@SJT-72 wrote:
Is this a case of its too difficult for the software engineers to rectify, opposed to what the software should be doing by default?
It is a case of wall elements in Revit do not contain "real" geometry. Walls are a somewhat abstracted element. I suspect this was done for performance reason originally, plus it makes dealing with more complicated situations of walls coming together easier sometimes (but harder in others.)
Flash forward 19 years (Revit was first developed in 1999) with computers today, performance MIGHT (and that is a big might) not be impacted as much if the underlying structure of a wall was changed to be more "real". This is what the parts tool mentioned earlier in the thread attempted to do with wall geometry. If the wall element itself was able to take on a more part like quality and be more adjustable and controllable the accuracy of the material takeoff of them would be more accurate. Making walls have "real" geometry might have other advantages too?
The issue is the abstract wall element in Revit today is fairly fundamental to the workings of the software, so simply changing it is probably not possible (again i.e. the reason Parts were created). So if a new kind of wall element did not have a performance impact, the development of a "New" wall element could be done, but you probably would have "new" part/layer based walls and "old" abstracted geometry walls. Kind of like when sketch based stairs were replaced by component based stairs. A new element was created that had more functionality. Sketch based stairs code still exists and you can kind of make them, but it happen less and less frequently as the "new" stair tool is used more and more. "New" walls development might looks very similar to that. So it is not as simple as fixing a minor thing with the way walls currently work, it would probably be a fundamental change to or the creation of a totally new element in Revit.
Of course all of this is just conjecture on my part. I am not a developer/coder, I am an Architect by training, but spending the last 13 years in a software company, I have picked up a few things about what is and is not possible or how difficult correcting the "error" in wall material takeoff might be. 😉
Jeff Hanson
Principal Content Experience Designer
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