AC12 curtain wall tool notes

[R Muller]

I have been experimenting with the curtain wall tool. I am posting some of my observations here in the hopes that other ArchiCAD'ers will have additional observations, better ways to do things, etc.

1. Mullion frames are vertical and transom frames are horizontal by default. However, individual frames can be edited to be any type of frame. Thus, you can use the three frame types to have three different frame profiles that are easy to choose. I am using “boundary” to represent my biggest frame, “mullion” for the next largest, “transom” for the most common small frame.

2. Custom frame profiles all have the same name, so it’s harder to apply a specific custom profile in multiple locations if you have several custom profiles. I find that the eye-dropper tool does work to transfer attributes from one frame to another.

3. Boundary frames can be used anywhere on the interior of the grid, as well as on the boundary. They will always be centered on an interior grid line, even if they are set to be inside or outside the grid on the boundary.

4. Other types of frames can be used on the boundary, by selecting and modifying a boundary frame. They will keep the same “inside” or “outside” alignment you set in the system level settings. There appears to be no way to have some boundary frames centered while others are inside or outside.

5. An invisible frame can’t be selected in order to turn it back into some other type of frame. One way to get the frame back is to select another frame, then drag a copy to the location of the invisible frame.

6. The same trick doesn’t work for deleted panels. Unlike frames, panels can’t be dragged or copied. Once a panel is deleted, the only way I have found to get it back (other than “undo”) is to delete the frame between the missing panel and an adjacent panel, and then put the frame back by dragging a copy of some other frame.

7. If your curtain wall sits op top of a slab, and you need to put a door in the wall that extends to the slab, you need to be sure that the boundary frames are inside the grid. Otherwise, the bottom of the door won’t go down to the slab.

[Anonymous]

I've also been having random attacks of the dialog box opening about 3 times the width of the monitor.

Is there a way to define the door size, (instead of letting it be defined by gird locations)?

Is there a way to to have different handles on each side of the door? Every storefront I've ever seen (in the US and Europe) has a push bar on one side and a pull handle on the other.