Stacked Wall - problems with upper segment with fixed height

[eidam655]

Hello everyone,

I am finally learning Revit and its quirks, while trying to model a family house (with correct technical details etc.)

However, I have come across two issues with stacked walls, which I am unable to overcome by googling or watching/reading more tutorials.

My stacked wall profile looks like this: 

It is a brick wall (with variable height), topped off with a reinforced concrete beam, which then hosts the concrete deck above it. (The thermal insulation layer is modelled from a separate wall and then joined with the structural wall.) The same wall functions as an exterior structural wall, and as an interior one as well.

Issue #1 I'm having is this - I cannot attach this stacked wall to the floor (concrete deck) above it, because then the upper concrete part of the wall is not shown at all. My solution in the meantime is to constrain its Top to the second level and manually specify an offset so that the top of the wall sits below the concrete deck - it is some solution, although I'm wondering if there's a way I could keep the advantages of the Attach constraints.

 Issue #2, the bigger problem - When I try to make an opening in such a wall, so that only the concrete part stays (as a beam) but the brick underneath it should not be there, the behaviour is buggy...? If the opening's height (lintel level) touches the underside of the concrete part, then the whole opening gets drawn as if it was filled with the concrete.

Thank you for reading; I'm looking forward to any tips and pointers on these issues.

~Adam

[L.Maas]

Few things. It always helps if you mention your Revit version. Further consider to upload part of your project so we can have a look at what you have got already. You mention that your stacked wall is consisting of a wall with a concrete beam. Why not use a normal wall and use a structural beam for the concrete beam part?

In Revit it is a good starting point to think about how things are going to be build in real life. That should be a clue how to model things

[eidam655]

Hi Louis,

I am using Revit 2017. I did not try using a beam as I was not aware of it existing 🙂 I have tried it now, creating a custom family, and the results are in the attached file... Although it did solve my problem with the openings, using the beams seems to be really cumbersome. I now need to edit the top offset values both in the beam's properties and the wall's... I would have liked the simplicity of a stacked wall better, if it worked as expected.

Thank you for taking the time to respond.

[ToanDN]

@eidam655

I have no such problems attaching a stacked wall to a floor and cut it with an opening (see below).

With that said, I tend to agree with @L.Maas about modeling building elements in correct categories.  A direct example from your approach is a beam built in a stacked wall does not have the same structural analytical model as a true beam and it can affect the structural calculation and analysis.  BIM is much more than just making a 3D model look correct.

[eidam655]

@ToanDN, thanks for the reply. Upon further investigation I found out that the wall opening is buggy when the host wall is attached to the base floor; when it's detached or the floor gets deleted, the opening is created as intended. 

Is this expected behaviour, or a bug?

Also, I would like to clarify - when I call the element a "beam," I'm not sure it is the right (english) term for it. Unfortunately I haven't found the correct translation (in Slovak this element is called a "wreath"). Its function is to distribute the load from the deck and upper floors among the masonry walls beneath it; it also serves as a horizontally reinforcing element. Does anyone know the correct term in English? Or German? 🙂 An almost finished wreath looks like this (not my photo):

 

[Anonymous]

i think we call this a wall-plate.....?

[eidam655]

Also, @L.Maas, I don't think that a beam is helpful after all; its corners do not join onto one another and in the end I have to draw the same floor plan twice. I found out that when I set the top offsets once, I can move everything vertically by moving the Level and all construction elements stay the same. At the same time, when I set both subwalls as Structural, I'm getting the same correct view of all the structural elements.

So, in conclusion, my issue #1 can be left ignored ( I don't need to Attach the wall because I can control the height through Levels), and #2 is a bug I'm gonna have to learn to live with.

Thanks to all of you for your replies 🙂