Compound Walls VS. Solid Walls

[jacob chavez]

There is a belief by others in my office that making compound walls is a waste of time for standard 2x6 and 2x4 construction. Their argument is mostly based on dimensioning. That is, sometimes you dimension might get stuck to the finish face, and not the core. However, it seems that if you take this approach, you run into problems when you get to creating the elevations.

Does anyone have an opinion on this? Do most people use compound walls and floors that "extend into core" or are most people using other approaches.

JC

[christopher.zoog51272]

There is a belief by others in my office that making compound walls is a waste of time for standard 2x6 and 2x4 construction. Their argument is mostly based on dimensioning. That is, sometimes you dimension might get stuck to the finish face, and not the core. However, it seems that if you take this approach, you run into problems when you get to creating the elevations.

Does anyone have an opinion on this? Do most people use compound walls and floors that "extend into core" or are most people using other approaches.

JC

imho, only using solid walls instead of using compound walls is just plain dumb. Your elevations, sections, details won't be true, it won't render right, or cost estimate right, etc the list goes on and on.

We always dimension to core, and we set our dim styles to "prefer core" as we are laying them out, and it is extremly rare that we have a problem picking the wrong face by mistake.

Sounds like laziness to me, don't let them sway you :wink:

[jacob chavez]

I too think that it plain dumb to not use compound walls. In heeding thier advice, I ran into all sorts of limitations. Mostly, I ran into two problems. 1) When I created floors, and used the "extend into core" option, the edges of my floors were showing up in my elevations; pain in the butt to use linework to erase all of these lines. 2) The second problem being materials. I had to paint all of my exterior walls with the material, which seemed like just a waste of time.

Another benefit that I found in using compound walls for my exterior walls was the ability to "pull" the siding material down below the base constraint of the wall, by unlocking it in the section material properties, so that my siding can extend slightly below my foundation top. This is the way that the building is built anyway and isn't that the idea of Revit in the first place? To build the model the way that it will really be built?

What about interior walls? Do others make their walls 3-1/2" structure with 5/8" gyp on both sides? It makes sense to me so that you can get "clear" dimensions. Just curious what others are doing.

Thanks,

JC

[aaronrumple]

Agreed. Dumb.

However it might be cool. if we could turn off non-core componets in a Revit view to create a framing layout plan....

Architect as Master Builder returns.

[sbrown]

In my opinion we have "dumbed down" our plans in the past, now with revit there is no reason, interior walls should have their finish on them so if there are clear ada dimensions you need to place you can.

I think it is sorely need however to have the ability to turn off any layer of the wall you want, our consultants are always mad at us when they get our exports and they have the gypbd on them. we need to be able to export just framing/structure style plans.

[christopher.zoog51272]

I think it is sorely need however to have the ability to turn off any layer of the wall you want, our consultants are always mad at us when they get our exports and they have the gypbd on them. we need to be able to export just framing/structure style plans.

I agree completely!!! Lets through this one on the wishlist.

Z.

(ED: or we could throw it on the wishlist Z!)

[J-G]

This should be added to the wishlist pronto! I was headed toward just creating "dumb" walls for this very reason, but after thinking about future cost estimating, rendering, and elevations, I stayed with the compund walls. However we do really need the ability to should only the structural core. This is a must for structural plans and to me it makes the floor plans clearer anyway becasue we dimension to the rough.

[gregcashen]

I agree completely! In our office, we usually do al plans based on the wall core. We don't even include the finishes in the plans. There is no way to do this currently. It is sometimes difficult to tell where dimensions are pointing to...core, face, etc. It is also much more difficult to layout framing based on finished face dimensions. Therefore, we are forced to clutter our floor plans with finishes that in many cases are only going to confuse the builder.

Greg

[ajayholland]

In my opinion we have "dumbed down" our plans in the past, now with revit there is no reason, interior walls should have their finish on them so if there are clear ada dimensions you need to place you can.

Users of "flat-cad" tend to ignore the finishes in plan and elevation, then stumble across the necessity of showing them in section. I'm currently doing some work in ADT where these techniques have led to a great number of inconsistencies between drawings.

My choice would be to show the finishes, dimension to face of core. There are some cases where I would always want to show the finish materials in plan (EIFS cladding). How about a 50% screen on finish layers. Maybe there's already a solution in object style variations.

-AJH

[GS Fulton]

I think it's great for us to show the true thicknesses of the finishes and assemblies. It would be nice if we could have better control of the lineweight display of the wall layers because they do get a bit muddy sometimes. It's extremely valuable for us to be able to cut a section and see how walls stack and how their finishes match up. That ability has saved me time and trouble in the past.

Consultants are always whining about anything that they're not used to. I've had to drag mine (kicking and screaming mostly) into things like sending and receiving files attached to emails (imagine that), PDF's (they actually have complained about them, go figure) so I think we'll just have to keep leading them. They don't (or shouldn't) dictate how we do things.

George F