Curtain Wall Question

[Jim Smith]

I find the Curtain wall tool somewhat; let's just say fussy.

For example today, I have a Wall that now wants to be a curtain wall. I import the Curtain Wall style from the menu and change my Wall to a Curtain Wall. Now I want to customize the Curtain Wall, and as far as that goes, no problem I have the wall type I want. However the Curtain Wall on the drawing does not change it stays put with the baked in parameters from the original. Eye Dropper doesn't fix this, nor does Replacing the wall.

If I create a new wall with the Curtain Wall chosen as my wall type, VIOLA I have my widths, heights, just like it should be.

WA-HOOPEN?

Edited August 25, 2016 by Jim Smith

[Guest Wes Gardner]

If I'm understanding you correctly - when you edited the curtain wall, you didn't affect the Wall Style, just that bit of curtain wall that was CREATED BY the wall style.

[Jim Smith]

I've edited the Wall Style in the Resource Browser as I would with any other wall style. When I edit a Wall Style (say I change 13mm GWB to 19mm) the walls drawn in the file that are that Wall Style change.

This doesn't happen with the Curtain Wall, at least not with mine.

Having said that, I have noted that files that use a Curtain Wall that were originally 2014 or 2015 (like this one) do often crash if the Curtain Wall is edited too much.

I tried a new, blank file with only one wall & I get the same odd behaviour.

[Jim Smith]

I think I have an working idea how to better work with Curtain Walls for the time being:

If one changes the Wall Style of a Curtain Wall, & Curtain Walls already exist in the drawing, then one must select these Curtain Walls, change them all to another Wall Type, then change them back to the EDITED Curtain Wall Type.

I think this is a bug. All other Wall objects of a particular Wall Style are automatically updated.

[Guest Wes Gardner]

Here's a link to a short video showing a change in the size of the frames, the curtain wall then updates

https://www.dropbox.com/s/3gdssu0v1ps5xrn/Curtain%20Wall%20update.mp4?dl=0

[Jim Smith]

I am not able to get the Curtain Wall to update. That is unless I replace the wall with another wall type & then replace that wall with the updated Curtain Wall. I have restarted both Machine & Software, not opened any other programmes & opened a blank VW file with 1 layer, nothing in the Resource Browser.

I've just submitted a bug report

[Jim Smith]

Regarding Spandrel Panels:

I thought that I could set Panels as Spandrels by highlighting each Panel & Editing the Panel's property. It seems rather that I Must use the Edit Curtain Wall Tool to do this & with this tool one must choose every Panel & then set this as a Spandrel. This seems like a flaw if this is the case.

So after adding Spandrel Panels to the Wall I saved this as a wall style. Prob is, the panels go away. So this ain't great!

Also I am having to draw a Concrete Knee Wall below the Curtain Wall, I thought this had changed. Wishful thinking?

Edited August 26, 2016 by Jim Smith

[Guest Wes Gardner]

Hi Jim,

Yes and no.

You CAN select multiple panels by holding down the shift key wherepon they'll glow red, then in the Preferences of the Edit Curtain Wall Tool, place them in the class called spandrel or whatever and adjust their thickness/offset to suit.

You can't have multiple panel styles in a wall style (maybe someday)

Here's a link with directions for creating "storefront" with the curtain wall tool. This lets you insert your curtain wall into a wall (including knee wall and wall above)

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/7lg94toh0zlm697/AAD_n_ed-4GJMfbKlmU78-sva?dl=0

Wes

[nrkuhl]

When you edit the curtain wall style, there's an option at the bottom of the replacement dialogue to "delete and recreate frames and panels".

Select this if you want your curtain wall to be re-drawn with the style defaults you just set up.

If you have an unstyled curtain wall, you can edit it's options globally. If you have a styled curtain wall, you can set up the style with the panel/spandrel layout you want in the style editor and then use the above option to update your already drawn curtain walls.