Advanced massing options

curtain panel family

A pattern based curtain panel family is a family which is placed on the grid. In fact you set a façade panel on a grid.

Steps to dra and place a pattern based curtain panel:

1. Make a new curtain panel pattern based family, in the family tab of the home screen. In this family you see a grid and a couple of base points. When you click the grid you can set in the properties what kind of grid it is, hexagon, triangle, etc. for example. It’s is really important that every shape you make is locked on those base points, with offsets etc. Those points are the points that are placed on the grid as the other geometry isn’t locked to this points there will be a strange outcome. Tip: to control yourself if everything is properly locked, click on the grid and change the size.
2. Load this family in the project.
3. Click on a divided surface or divide one, in the type properties under the drop done menu you can select the curtain wall panel. In the properties you can edit more settings like how the border tile should be made (overhanging = complete tiles on edges, partial = cut tiles on edges, none = no tiles on edges only complete tiles are drawn) Here you also can flip or mirror the tiles of necessary.
4. Your surface is now finished. (in the example down here, I have set all grid rotation on 90 degrees, 25 bij 20 tiles, component are flipped, border tiles are empty)

Adaptive component family

With an adaptive component family you do the same as with a curtain panel pattern based family, but there where in a curtain panel pattern based family the base points are locked on a grid in an adaptive component family only the relation between the points are set so you can place this family on every points grid/line you like. As you see in the example above the borders are empty because you want to place there a special border family, this we are going to do with an adaptive component family. The nice thing about this family is that you can spread the placement points to different surfaces so now you can make the right connections between them.

Steps to make an adaptive component family:

1. Make a new adaptive component family. First you set the number of adaptive points you need to set the component in our example we start with a family with 3 points for the bottom of the surface. Make sure the points are adaptive placement points, select the points and set in the properties under the adaptive component.
2. Connect these points with reference lines, make sure that the 3d snapping is on.
3. Draw a point on one of the lines, set the work plane in this point and draw a rectangle with the right constraints for height and width. Select the rectangle and the reference lines and click on the create form button. Tip: you can check if all the constraints are set right to move one of the points.
4. Load the adaptive component family in you project.
5. Make sure the grid of the surface is visible by selecting the surface and hit the surface visible button. you also want to see the notes that creates the surface. For this you select the surface, click on the arrow behind the surface representation tab in the ribbon, a pop up will appear. In this pop up click on the surface tab and check the box by nodes.
6. Now you can place your adaptive component, for this placements make sure you pick the nodes on the surface and not other geometry or so, else he will take this geometry as a work plane, and not the plane the nodes are set on.
7. Now you can finish your surface.