Multi-story exterior walls

[David Collins]

Being a creature of habit, my work habits probably all go back to ArchiCAD 6. But lately I've been wondering about multi-story walls, especially for exterior walls that are essentially the same on all stories.

I've always broken up exterior walls into one story sections, probably because that was the way you had to do it in the past. But if all the exterior walls were multi-story, with their home story at the base of the building and the top story-linked to the roof, you wouldn't have to coordinate back through all the plans each time you changed position or material or thickness. This seems even more feasible with the new PBC slab connections, which will work anywhere along the height of a wall.

So: is this standard practice and I'm only just now figuring it out? Or are there problems and issues with using multi-story walls this way?

[jakubc]

Interesting question indeed. I'm quite new to archicad (started using it in the end of version 15) and already used both methods - and I find it right to use multi-story exterior walls like you described it, it doesn't cause any troubles and speeds up the work. But I only did few projects this way. Maybe in more complex cases it turns out to be problmatic so it would be nice to see what are other people experiences and workflows.

[Eduardo Rolon]

I have always used multistory walls (making holes in slabs or using SEOs) and with PBC in 17 I don't see any reason not to use them.

[Barry Kelly]

So long as it is the same wall in the same (plan) position on all stories then there is no reason not to use a Multi-storey wall.
You will probably want to set your window/door head/sill to storey rather than the wall base.

As Eduardo said now that 17 has Priority Based Connections the multi-story walls will be cut away correctly around the edges of floor slabs.
So there is no need to stack walls in layers as the wall thickness changes around the edges of the slabs.

However should the wall need to vary in position or composition then you will need to revert back to separate walls on separate storeys.

To split an existing wall vertically into two is easy with the split tool.
To split an existing wall horizontally into two is not so easy and requires duplicating the wall and then adjusting the heights of each and the home storey of one of them.

I am a bit old school as well and still place separate walls in each storey unless I have a window that needs to span two floors as in a stair well.

Barry.

[sinceV6]

What about scheduling multi-story walls? How do you manage that? I mean when you need to list walls per story.

I rarely use multi-story walls, may be because of old habits. Top story linking and PBC might be a good excuse to use them more, but until they can be listed per story as multi-story morphs can, I guess I will still use them only when needed.

Unless of course, you have a great tip up your sleeve?

Best regards.

[David Collins]

I've just finished a project using multi-story walls wherever possible. Some observations:

PROs: PB Connections are particularly easy with multi-story walls: intermediate slabs just clean themselves up more or less automatically. When you have walls split into single story sections there's a lot of fussing required at each floor with the "Adjust to Slab" command. Also, a multi-story wall is less likely to get itself automatically sent to a different story after some minor adjustment to its height, due to the auto-story assignment problem.

CONs: A simple marquee selection will show the entire wall in 3d, instead of just the one story as you'd like. You can filter the 3d view to restrict its range to just one story, but that's a lot of clicks away from the simple utility of the marquee tool. As Barry notes, splitting a multistory wall into vertical sections is a pain and sooner or later you run into the need to do so. I can also see that the inability to list multi-story walls by story in schedules would be a drawback, as well.

[aarkell]

Hi All,

Was curious if opinions have changed on multi-story wall vs the "old school" in 2022? I get asked this question all the time in my office and sometimes have a hard time defending the old school method of separate walls per story. I prefer the single wall per story approach and like the added flexibility if items need to change per story, but was curious if AC 25 & 26 make an even stronger case for multi-story walls? Appreciate everyone's previous responses detailing their modeling methods--the insight is always helpful.