Documentation of Exterior Wall Assembly with Finish Modeled Separately

[MHA-Jeff]

Recently our firm has adopted modeling the structural portion of the wall separate from the finish on our latest project. Model wise this has been great, but we have run into an issue documenting these walls. Before we typically tagged our one wall and that would refer you to the wall legend that would then refer you to our details sheet. With the separated walls, we have tried to create separate wall tags (one for finish and one for structure) that when stacked on top of each other would call out an assembly. The structural wall would hold the letter and finish the number. So our exterior wood wall with brick is F1. In the beginning it seemed like THE solution, but we have run into complications that makes this work around obsolete. I have seen a few threads talking about the benefits of the separated modeled assembly, but not too much on documentation. For those that also use this method, what are yall's processes for documenting your separated walls?

Some ideas we had:

• Create a note block that resembled a wall tag, could be scheduled but the assembly wouldn't be tied to the wall
• Split the structural portion of the wall to have the assembly tag we want and then just tag this wall (this is what we were doing already for walls that had a finish on both sides of the wall)

[ToanDN]

If the bottom line is to have one tag for multiple walls then create an Assembly from Walls and tag the Assembly.

[MHA-Jeff]

Thank you for responding. We originally were modeling walls as one assembly, but it made it easier to split the assembly to multiple walls for four reasons:

• easier to add a finish to portions of a wall instead of having to split a wall and replace with a desired assembly. Another common practice in our office is to have a wall run through multiple levels if the wall stacks that way we don't accidentally move a wall on one level and not have the walls above and below follow. I know you can use ref planes or lock walls to along their location lines, but just continuing the wall was the least intensive operation.
• through VE or owner request, changing or replacing finishes is much easier at any point in the project.
• once the structural portion is set we dimension to this wall. Then if finishes change, we don't lose dimensions if splits or replacements happen
• easier to coordinate with structural and MEP without the clutter of finishes. We put wall finishes on a separate workset

I've seen older replies to posts talk about this as a way many firms tackle Revit modeling, although they callout their wall assemblies in wall sections. We ended up using an annotative symbol that looks just like the wall tag in plan, but now requires us to diligently track and manually change these tags if something is updated, across multiple views. I know most likely I won't get a 100% solution, but was curious about how others deal with this problem if this is their method of modeling.

It would be great to have some sort of tag that had an "if-then" situation, or at the very least have the new tag that can tag multiple of the *same* element to be able to tag different walls to make the assembly tag that way we wouldn't have to use 2 tags, although that doesn't solve the other problems.

[ToanDN]

I think you misunderstood.  I mean the actual Assembly tool.

[MHA-Jeff]

Interesting, I have not used this operation. I did a quick google and test. I got real excited at first, but looks like that would work IF the walls could be different lengths and heights. It seems the assembly has to be exactly the same, otherwise every wall will be a different assembly, like groups. This is a very large project, 2 buildings on site almost 600,000 sqft. with plenty of undulations at balconies.

[ToanDN]

I thought you want to do a wall legend/detail?  If so, shouldn't you only need to create one Assembly for one configuration, not every instance of the one configuration?

And even if you have to create multiple Assemblies, you can still tag them using Assembly Mark instead of Assembly Type Mark so that the same configuration can be the same Mark.

[MHA-Jeff]

Ah no, so we tag our walls in plan, and then that tag sends you to the wall legend which I have created wall assemblies specifically for a legend. It's the tagging of walls in plan that is the biggest headache.

Our *fake* annotative tag in plan (unassociated to walls) E1 & E2 as an example

Our legend which is working

And this is where others had said they document the assembly, in wall section. We do this as well, but is not our main documentation strategy.

[ToanDN]

Maybe use a Wall Tag with the combination below as the label:

[Type Mark + Comments]

Tag only the Structure Wall (F) and manually enter the value for Comments (1, 2, 3...) so that the tag comes out as F1, F2, F3...

[MHA-Jeff]

Thank you for working through these solutions with me. We tried a similar thing with using Type Mark + Mark, but the problem with this is the Mark wouldn't change if the finish changes, so if we have brick at level 1 and stucco at level 2 the Mark would stay the same for both levels. Maybe if the tag could both associate the letter to the structure and then manually we could type in the number into the tag...