BIM Tree Chimpanzee – Replace Curtain Walls with Windows in Revit®

Hello and welcome to the next article for architects about our brilliant solution for Revit – BIM Tree Manager . As you may already know, last month we started a BIM Tree Chimpanzee blog series that teaches how this tool can help architects, structural engineers, and MEP engineers use BIM to its full potential, so stay up to speed and take a look at our previous articles! You can find links at the end of this article.

At the very first stages of building design, while trying to decide between various masses, sizes, shapes, shades, and so on, expressing the main idea is what matters most. In order that others understand our thoughts, we have to make the design concept as clean and minimalistic as possible. Of course, we have tons of ideas but not as much time, so we think of ways to save time on the technical work in Revit. For example – adding Curtain Walls instead of Windows.

This really is a time-saving idea. You don’t have to create lots of Window Family Types, hence have more time and flexibility to actually be creative. However, a time when those “windows” need to be scheduled will come and you will need to replace them. That is where BIM Tree Manager comes in handy. With this solution, you can replace Curtain Walls with Windows in just a few simple clicks.

After BIM Tree Manager is already run for Walls category, desired Curtain Walls need to be selected for replacing. You can filter elements by all kinds of different criterions. In this example, I filtered all Curtain Wall elements of Family Type “Curtain Wall for Windows”. It is the type name that was used for sketching windows in the project.

Now, function “Replace Window” can be used.

BIM Tree Manager replaced all selected Curtain Walls with newly created Window Types of the same dimensions. In the picture below, you can see that previous Curtain Wall of 1200 mm width and 5800 mm height was replaced with an automatically created Window Type that is 1200mm width and 5800 mm height.

New Types for chosen Window Family were created automatically for every replaced Curtain Wall ->

Before:

After:

Curtain Walls can be replaced with similar Window Family design types to achieve the most accurate results.

Here are a few examples of before-and-after:

Curtain Wall with horizontal mulion

Curtain Wall with vertical mulion

As you can see, the tool replaced the selected Curtain Walls with the chosen Window Families of similar design and created new Types with corresponding dimensions.

This is just one of many helpful features of AGACAD’s advanced solution that will help you save time while still using BIM models’ to their full potential.

Go ahead and download a FREE TRIAL and experience its benefits yourself. You can even request a live demo with our BIM Application Engineer.

In the following articles, architects, structural engineers and MEP engineers will find out how they can benefit from BIM Tree Manager, so stay tuned for more. Don’t hesitate and try Tools 4 Revit® add-ons that will help you concentrate on work that creates value.