Curtain Wall - Mullion spacing

[rm]

We are building some very simple storefront panels, with the curtainwall tool, with the intent to have even width and even height spacing in our mullion grid patterns. For example, 5 wide panels x 4 tall panels.

We draw an overall opening size in an elevation window that we want filled with curtainwall tool. We are using 2" wide frames. We are using the draw from centerline of frame option, for the overall perimeter of the opening, therefore we draw our perimeter 1" in from all sides of the wall opening where this will be inserted to.

We select best division for the spacing option.

The end result is almost always wrong as if ArchiCAD can't do math. When I say wrong, I mean spacing between the mullions is almost always uneven therefore making the glass sizes different as well.

Maybe its just us, but we cannot get consistent results. Occasionally (very rarely) it seems to give us the expectected results.

Then if we manually move individual mullion pieces to get spacing correctly, often the glass panels automatically get deleted even though we didn't select any glass panel pieces. Or small fragments of frame get created, that then need to be deleted. Its seems like AC isn't not "healing" or "stretching" the glass to fill moved frame pieces.

Just wondering if anyone else is experiencing these issues and if you have found a fix?

Any suggestions appreciated.

[David Maudlin]

rm wrote:
...Then if we manually move individual mullion pieces to get spacing correctly, often the glass panels automatically get deleted even though we didn't select any glass panel pieces. Or small fragments of frame get created, that then need to be deleted. Its seems like AC isn't not "healing" or "stretching" the glass to fill moved frame pieces. ...

When editing the CW in elevation, turn on the Scheme Grid in the little palette in the top left corner. Move the grid lines rather than the mullions.

Hope this helps.

David

[rm]

David wrote:

When editing the CW in elevation, turn on the Scheme Grid in the little palette in the top left corner. Move the grid lines rather than the mullions.

Hope this helps.

David

David -

Thanks for the suggestion, we will give that a try.

We also discovered something that seems to help. It seems to be important to set the starting point at 0'-0" in the set up dialogue panel, even if the base of the frame is not set at 0'-0" when drawing the outline of the CW in elevation. We found this bay accident, it really doesn't make sense to us, but seems to result in mover even spacing for horizontal members.

The CW tool in general seems very powerful, mastering it though seems to take a lot of trial and error. I wish there were some solid step by step videos out there that clearly show what settings affect what outcome with the tool.