Placing doors and windows in wall components

As a part of our practice we do interior build outs. We will receive DWG base drawings from clients or buildings. As our office standard I am wanting to use the DWG as a trace and convert the drawing into Revit. I feel we save time in the long run by converting the drawing as opposed to just using it as an underlay.

To do this I have suggested that we trace the exterior wall, interior stairwells, elevator shafts and toilet surrounds as a wall component. This allows us to follow pilasters, wet columns, and other articulations. This is relatively easy and quick BUT..

When I go to place doors and windows in plan view in the wall component Revit will not let me. I can place them in the wall component in 3d view, just not plan view.

What am I doing wrong? Thanks in advance.

Also

Is this what other firms are doing?

Let me expand on this a bit. It appears that the create in place wall component will

-allow me in 3d view to place doors and windows in some of the created wall, but not all portions.

-not define Room Tags. If I place a room tag within the create in place wall component area the Room Tag does not recognize.

What am I doing wrong here?

Instead of creating in-place family walls that are traced from the DWG, use the Wall tool, and the Pick option in the options bar to pick the DWG to place walls. This is very quick, will allow placement of doors in plan, and will be room bounding. In the long run, it will save you more time becuase these are true "walls", not in-place families.

Thanks for the reply Scott, but just so I understand.

The Create in Place Component made Wall does not act like a wall.

If that is the case OK though it would be nice if it did. Wish List.

Here is the issue. I am working on older, 1940's, mid rise construction with exterior pilasters, irregular interior walls due to previous construction, walls that go from one thickness to another due to plumbing etc.These can be modeled with the walls tool but you are changing wall types, checking and un checking the room bounding button, that type of thing. If I could just trace the wall as a Create-in-place it would appear to be faster and I thought easier.

Questions -

Why does a Create-in-place Wall family accept doors and windows sometimes but not all the time?

Would it be easier to accept that the C-I-P Wall does not Room Bound and place a Room Separation line at the perimeter so that Room Tags can be placed?

Can a parameter be added to the C-I-P Wall family for Room Bounding?

What are interiors based firms using as a "best practice" in importing and using provided DWG base plans?

Just askin'

The create wall in place is not really meant to be used like you do, I use it to create wall that are impossible to create with normal wall tool. weird shapes in different directions...

if you use the wall tool like Scott suggested, it might take a little longer (don't know why really) but you have walls that behave like walls.
when I get a DWG I trace over it with my walls and floors, never in place wall... :)

yeah....a real b*gger....see this post
http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=21944

Thank you Eldad and Alex.

Alex I agree this is a bug. We do some interior's work. The project i am working on, 70 year old mid rise, has all types of existing interior and exterior "articulations". If I can use the C-I-P Wall family I can easily adjust walls as we complete our field measure.

This is not the most complicated of exteriors but if modeled only with tool type walls I would see 6-8 types of exterior walls required?

Right now I am thinking of using a generic 6" wall to "sort of" go through the center of the wall mass. Then I would model the articulations-on either side of that wall as a C-I-P wall family. I am concerned that the interior walls may not attach correctly to the 6" exterior wall but that is what I will now try.

Too bad about this one. I still would like to know why sometimes the window will attach and sometimes not.