Walls in highrise

[frv]

Hi, 

we are trying to set up a file with VW for a large building with dozens of repetative floors.

Is it possible to use the wall tool per floor and have some kind of symbol functionality in case we need to make edits in the interior walls used. It looks like the wall tool is too basic and can not be used in symbols. I don't want to think of having to change interior walls for every floorplan for every edit we have.  Maybe VW is too basic for a proper model that is easy to edit afterwards for larger buildigs with a lot of repetative elements like interior walls, elevator shafts and so on. Or am I misunderstanding the wall tool ?

 

Any people here who are very experienced with larger buildings who would share what works and what not ?

Cheers Francois

[Pat Stanford]

If the floors are identical then you could use Design Layer Viewports of a single set of walls.  

 

If there are differences on the interior walls on each (or some) layers, then those layers will need to have their own custom set of walls. There is no way in VW to use a symbol or design layer viewport and have just some of the instanced be different.

[Jeff Prince]

2 hours ago, frv said:

Hi, 

we are trying to set up a file with VW for a large building with dozens of repetative floors.

Is it possible to use the wall tool per floor and have some kind of symbol functionality in case we need to make edits in the interior walls used. It looks like the wall tool is too basic and can not be used in symbols. I don't want to think of having to change interior walls for every floorplan for every edit we have.  Maybe VW is too basic for a proper model that is easy to edit afterwards for larger buildigs with a lot of repetative elements like interior walls, elevator shafts and so on. Or am I misunderstanding the wall tool ?

 

Any people here who are very experienced with larger buildings who would share what works and what not ?

Cheers Francois

Easily done.  If a floor plan layout is repeating on multiple floors or across multiple buildings, draw it as a separate file and reference it in as Pat suggested.  Then, if you need to update the floor plan, it changes everywhere.  This is how apartments, offices, subdivisions, and high rise projects can be done efficiently.  It’s a great strategy for elevator lobbies, bathrooms, and other repetitive features.

[Tom W.]

2 hours ago, frv said:

Is it possible to use the wall tool per floor and have some kind of symbol functionality in case we need to make edits in the interior walls used. It looks like the wall tool is too basic and can not be used in symbols.

 

Yes Walls can be used in symbols. This is an alternative method to using DLVPs. You can do it either way: I don't believe either method has an advantage over the other. The only issue in both cases is that Walls will need to have their heights set manually as they won't recognise layer wall heights or story levels once inside a symbol/DLVP. So one strategy might be to draw the external walls, internal party walls + the structural slabs as normal (i.e. outside of the symbols) then use symbols for the internal walls of the apartments, the floor finishes  + fixtures/fittings.

[Pat Stanford]

The bigger issue might be that walls that are part of DLVPs or symbols will not "join" or "component join" with walls that are outside the symbol/DLVP.

 

But I will leave it to someone who actually uses one or both of these methods to explain how they work around that issue.

[Jeff Prince]

24 minutes ago, Tom W. said:

 

Yes Walls can be used in symbols. This is an alternative method to using DLVPs. You can do it either way: I don't believe either method has an advantage over the other. 

If more than one person is working on the project, and especially if you do not use project sharing, the choice is obvious 😉

[frv]

Tx, the above replies all make sense.

At the office we have some Revit experts too and they feel that the "workarounds" do not make it easy to exchange IFC formats for others to extract data from the VW files. But I understand you can not duplicate groups of walls over several floors and attach these groups to story levels for their height. You can do that in Revit. In VW we need to manually maintain the walls for their height dimensions. The maintenance is reduced by a lot by using references to the repeting floorplans (sets of walls). That might be the easiest way to go then. As a side note, I export to C4D for rendering in Coronarender and the export of the most complex files with lots of references is flawless in seconds.

 

tx for the help, very useful for me.