Best workflow for multiple wall finish combinations without Composite Bloat

[Cazer_36]

Hi everyone,

I am looking for the best professional workflow to manage various interior and exterior wall finishes in Archicad without ending up with an uncontrollable number of Composite Structures (Composite Bloat).

I have prepared a small demo plan to illustrate the issue. As you can see in the attached image, even in a very small layout, I am forced to create 5 different wall combinations (TYPE-1 to TYPE-5) because the finish layers (C-1 to C-4) change depending on the room types on either side of the core wall.

I have already tried two common workarounds:

1. Using Wall Accessories.

2. Modeling finishes as separate, thin composite/basic walls (furring walls).

However, both methods create serious headaches when it comes to doors and windows. The openings do not automatically coordinate seamlessly across multiple walls, and whenever a door/window position or size changes during revisions, it becomes a manual tracking nightmare.

How do you handle this complexity in large-scale professional projects? Is there a native feature, a specific Wall Closure/Opening Tool workflow, or an industry-standard method that makes managing separate finish layers seamless when dealing with doors and windows?

I would highly appreciate your insights and workflows. Thank you!

 

Operating system used: Windows

[Lingwisyer]

There is a related wish that would resolve issues with your second stated workaround. Currently, the wish is listed as "On Roadmap", though it never was. The "Opening Input in Section/Elevation" that came out with AC29 was stated as being related though it is a bit of a tangent, and quite a leap in it's current form from the wish...

https://community.graphisoft.com/t5/Wishlist/Opening-Tool-as-Standard-Wall-Penetration-Tool/idc-p/70...

Ling.

[Cazer_36]

Thank you, Lingwisyer, 

The main problem I am facing is that the same structural wall core often requires different finish build-ups on each side depending on the functions of the adjacent rooms, which eventually leads to an excessive number of Composite Structures.

What I am really curious about is how offices handle this situation in large-scale projects. Are most users modeling finishes as separate walls or accessories and manually managing opening coordination, or is there a more robust Archicad workflow that I may be overlooking?

I would be very interested to hear how this is handled in projects.

[Lingwisyer]

Drafting wise, are you modelling the finish build-ups as generic thickness, or as composite layers to be listed? I assume you are labelling the walls based on the inside / outside Building Material ID?

[Cazer_36]

Yes, I am modeling the finish build-ups as composite layers so they can be properly listed in the schedules. And yes, you are correct, I am labeling the walls based on the Building Material ID.

[O_De Costa]

@Cazer_36
Since Archicad doesn't offer a native solution for this, workarounds are unavoidable. Your Option 2 (thin finish walls) is workable and has been used effectively in professional practice, typically in combination with fully built-out composite structures. The opening coordination issue you mentioned, can be managed using empty openings, which can then be filtered out of schedules to keep documentation clean and having the advantage of indexing/tracking openings after/for revisions.

That said, the more fundamental shift worth considering is in how Wall Types and Wall Finishes are classified. Trying to encode finish information directly into wall type identifiers leads to exactly the composite bloat you're describing. I would suggest that a cleaner approach is to treat them separately:

Wall Types defined by their structural or functional core (not their finishes)
Wall Finishes captured on a Room Finish Schedule, with surface information called out via classification and properties labels
This keeps the wall type library manageable and puts finish data where it's most useful --- in the schedules.

While a native modeling solution for this would be a genuine improvement to Archicad, revisiting the classification logic is the most scalable path within the current toolset

.

[Brandon-W_DWa]

In our professional workflows, we follow what @O_De Costa is describing, which generally is to separate wall/partition types and finish types in our drafting standards. But back to how to model/organize this system: I find that a large number of composites is unavoidable, and the less error-prone option (you also note the limitations of other options).

I recommend to our users they take it one step further, even, and create separate composites for different conditions. For example, this allows identical wall types (architecturally) to be used in a parapet condition vs. a soffit condition. The only difference in the composites (BIM-wise) is the intersection priority of the materials, which allows the model to do most of the heavy lifting for us when it comes to assembly intersections. It takes really good naming conventions, but other than that, it's manageable.