Curtain Walls: locating relative to adjacent walls

[pashley]

How do you set the relationship between a curtainwall and a wall that it ties into?

I have an 11 inch thick brick on stud wall that has punched openings in which curtainwall sits. The face of the 4" deep mullions is to be 1/2" back from the face of the brick. I got it to work in one wall by giving the mullions and infill panels an offset. However, when I copied that curtainwall to another location, placing it next to the same brick type wall, it won't position itself in the same way. And if I try to move the curtainwall towards the interior (needs to move 1") both the curtainwall and the adjacent brick wall move.

Can the curtainwall move independently?

What's the correct way to set the position?

This is driving me nuts.

[sbrown]

use move and check the disjoin button.

[J. Grouchy]

Curtain walls have always bothered me. I dislike having to either edit the wall profile or stop a wall in order to place a curtain wall. I would prefer it if they acted more like windows, and you could set an "offset" relative to the location line of (or maybe just the face of) the adjacent wall.

[pwmsmith]

Not that I know that much but I been working with a model with lots of curtain walls (lot of problems). One way I've found is that I change the loc line of the wall which is to be cahnged into a curtain wall to center. This moves the curtain wall to the center. Maybe there are smarter people than me who can help.

[SCShell]

Curtain walls have always bothered me. I dislike having to either edit the wall profile or stop a wall in order to place a curtain wall. I would prefer it if they acted more like windows, and you could set an "offset" relative to the location line of (or maybe just the face of) the adjacent wall.



Hi there,

I was told to create a window family for this approach; however, once I started playing with it, I realized that I lost the ability to place doors in the storefront system. (I am not a "family master" yet and don't know how to use nested families or really modify families like that.) I still use curtain walls as "storefront" and I still have to mess with the placement. But, the power of grid and mullion layout/modification more than makes up for that!

I did however, create a new door panel which has an extruded sweep around it's edges in order to create a standard aluminum storefront entrance door unit. I also have some different profiles to represent wide, med and narrow styles.

In addition, the curtain wall family works great for other things, such as bookcase shelving units, the now famous "standing metal seam roof" and anything else which requires basic grid type layout patterns.

Good Luck
Steve Shell

[Scott D Davis]

curtain wall can also be used for 2x framing.....

see this (http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=7039)

[J. Grouchy]

I did however, create a new door panel which has an extruded sweep around it's edges in order to create a standard aluminum storefront entrance door unit. I also have some different profiles to represent wide, med and narrow styles.

We did that too over here. I was surprised to find that there wasn't one already made since this is the most common door style in an aluminum storefront system...I mean, how often do you really see an ALL glass door in an exterior application?

[sbrown]

I've made a number of curtain wall "standard doors" based on Kawneer.

[pashley]

Thanks for the help, guys. I'll have to get back and download the doors.

One thing I noticed when I do move the storefronts (and sometimes just walls) - I often get the warning about walls overlapping and some reference to room boundaries. Am I flirting with future disaster where rooms and ceilings won't be created or calculated correctly?

[richardlwells]

Go to a plan view, highlight the curtain wall then select it. You may have to pick the activate dimensions button,then edit one of those dimensions to give you the desired result. In some cases it is easier to make a new dimension, say from exterior face of wall to the curtain wall, then select the curtain wall (and activate dimensions button), edit the new dimension and then erase it. Hope this helps.