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• Composite Walls with Varying Skin Heights

How to Create Composite Walls with Varying Skin Heights

In architectural practice it is a common to have composite wall structures. In some cases the various skins of the Composite Wall do not extend to the same height but start and end at various heights.

This article is about how to create these kinds of structures in ArchiCAD 10 and later, using Complex Profiles.

For an overview of these topics, see Composite Structures and Place a Wall/Column/Beam with a Complex Profile in ArchiCAD Help.

Brick Veneer Wall on Studs

We wish to achieve the result shown on the illustration below.

The studs and the interior Wall boards rest on the top of the Slab, while the sheathing, air space and Brick veneer extend down to rest on top of the foundation. One way we could do this is to place a composite structure on top of the foundation, then place the Slab, and then cut the intersection portion of the Slab out of the Composite Wall structure.

But there is another way that does not require Solid Element Operations, plus it can provide you with better sectional representation of the Composite Structure. Here is how to do it:

1. Open the Profile Manager Window with the Design > Complex Profiles > Profile Manager menu command.

2. Click the New button to start creating a new Profile. The Profile Editor Window is opened. This Profile will be available for Walls.

3. A good thing to do, if you have a standard foundation detail in a separate drawing, is to open that drawing and copy-paste the Wall structure into the Profile Editor Window.

4. Modify the various skins of the Composite Wall using Fills. You should use the Fills you wish to see when creating a Section of the Wall later. Create the Fills representing the sheathing, air space and brick veneer so they reach down as much as needed in the standard detail. For example, if the Slab is 200 mm thick, the bottom of the Fills should be 200 mm lower than the bottom of the studs.

Note: Be fully aware of where you place the Fills in relation to the Global Origin shown in the Profile Editor Window. Elements placed at the Origin will be at the height specified for the Wall Base when the Wall is placed. The origin also corresponds to the reference line in plan. In this example, we want the veneer skins to extend lower than the Wall Base. Even though part of the wall mass extends below the origin (base), the origin determines the home story of the wall for 'automatic' walls. This solution has significant advantages over simply using composite walls and solid element operations to achieve the same result: With a conventional composite wall with a slab subtracted from it, the base of the wall would be the bottom of the lowest skin, causing an 'automatic' wall to have a home story one floor below the intended home story.

5. Place Hotspots at each point of the Profile you wish to be able to snap to when manipulating or working with the Complex Wall later in 3D.

6. Turn on the Vertical Stretch design layer.

7. Move the two Stretch Lines (the dashed lines at the top and bottom of the Profile Editor window) to the positions which will define which portion of the Wall you will be able to stretch vertically in the model. In this example, we wish the portion extending below the Global Origin to remain fixed, and the structure above the Global Origin to be stretchable, to accommodate various Wall Heights.

8. Turn on the Opening Reference design layer. The two opening reference lines (the vertical red lines in the Profile Editor window) are placed at the inner and outer surfaces of the Complex Wall.

9. Click the Store Profile button in the Profile Manager to save your changes.

10. In the appearing dialog box, specify a name for the new Complex Profile.

11. In the Floor Plan, place a Complex Wall using the Profile you just created. Also, create the Foundation and the Slab. At this point you do not know exactly where the left edge of the Slab should be located.

12. Select all these elements and go to the 3D Window.

13. Select the Complex Wall in the 3D Window. You can see the 3D hotspots that appear where we placed hotspots in the Profile Editor Window. We can use these hotspots to correctly position the edge of the Slab.

14. Modify the height of the Complex Wall. As you can see, the lower 200 mm portion of the Complex Wall is not resized, only the stretchable portion above the Wall Base level.

15. Return to the Floor Plan and draw a Section Line across the Complex Wall. Open the Section to see how the Complex Wall looks in section.

Note: You can draw further elements of the Complex Wall in the Profile Editor to enhance the Section of the Complex Wall. You may draw a Fill for the metal tie or other elements to be shown in the Section of the Complex Wall. However, you should not overpopulate the Profile Editor Window with these auxiliary elements, because they might affect the model size if they get overly complex. Use common sense to detail the Profile element only to the degree you model other parts of your building design.

Category3dModeling