Problems with arrays

[jhd]

I'm trying to make a curtain panel family that consists of louvers. I start by creating a simple sketch of a rectangle in the front view. Once I'm done with the sketch I lock the long ends of the rectangular 3d geometry to the left and right reference planes. At this point I have not created any new reference planes, but am just using the ones that are part of the family template. I then do a simple array in the vertical direction and lock the top one to the top reference plane. The problem arrives when i try to stretch the right and left reference planes. The array of the 3d geometries becomes skewed in the left-right direction and when i bring the curtain panel into a family and adjust the grid lines the lengths of the louvers become arrayed. It's sort of a tough situation to explain, but if anyone's tried making adjustable louvers then you've probably run into this problem. please help - thanks.

[davidwlight]

Your best approach would be to create a seperate louvre family and then nest this into your curtain wall panel. You can the array the lourve, constraining it top and bottom as well as at each side within the curtain wall panel. I would probably only array two lourves in the first instance, then add a parameter to the array so you can control the number of lourves. If you take a look at the attached family, hopefully it should give some basic pointer (sorry its a metric file). But once your've got your head around the approach, you can create stuff like. this....

[dfriesen]

Curtain panels are not friendly towards arrays. I'm not sure about your exact problem, but if you haven't run into it already, you'll find that you can't control the array based on the height of the panel.

Another way of doing it, which I find better, is to create a new curtain wall style, using horizontal mullions that have the profile of your louvers, spaced as you need, and the Empty System Panel as the panel. Then, in your project, select a panel where you want louvers, and select your Louver Curtainwall in the Type Selector.

Very simple and reliable.

[rmejia]

I was having a similar problem when creating a door with a louver the other day. Whenever I changed the width of the louver, the array would move. I was able to align the last item in the array to the reference plane and lock it, but the problem persisted. I then aligned and locked the first (original), second and third arrayed items (I had a lot more, but tried out just the first few) to the left and right ref planes and now it works properly.

[Andre Carvalho]

You can try reverse engineer this louvered (and sloped) curtain panel I've created to the Shard London Bridge tower.

I hope it helps,

Andre Carvalho

[MNsnowtaTy]

I'm having the same problem with a cabinet that I want to have shelves locked to the ref planes so that I can adjust the width easy. When I do it the arrayed shelves are skewed as well. I want to be able to have a parameter to add or take out shelves when the height changes and also for them to adjust to the width change.

So would I need to nest in a family for the shelves?

[Scott Womack]

The most reliable way I have gotten around this annoying behavior is to create a family that is a single shelf (or louver), making its length, etc. an instance parameter. Then I load that into a new family for the array. You have to recreate the parameters, again as instance paramerters. Now select the single item, and set its parameters to be controled by the newest ones you created, and do the array. Now take the array and load it into a new family that is line-based, etc. Re create the parameters from the original file, plus the additional ones from the array family. Now link those in the nested familes to the newest ones., and the array will work correctly as you adjust the length. It takes a little time, but it produces a stable, operating family.

Oh, as you create the parameters in each of the progressively newer family files, remeber to give those parameters a value greater than 0 before you link the nested families to them.