere that affects that curtain wall (say move a roof that the wall is attached to) a new mullion is created automatically.

[Archman]

nested curtaain walls seems to work well if your curtain wall is straght up and down. What if it tilts?

[t1.shep]

Are you asking about sloped walls?
It looks like you've got it from the image. However, much to my dismay, the only ways that I know of for making sloped, or tilted walls is to use massing. So you have to go in and make a mass at the angle and length that you want. You could use and extrusion or sweep, or import a mass from Sketchup. It's really kind of inefficient I think. I would love to be able to go to a section and rotate the wall to the angle that I want. Once you have the mass, you use a "curtain system" and apply it to a face of the mass. Now that you've done that the curtain system acts like a regular curtain wall and you can change the panels to different wall or curtain types. However, since the wall is dependent on the mass, you can't change it's length or height or anything like that. Hence the reason I think it is so inefficient.
Is that what you're wondering about?

[dbaldacchino]

Hmmm, if it tilts but is planar, I wonder if you could create it in a separate file with the rotated grids, link it into your project, and then rotate the link so the curtain wall is outwards/inwards from the vertical? Haven't tried it, just a wild thought.

EDIT: Stupid idea....can't rotate levels, DUH!

[dbaldacchino]

Intriguing design problem :)

One can use a ruled curtain system to get the slope easily without having to use a mass. The problem though is that there is zero control over gridlines. Revit extrapolates their position automatically, so that if the top line is smaller than the lower line for example, the grid lines will tilt and slope in a "ray" so the spacing at the top is proportionate to the space at the base (non-parallel). If both top and bottom lines are the same, the gridlines are parallel.

With this method, you have to edit each curtain panel manually in-place. This way you can profile it any way you want along it's plane. Then you have to add an extrusion/sweep/whatever shape you want within the panel to represent the mullion (this is just a modeled element and won't schedule since it's part of the panel).

The other option is a curtain system by face. You might have to build multiple pieces if not all mullions slope. With this face system, you have control over the grid angles just as a curtain wall.

[Archman]

What I eneded up having to do was make a roof that sloped apporpriately, then turn it into a sloped glazing family. That got me the basic sloping trapezoidal shape. Unfortunately you cannot nest walls into sloped glazing like you can with a curtain wall, so I had to model the edge piece shaped like a parallelogram as a separate sloped glazing family.

It gets me where I want to be, I just don't like the fact that I had to model this window wall which is all in one plane as two pieces.

[dbaldacchino]

Yep, I hear your pain. Only curtainwalls seem to have the ability to contain walls or curtain walls as a substitution to a curtain panel. For very complex shapes, I think one could model it vertically, save it out as a 3D dwg and link it back in. That would give you the flexibility to rotate it in any direction. Of course that means you can't schedule parts and....you used a dwg :banghead: