Masonry wall bulge

[jvedio]

I need some opinions. What's the best way to model a masonry wall for a old city hall where the masonry bulges in certain areas for structural reasons? I thought about either creating an in place family, creating a wall hosted family or drawing a parallel wall and joining it to the main wall. I just wanna know what other people are doing as a best practice. Attached is the condition i'm talking about, it's in plan view. Thanks.

[TheViking]

Why not use a wall sweep?

[jvedio]

There is more than one on a single wall and they are at irregular intervals. Plus the number of them on each wall is different.

[patricks]

That would be pretty easy to do with an architectural column, unless the thicker portion changes as it moves up the wall.

I would still probably do it as an architectural column family with the varying thicknesses built into the family. Then when you place it along the wall, it will join to the wall and take on the masonry material.

[tomnewsom]

I do lots of this sort of thing, and if I went about it with families I'd go crazy. So, I create an overlapping piece of wall and Join the main wall to the bulge (in that order - if you later demolish the bulge, the wall will remain in the right shape, instead of having a chunk eaten out of it). This approach is infinitely flexible, which is the most important thing when modelling existing conditions!

[aaronrumple]

This situation is exactly whet the architectural column tool awas designed for...

[tomnewsom]

This situation is exactly whet the architectural column tool awas designed for...
Only when you have a limited amount of variation in your 'lumps'

What about when the face of the lump is not parallel to the wall?
What about when the corners chamfer?
What about when the lump goes round an angle?

These conditions can all be easily accomodated with Joined walls. Columns are for columns and new bumps. Existing fabric, especially in older buildings, is best done in plain old walls, in my experience.

[aaronrumple]

What about when the face of the lump is not parallel to the wall?

Just rotate the pilaster... It can stick into the wall. (See attached examples...)


What about when the corners chamfer?
Just use a different pilaster type... The one in example is supplied with Revit. Even very strrange shapes can be used.


What about when the lump goes round an angle?
Just use a different pilaster type...


These conditions can all be easily accomodated with Joined walls. Columns are for columns and new bumps. Existing fabric, especially in older buildings, is best done in plain old walls, in my experience.

Columns have always been misnamed. They are really column covers or pilasters and were designed by the factory to act so. This is why they auto-join with walls and adopt the material settings of the wall.

Yes, I'll use joined walls sometimes, but columns are typically simpler to manage, maintain and move around. For the orighinal example shown above, it is a textbook example of how to use a column as intended by the factory.

For existing conditions, I do like to use instanced width and depth. this allows me to quickly make any size column I want just by stretching it in plan to the correct size.

[tomnewsom]

Ok, the working day is winding down here now, but I'll check your rvt out - I am open to persuasion :)

[tomnewsom]

Okay, I do see the advantages, but it's still not as simple as using walls when you're tracing a survey. I use Pick from line to create my bumps and then go back after doing a load to Join them up. It's more tricky to get Columns aligned with the survey lines.

[jvedio]

Thanks everyone for the advice. I think I'll go with a combination of joining walls and using columns. With wall joins I retain a lot more control if I have to go back and alter anything and they cleanup a lot nicer.