Placing and editing curtain walls

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A curtain wall is a type of wall that encloses the exterior of the building

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but does not carry any structural load.

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They are fixed to the structure to make the building weather tight

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and are often made up of panels and millions.

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With the panels being a mix of solid and glazed materials

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with the glazed materials allowing the light to come into the building

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zooming into the atrium. At the end of the building,

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we can see the location where the curtain wall is required.

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It will be easier to create the curtain more accurately by sketching in a plan view.

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So from the project browser,

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I'll open the floor plan view, floor one

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and then to help see the curtain wall as it's created,

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I'll go to the view ribbon tab

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from the windows panel,

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I'll use the tile windows tool so that we can see both

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the two D plan and the 3d view on the screen simultaneously.

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So we just need to adjust the view so we can see

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where the curtain wall needs to be created in both views.

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And now to create the curtain wall. First, we'll make sure the plan view is active.

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And then from the architecture ribbon tab on the build panel,

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we'll select the wall tool.

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Looking at the type selector, we can see we have the basic wall,

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exterior brick on cmu selected.

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So

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from the type selector, we'll scroll down

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and then we can see we have the curtain wall families

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and then we'll choose the curtain we glazing type to use in this instance,

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looking at the options bar above,

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we can see the height and it's connected to floor two.

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We'll change this to floor four.

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The location line is not relevant on a curtain wall.

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However, at the end of the options bar,

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we'll change the joint status to disallow.

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So it doesn't join and connect up with the existing walls. We have modeled.

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Now looking at the sketching tools above,

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we can see we have it set to draw a straight line.

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So

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in the floor plan view,

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we'll just zoom in to this end of the wall here and we'll click on the end of this wall

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and then panning across to the other side,

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we can snap to the end of the opposite wall

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and having done that,

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we can see that we've created a curtain wall and

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it's visible in both the plan view and 3d view.

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However,

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it's just one very large panel of glass and

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we'd like to have it divided into smaller panels.

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So to do this,

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we'll need to click,

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modify to stop creating the curtain wall and then we'll resect it

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and from the top of the properties pallette

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or choose edit type to access its type properties.

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Looking in here, we can see we have the panel for a vertical and horizontal grid

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and the layout is both set to none. Hence, we have no grid lines.

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But before we make any changes,

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we'll make a duplicate of this curtain wall type to create a new one.

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So next to the type name will choose duplicator

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and then we'll assign in the name curtain wall panels

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and click. OK to create this new type.

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Now, next to the layout parameter in the vertical grid panel, we'll click none.

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And we can see we have a number of options to specify how the grid lines will be set out.

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We'll select the fixed distance option

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and then we'll set the spacing parameter below to be 6 ft

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which will give us

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grid lines 6 ft apart

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along the length of our curtain wall.

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For the horizontal layout, we'll also choose fixed distance

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and set the space in parameter to be 15 ft

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which will give us horizontal grid lines 15 ft apart

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starting from the bottom of the ball and working upwards.

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Now click OK

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to save those changes. And we can see that applied now to the curtain wall,

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we can see the grid lines 6 ft apart going across the curtain wall

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and up the curtain wall every 15 ft as we specified in the properties.

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Looking at the end of the curtain wall, we can see we have a small panel

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and this is because the length of the curtain

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wall does not divide perfectly into 6 ft panels.

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And therefore we have a smaller panel left over at the end,

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we can choose where this appears looking at the property's pallet.

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We can see in the vertical grid panel that we have a justification parameter

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and it's set to begin.

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Hence, the 6 ft panels have started where we started to draw the curtain wall.

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And we have the odd bit left at the end,

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we can change this justification.

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We could choose end which would swap it to the start of the curtain wall,

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but we'll choose center justification.

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And then we can see the panels are set out from the middle of the curtain wall.

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And we have two slightly smaller panels at either end of the wall.