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516 | ChaPTER 12 Creating Walls and Curtain Walls

Creating Complex Curtain Walls

Often at the early stages of design, as an architect or designer you need to be able to model
curtain wall systems that indicate more complex design intent. These systems need to be flexible
and light enough to allow you to explore design iteration, but they also need to be robust and
detailed enough to be useful as your project moves from concept to design development and
then on to fabrication.
In Revit you can build complex curtain walls utilizing massing tools. There are two potential
workflows. You can model your curtain wall system directly within the project environment
from massing forms, or you can build it as a family within a conceptual design environment.
Both of these methods are quite similar, but we prefer to use the conceptual design environment
because the complexity of modeled elements, such as adaptive components, is better managed in
a file that is separate from the project environment.
Project Environment You can build your forms directly within your project environment
using the in-place massing tools. When walls are constructed through the In-Place Mass tool,
the conceptual design environment does not have 3D reference planes and 3D levels.
Essentially, to create a complex curtain wall within the project environment, you’re going to
follow these simple steps:
1. Create an in-place mass in the project environment.
2. Divide the surface.
3. Apply a surface pattern.
4. Replace the surface pattern with a pattern-based curtain panel family.
Conceptual Design Environment You create your curtain wall designs in the Revit concep-
tual design environment (CDE), which is a type of Family Editor. These forms reside outside
the project environment. You can then reference these massing families into a project environ-
ment, allowing you to explore contextual relationships with the building form.
To create a complex curtain wall within the conceptual design environment, you’re going to
follow these simple steps:
1. Build a new conceptual mass in the Family Editor.
2. Divide the surface.
3. Apply a surface pattern.
4. Replace the surface pattern with a pattern-based curtain panel family.
5. Load it into your project.

You start by designing a conceptual form that will represent the shape and form of the
surface of the curtain wall. You are then able to subdivide the surface of this form using a grid
system, referred to as a UV grid. Because surfaces are not always planar (flat), a UVW coordinate
system is used to plot location across the surface. This grid system automatically adjusts,
following the natural contours of a non-planar surface or form. The UV grid is then used as
a guide for applying a pattern to the surface. You can investigate how you might panelize the
surface to make it constructible by applying a geometric pattern to it. This pattern provides a

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