Make Curtain Wall Smart
Editor’s note: This post was originally published on the Enjoy Revit blog and re-published here with permission.
Environmentally, I can't say curtain wall is the best option. My office has good looking wide curtain walls, but they made me like a turkey in the oven last summer. (Damn energy policy!!! :( )
But it's still attractive when we design a building with large and simple shaped mass.
Revit provides pretty good feature to make curtain walls. But there are some inconveniences yet.
1. Window Legend
In legend views, window families can be placed. Why can't Curtain walls?
There were a few suggestions in Revit community, and here is mine.
I don't think it's perfect, but can be a good option if the curtain wall is not curved one.
I wish I can make unfolding of curtain walls in Revit soon.
2. Louver in Curtain wall
If a general louver window necessary, it's not difficult to make with 'array' and some formulas. And you can also make similar with a curtain wall panel template if you want to make curtain wall panels to louver.
This is one of the old families I made. Not array but folding system..anyway..
But using parametric array in families makes your project heavier. You can get it faster with including curtain walls in a curtain wall as their panels like this.
3. Irregular Grids
I rarely see curtain walls with same grids distance in real world. But grids in Revit curtain wall makes it automatically. If you want to make grids irregular, you have to unpin & move, or draw custom grids. But most of curtain walls have repetitive patterns though grids are irregular. And here is my solution.
If you want more complicated patterns, just make a panel family which contains mullions. It's faster in most cases.
