Partial Height Wall Exporting

[mrice.47661]

I just did a forum search to see if this was covered before, but I don't see that its come up yet - so maybe everyone has discovered a simple way of handling this???

When you have a partial height wall in your model, it's difficult to get that wall to export to a separate layer in a .DWG file. In many cases, these walls really need to be on a separate layer so that those consultants who are forced to use the .DWG files for documentation can turn them off independently from the full height walls. Its needed to truly understand how a ceiling plan is going to look (for instance.)

Unfortunately we haven't been able to find a great way of doing this.

I can create a sub-category of the wall family called "Partial Height Wall", but I have no way of accessing the family (or creating a hybrid) that could make use of the sub-category when exporting.

We could high-jack one of the built-in wall "functions" to force those walls to export to the correct layer, but I'm quickly running out of those, as due to the "Soffit" function not functioning (no pun intended) during export, we had to high-jack the "Retaining wall" function in order to have our ceiling soffit walls not export to the floor wall layer. (Is this a bug others have found as well when exporting? - or is there some trick there too?)

I suppose we could do some sort of filtering thing, and do multiple CAD file exports - but that again seems like way too much trouble.

It seems like such a simple thing would be easy to achieve, but I just don't see how. Any ideas/suggestions/solutions?

[aggockel50321]

Probably not the answer you want but:

1.) Create the short walls as in-place families, under the walls category.

2.) Or, after export, open the dwg and move the short walls to a new layer

[mrice.47661]

Ugh - that's what I was fearing ... I suppose if there aren't TOO many partial height walls the in-place family might be a workable work-around - though it would mean all the great wall functionality that we have with typical wall objects would be lost.

I was hoping someone had found something we've missed in the exporting options.

If not, perhaps the Revit team could simply add "Partial Height Wall" to one of the predetermined Wall Functions in the next release. I don't think that would be too much of an effort, would it?

[Teresa.Martin]

Hi!
There actually is a way to do this, but it involves using filters. You could create a user filter called WALL-Partial Ht. You could add a parameter to the wall (Yes/No or just use the description and/or comment field).

Then go to visibility graphics (filter tab) and create a color (cut) override. This will give the partial height walls in plan (you could set it for elevation as well).

Now, when you do to export the file, go to the options tab and under layer and properties choose (All properties BYLAYER, new layers for overrides).

This will create a new wall layer in Autocad (A-Wall-2). You can just change the name then in Autocad to partial height.

So...I am not sure if this is better for you or not, but at least you can apply the filter to any type of wall, etc. and you can do this in plan, section or elevation.


Best regards,

[Dimitri Harvalias]

You can accomplish this with filters and by modifying your export settings. Experiment with this a little and see what works for you.

Click the Options button in the export dialogue. You are given three options as to how you want layers created and object categories mapped.
If you select the third option All properties BYLAYER, new layers for overrides Revit will create a new layer for any elements with overrides. If your low walls are defined as a different type you can create a filter to override the projection line based on type. Apply that filter to plan views by default and your low walls will be exported to a new layer.

You can refine this further if you want to use the same wall types by adding a Low Wall yes/no parameter to your walls and create your filter on that rather than type.
To keep the plan views graphically consistent the override can just set the projection line color to black so these low walls won't appear any different in your Revit views.

[mrice.47661]

Thanks to all - I think the added parameter + filter solution will do the trick.