Model in place wall issue with Windows/Doors

[Anonymous]

I am working on a historic building renovation. We modeled the exterior walls as an in-place wall family due to the constantly changing thickness that we measured during our site measurement. When we try to add windows into the wall, we get an error message that says it can't cut the window from the wall. Is this something that is common in Revit 2016? I could remodel the walls as actual walls, but the varying thickness makes this problematic.

[Alan.johnson1970]

When you created  the 'in place family' did you categorize it as a Wall?

If you did, you should be able to place a window in it.

If you didn't you can select it and 'edit family' and re-categorize it using family category and parameters

[Anonymous]

It is categorized as a wall.  the program tries to place it, the little green bar at the bottom left churns for a bit then i get the error message, same happens for doors as well.

[Alan.johnson1970]

I would need to see a copy of your model and test it

[Alan.johnson1970]

You could also try creating stacked walls if your wall has varying thicknesses 

[rodrigo.bezerra]

Check if your window family have any geometry constrained to the wall centerline reference or any other reference plane constrained to that, and if it has, remove the constraints. You must redo the constraints to a wall face, interior or exterior.

On a regular window family, the base wall is a regular wall, with both faces parallel to each other. It also has reference planes marking exterior face, interior face and wall centerline (also parallel to each other). I assume, @Anonymous, that most of your wall faces are not parallel, and obviously don't have a wall centerline reference - because you just can't manually do it. I'm guessing that's the problem.

I built an in-place wall and successfuly placed a window in it. It's one of the families that comes within Revit basic Library.

Recently I had the same experience modeling an existing building complex, with variable wall thickness. To avoid any future family issue, I prefered to use regular system walls. I noticed, while studying the buildings, that most of variations were less then an inch in 3m, 5m or longer walls. Exceptions were treated individualy.

Hope it helps

Regards

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

FYI....OP copied the wall and pasted it back and then it started to work again.