Storefront doors in legend view?

[patricks]

What is the preferred method for showing an aluminum storefront door in the legend view? Being that it's a curtain panel, it seems to only show up as a square panel in the legend view, no matter what value I enter for "Host Length".

[aaronrumple]

The best way is to make it a real door. I nest a shared door family in the curtain wall panel family so it schedules and acts like a door. I think I posted an example recently...

[patricks]

I don't have any trouble scheduling my curtain wall doors, it's just when I try to put it in a legend view.

What I did and what I've done on a project before is to just use the single glass door family and make a type that looks like a storefront door (frames turned off in the door type elevation legend) and it works okay. I was just wondering if there was a way to actually use the storefront door shown in the legend component drop-down list.

[aaronrumple]

I don't think so. The problem is that the curtain wall family strectches to fit all available space, so you don't have the width height that you would need to place it in a legend.

[Shaun v Rooyen]

Aaron is right the way to do it with the least amount of frustration, is to make them (the shopfronts) up as doors/window families

Here is an example of our typical aluminium shopfront legend/sheet layouts.

[mchaney]

The sample sheet shown in Zeds post is fantastic. Can i please request a bit of elaboration on how this accomplished ?

Can you perhaps post a sample of one of your shopfront systems constructed as a door/window family ?

Any assistance would be much appreciated.

Thank you -

[Matt H]

Aaron is right the way to do it with the least amount of frustration, is to make them (the shopfronts) up as doors/window families

Here is an example of our typical aluminium shopfront legend/sheet layouts.

Yes Please Elaborate on this, i'm pulling out my hair trying to figure out how you did that!!
You could send me a PM if you would like

[greg.mcdowell]

my guess is he made the storefronts/curtain walls in the family editor... and that means you have to build each one piece-by-piece out of extrusions and the like...

[mchaney]

We had to figure this one out on our own.... actually we hired a trainer to come in from our CAD sales company to train us on the basics.

Essentially you must model your curtain walls from scratch as Window families. (use ONLY the window.rft template). Every mullion, every piece of glass etc.must be modeled separately. I have attached one of the storefront families we have created in recent weeks. This is a painful and time consuming way of doing things, however once completed, everything will schedules and tags properly - shows up in legends etc.

If you open the attached family you will see how we have gone about building them.

A couple of things to note

1. Solid Form Extrusions can include multiple closed loops. (this makes building the mullions and glass panes much easier)

2. The more parametric you attempt to make your family, the more difficult it is to create... and the more difficult it is to modify. The example file posted contains several parametric variables, however the more we do this, the less parametric we build them.

3. If it is a storefront that will require a door to be inserted into it - in the window family you will modify the 'Opening Cut' object to allow for a bit of wall to remain that will allow you something to place your door into in the actual project file. This will allow the door to tag and schedule normally in the project file. Do not load door families into your window family. This same trick can be used if you want to place windows into your curtain walls and schedule them separately... only if these windows do not occur at the edge of the 'Opening Cut' you will have to create a 'finger' of wall which connects it to the perimeter. This finger can be hidden in a mullion... but again.

4. If you want your window family to cut accurately in plan (this is especially true if you have multi story curtain walls that have a different plan appearance at each level) then you are in for an extra level of torture. In the family - you must change the family type to Generic Model instead of Window. This is simple enough to do - go to Settings -> Family Category and Parameters. Select Generic Models. This will allow it to cut properly in plan views.... except now it will not tag as a window. You must now create a Generic Model tag that looks just like your Window tag. To schedule them, you must use a multi-category schedule. Not that difficult to create, but at some point Revit, enough is enough.

5. Detail components can be loaded into the family. The way we use this is to place detailed mullion drawings into the side elevation views, this way they display properly in our large scale wall sections.

6. Materials for your family - presuming you want your Metal-Aluminum (or whatever) from your project file to be available in your family - you can make your project materials available in the family file. To do this - have both the project and family files open. In the family file, go to File -> Transfer Project Standards. Select the project file for your 'copy from' and check 'materials' only. There you go.

7. When placing these families into Legend views - ideally we would like to see the Exterior Elevation of the glass positioned above a plan view of the same family.... and we would like the plan and elevation to line up.... No way to do this. You cannot rotate your family in a Legend view.... you cannot mirror. If you want them to align properly, your only option is to show the interior elevation (again - not the industry standard). Otherwise get used to the elevation and plan going opposite directions. (if you look at ZEDS legend sheet .pdf as part of the earlier post - you will see this problem)

8. You can mirror your families inside the project file. the example i have attached xxx_door_left.rfa ...also works fine as xxx_door_right.rfa. ... i didn't figure that out until after i had constructed xxxx_door_right.rfa as well.... drat.)

9. To place into a project, you will need to construct a dummy wall to host the window family. In our case, the storefonts actually are placed within concrete frames (made up of beams and columns) so the dummy wall needs to be exactly the same width and height as the window family 'Cut Opening' object.

I will rant for just one moment that this process is a nightmare and one of several HUGE gaping holes in the Revit platform. Our office has wasted weeks now manually reconstructing all curtain walls on six buildings. The curtain wall tool provided in Revit - in my opinion - is perhaps cute for schematic design purposes, but is absolutely worthless for use in construction documents.

The work around i have described (and certainly others are using) is completely undocumented anywhere. There is no set of tools built into Revit that will allow an office to create curtain walls and schedule them in any way resembling the industry standard method. Oddly, this is not mentioned in any brochures.

Good luck

m

[Matt H]

The best way is to make it a real door. I nest a shared door family in the curtain wall panel family so it schedules and acts like a door. I think I posted an example recently...

How do you do that??