10 Wall Tips

Continuing the series of 10 quick tips, here are some tips for walls:

1.  Embed a wall into curtain panel

You can change a curtain wall panel to any wall type by un-pinning it and modifying the type.  Next you can then embed another curtain wall into the new wall panel infill by adding a curtain wall and using the Cut Geometry tool between the wall infill and curtain wall.  You can repeat this process as many times as needed.

2.  Disallow join

When you right-click over any wall end you activate the Disallow Join option.  This will prevent the wall end from joining with other walls.

3.  Unlock wall layers

When editing the structure of a wall, you can click Modify and un-lock a region of a wall layer.  Afterwards the wall will display an additional grip to dynamically adjust the wall layer as needed.  

  

This dimension can also be manually entered in the Instance Properties of the wall under Base Extension Distance or Top Extension Distance depending where the layer was unlocked.

4.  Schedule a curtain wall infill as wall or curtain panel

To specify how the infills of your curtain wall will be scheduled, highlight the panel and open Element Properties to locate Categorize As.  You can specify panel or wall.

 

5.  Enable multiprocessing for wall cleanups

If using a quad-core processor on your workstation, you can improve the wall join regeneration times by enabling a switch in the Revit.ini file. Check out page 4 of the Model Performance Technical Note through the link below for additional information:

Revit 2010 Model Performance Technical Note

6.  Wall sweep other than horizontal or vertical

Using the standard Wall Sweep tool you have options for Horizontal and Vertical.  If you need to create more custom shapes you can use the Component > Model in Place to create custom wall sweeps.  Simply set the work plane as the face of the wall and start modeling the sweep as needed.

 

7.  Break up a stacked wall

If you need to maintain the geometry of a stacked wall but convert it to standard walls, you can utilize the Break Up tool.  Simply highlight the stacked wall > right-click > Break Up.

8.  Access room bounding for stacked wall

For stacked walls you cannot directly access the Room Bounding parameter, unless you TAB select the wall.  Additional information is available in the Technical Solution below:

Modifying Room Bounding parameter for stacked walls

9.  Join geometry tool on parallel walls

Hosted objects such as a window or door in one wall will cut openings in a second parallel wall when the Join Geometry tool is used between the two wall objects.

10.  Wall function

When placing a wall, if you change the Element Properties > Type Properties > Function the wall insertion defaults will change.  For example when first changing to Soffit, the default wall will change to 1’-0” high.  Changing it back to Interior will resume the last entered Interior wall function height.

Comments

[Danny]

These are some great tips. Disallow join was completely new to me, and man have I needed that capability umpteen times.

Thanks!

[Ryan Duell]

I received a good follow-up comment from Gregg Behmer I wanted to add on this thread. For tip # 9, it is good to keep in mind the proximity of the parallel walls. They typically need to be within around 1’-2” of each other before they accept the joined geometry without touching. Thanks for the follow up Gregg!