Wall Tile Yes/No Instance Parameter

[sgreenfsb]

Interior designers know that one of the most consistently frustrating issues in Revit is keeping up with split faced & painted walls in Interior Elevations. We use the split face & paint tool to show wall tile patterns in elevation, and these are very sensitive to any modifications made to the walls. I'm constantly chasing down my graphics to ensure that they look OK in elevation. I know that there are other methods, but in my experience they are too tedious for Architects to want to use, and I don't want to step on their toes when it comes to managing the walls since those are typically covered in their scope. I know we can just add the wall tile to the structure of the wall, but Architects don't love to do this because the wall tile is not usually part of the actual partition type detail, and it makes partition type management too complex, especially on large projects with multiple production staff in the model. I know we can also model a standalone wall type that is just for the wall tile & mortar thickness and join that with the main partition, but this can also be tedious to manage. I know we could create a wall sweep for the wall tile and control wainscot heights that way and not have to worry about joining anything with the main partition, but wall hosted toilet accessory families do not host to the faces of wall sweeps, they will host to the main partition, so that's not a real solution. 

I think the ideal solution would function very similarly to the function that already exists for walls where you can add a wall sweep to the wall type, but it would need to function by instance vs by type for it to work properly, and it would need to be considered part of the wall structure so that it's part of the substrate that accepts wall-hosted families.

If anyone else has found any good workarounds given the tools we have today, please share! 

[mhiserZFHXS]

How would this work exactly? Do you create a wall-type that has the tile built into it but you check a box for if its there or not? Or is there a dialogue box to basically build the tile into each wall individually?

Honestly, we just do the option you mentioned where tile is modeled as a secondary wall and then joined with the main wall. I'm not sure if that's any more tedious than an alternative, especially now that there is an option to place a wall by room or by wall segment. Sure, it might take a little cleanup after being placed, but it is a big improvement. 

[Mike.FORM]

Also, we model all our wall and face hosted elements with an optional offset from face parameter so that if you have something passing between the host element and the hosted element you can offset it so you do not get interference.

[sgreenfsb]

Ideally, it would function similarly to how you build onto the structure of the wall, but you'd have the ability to toggle the existence of the outermost finishes on each side via instance y/n parameters, and it wouldn't have an effect on the type mark used for the partition. That's how my firm operates, at least - we don't have special partition types for tiled walls, we just have a general note to use backer board ILO gyp bd where wall tile is scheduled on the interiors sheets. I definitely agree that separate modeled tile walls are the best solution that exists right now - the issue that I run into with that methodology is that my Architects either love it or hate it, so it's not something I can really implement into our modeling standards on the Interior Design side of things because we will get pushback on it 50% of the time. I think it's the best workaround we have right now, but I do still view it as a workaround. I would love to see something more intentionally integrated into the walls family category from AutoDesk.

[sgreenfsb]

I've definitely considered this, but we purchased all of our toilet accessory content from a third party and have been hesitant to modify or add parameters to those because they do send us updated libraries frequently. We would have to modify those libraries every time we get an update from our content provider, so it's not the most ideal solution right now, but definitely a great workaround if you or others are able to implement that easily!

[mhiserZFHXS]

Are your colleagues aware of the new option to place walls by room? That really streamlines the process. 

I'm not sure I'm on board with the idea as you present it. What if there are multiple wall finishes in a project? What if that wall finish is on multiple wall types? It'd create a lot of duplicate work to include all of that. It doesn't harm me to implement it, so if Autodesk does it, oh well. It just doesn't seem like much a time saver to me. 

[sgreenfsb]

Well, a more simplified solution would be to give the option to let wall sweeps be a hostable surface. What I'm really looking for is something that operates the same way that wall sweeps do. The only issue with using wall sweeps for tile systems is that you can't host to their faces.