You can create quick schematic curtain wall using compound forms!
To create this, you first need to set up a compound part.
Set the Building Primary toolbar to Complex, choose an appropriate family and then open the Dataset Explorer.
Right click in the part window and choose new.
This compound part will be used to generate the glazing and the horizontal mullions of your curtain wall. It is a good idea to sketch out what you want your wall to look like at this time and do a little math to determine the height of the glazing panels and the mullion positions.
Name your curtain wall and give it a description.
Choose an appropriate family and part for the components of the curtain wall and insert several sub parts.
Start changing the sizes and offsets of the sub parts one by one.
(Keep in mind that if you change the family/part on a sub part, the dimensions associated with that sub part will default the the parts defaults, so always pick the part first before you change the dimensions)
The dialog will show you the total height of your curtain wall as you adjust the dimensions.
Once you have your curtain wall layout complete, click OK and then commit your changes to the dataset.
Use the Linear Form tool to draw some of you new curtain wall. Check the dimension of the wall to make sure that you didn't make any mistakes when creating the compound form.
To create the vertical mullions, simply use the linear form tool, but change the part to a non-compound part.
Place a form that is the depth of your vertical mullion but, only as long as width of your vertical mullion.
Your mullions and glazing may overlap, depending on how you draw your curtain wall.
You can copy your vertical mullion to create what ever pattern you want.
For Curved Curtain Wall, just change to the Place Segmented Arc Form tool:
This tool will draw a curved curtain wall made of flat segments.
The tricky part about this tool is controlling the length of the segments. They are controlled by the Tolerence setting on the tools dialog:
The tolerance is the distance from the center of the chord (the flat segments approximating your curve) to the center of the arc.
Now you could get out your trigonometry knowledge and generate a quick formula to calculate how big the tolerance should be to get the segment length that you want, but why not let the computer do the math for you?
Off to the side of your model, quickly draw a circle that represents the radius of the curve you want to approximate. Draw a line from the center of your circle to the edge to represent the radius.
Now draw a line that is the length of the segment you want to create:
and move the center of that line to the point where the radius line and the circle intersect.
Now move the line down to where the end point touches the circle. Locking the x-axis in accudraw and using the nearest snap mode will make this easy.
Now measure the distance along the radius line from the circle to the center of the chord to determine the Tolerance setting you need.
In my case, a 30 foot radius with a 6 foot segment length requires a tolerance of 1 51/64".
Using your newly found setting, trace over the circle and chord with your wall to determine if the calculation is correct.
For the vertical mullions on the segmented curve curtain wall, you can place linear forms like the straight wall or you may want to extrude diamond shaped mullions depending on the curtain wall system you are using.
This article is valid for AECOsim Building Designer and all versions of Bentley Architecture.