Windows across multiple stories

[gotphish001]

I've been searching for a fix for this and there's nothing worth a grain of salt that's from the last 15 years. I for sure hope there's a better way than those work arounds from a lifetime ago.

I have 2 stories. I have a window that spans both stories. It's in the first floor wall. I want  the window to show up on first and second floor plans because it IS on both floors.

No, I don't want to just make the wall of the first floor 2 stories because of the project. Window is on a stair tower landing. There's some existing elements. The first story wall and second story wall are not the same, so stretching the first floor up an extra floor is not correct. 

No, I don't want to just make a copy of the window and put it in the wall above basically creating a window that isn't real. That screws too many things up, schedules, material take offs, etc.

You can show use the floor cut plane to show the wall above if you set the projection setting in the wall to "floor plan range". This shows window on the second floor but then the wall on the second floor shows as just an outline with the window. Changing settings I can make the window show right on either story, but not both. Change one setting and it fixes it on one floor, but breaks the other floor showing it correctly. I have 5 hours into trying to get this one window to work correctly. Just so much wasted time. It's hard to bill a client for 5 hours that I basically did nothing.

A window across floors is in almost every project that I've ever worked on over the last 15 years. How can there be no way to do this without BS work arounds? How can there be nothing that comes up in the search for a fix for this that doesn't just say "make the wall taller" or "put a fake window in"?

[Barry Kelly · Accepted solution]

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@gotphish001 wrote:

No, I don't want to just make the wall of the first floor 2 stories because of the project. Window is on a stair tower landing. There's some existing elements. The first story wall and second story wall are not the same, so stretching the first floor up an extra floor is not correct. 

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Different walls is not  problem.

Make a Complex Profile wall.

It will be one wall, 2 storeys high, that can be set to show on multiple storeys.

Then you only need to place one window.

If you need to you can even add modifiers that will allow you to stretch the individual components of that wall rather than just the overall height (and width).

To help making the complex profile, you can model the 2 walls on top of each other (in the same storey) at the heights as they would be built.

Select both walls in plan and then EDIT menu > Reshape > Merge Walls.

This will replace the walls on plan with a "Custom" complex profile wall.

Select the wall and right click, choose 'Edit Selected Composite/Profile'

This will open the wall in the Profile Manager.

Edit the wall further if you need to, add modifiers if you want to.

Save with a meaningful name.

If you modelled the walls in their exact location, select the 'Custom' profile in plan and swap it for the new profile.

Otherwise, you can delete that 'Custom' wall and now just add a new complex profile wall where you need it.

Make it show on multiple storeys and add a window where you need it.

Barry.

[Lingwisyer · Accepted solution]

Screws up your schedules temporarily, until you add a property to exclude the symbolic windows.

[gotphish001]

I didn't know about that last part about merging profiles. That will speed things up. I also didn't think of just making one profile that was both stories and different at each level. 

The schedule idea works. I just thought after all these years they would have added a tool to just fix a common thing.

Thanks and didn't mean to rant my question. I just wasted a lot of time trying to find a answer that didn't really exist. I'm sure everyone's been there. Sucked down the rabbit hole of fiddling.