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Sloping and curving curtain wall

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    #1

    Sloping and curving curtain wall

    I'm working on a high-rise that seems to be heading down the path of having 2 facades that are sloping to the top, and joined together in a curve that happens to be vertical at it's tangent point. I've found that trying to use the fixed distance option on a non-planar curtain system is somewhat unpredictable and won't be able to get me a consistent sill height about the floors. It also makes all the panels slightly different, unique sizes to fit the curve. The designers are looking to hold a constant 5ft module in the horizontal direction, which means there will actually be slightly more panels at the bottom than the top since the perimeter at the base is greater. In reality it ends up being about an inch difference from the top to the bottom. I'm trying to wrap my head around the best way to actually model this and short of making a separate mass for each floor to apply a curtain system to, I'm at a loss. Even that wouldn't be terrible if there wasn't a possibility of the slope changing down the road causing me to need to start over from scratch. I'm looking for some insights into how the exotic design guys would handle this. I'm pretty good with curtain wall, but I try to avoid curtain systems whenever I can for this reason.
    Tower Skin.PNGTower Plan.PNG
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    #2
    Originally posted by chris.macko View Post
    I'm working on a high-rise that seems to be heading down the path of having 2 facades that are sloping to the top, and joined together in a curve that happens to be vertical at it's tangent point. I've found that trying to use the fixed distance option on a non-planar curtain system is somewhat unpredictable and won't be able to get me a consistent sill height about the floors. It also makes all the panels slightly different, unique sizes to fit the curve. The designers are looking to hold a constant 5ft module in the horizontal direction, which means there will actually be slightly more panels at the bottom than the top since the perimeter at the base is greater. In reality it ends up being about an inch difference from the top to the bottom. I'm trying to wrap my head around the best way to actually model this and short of making a separate mass for each floor to apply a curtain system to, I'm at a loss. Even that wouldn't be terrible if there wasn't a possibility of the slope changing down the road causing me to need to start over from scratch. I'm looking for some insights into how the exotic design guys would handle this. I'm pretty good with curtain wall, but I try to avoid curtain systems whenever I can for this reason.
    I did something similar a couple of years ago. Ellipse in plan, sloped to the top. It wasn't as tall as yours though, 3 or 4 stories. I'll see if I can dig out that project and see what I can upload here.

    edit: what version of Revit are you using?

    edit #2: I looked at the project that I did and I don't think it's what you are looking for. My mullion location module widths started at X at the bottom then got smaller as the verticals extended to the top. Using a curtain system there is no way to control the angle or offset of a mullion grid. You could do it via the mullion definition but that would mean that you'd need a different mullion type for each one on the curve. Not something that I'd want to deal with...sorry
    Last edited by Dave Jones; May 30, 2017, 07:27 PM.
    I'm retired, if you don't like it, go around!

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      #3
      It's in 2017. I've done an ellipse before, although with vertical sides so not quite as bad. This one is 3 segments that line up, and at the top the 2 end segments are straight and orthogonal. I guess the real question is is it worth modeling the slightly offset panels in the vertical direction? I think from top to bottom it ends up being about an inch, so it might be a lot of trouble for something you'd never see. I've already made the horizontals manual and aligned them to grouped reference planes at each floor, so that at least covers 1 direction.

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        #4
        Originally posted by chris.macko View Post
        It's in 2017. I've done an ellipse before, although with vertical sides so not quite as bad. This one is 3 segments that line up, and at the top the 2 end segments are straight and orthogonal. I guess the real question is is it worth modeling the slightly offset panels in the vertical direction? I think from top to bottom it ends up being about an inch, so it might be a lot of trouble for something you'd never see. I've already made the horizontals manual and aligned them to grouped reference planes at each floor, so that at least covers 1 direction.
        my normal thought process is to model it like it's going to be built but given the small difference in module dimensions from top to bottom I probably wouldn't worry about it. My head is in 12 other things today so I'm having a hard time pondering the result of having consistent module dimensions at the curvy sloped portion of the wall. I think that it could be done but where the curve meets the vertical portions you will end up with out of square lites of glass and that may not be desirable either
        I'm retired, if you don't like it, go around!

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