Discover how to draw windows using a PDF as a reference to accurately capture measurements such as sill and head height and mullion definitions. This guide will also help you understand how to use exterior glazing as curtain wall type and make strategic use of vertical and horizontal grids for precision.
Key Insights
- In drawing accurate windows, a PDF can be used as a reference to ensure correct sill and head height and to maintain the right mullion definitions.
- Exterior glazing can be used as the curtain wall type for this process, with the vertical grid layout set to a fixed number to determine the number of vertical grids within the wall.
- Strategic use of the horizontal grid is essential, with the distance chosen carefully based on the specific requirements of the wall. An automated embed option can help embed the walls within basic walls for a seamless, accurate end result.
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Now drawing these windows is a pretty straightforward process, and what we will do is we will use our PDF as a reference to make sure we get the right sill and head height, and then also making sure that we're following the plan here to make sure that we have the right mullion definitions. And so you can see the dimensions on the CAD file that we're using as the basis, say five equal panels, so that we know we're going to need four mullions going vertically, but we have no idea where the sill height or the head height are. We're going to go ahead and pop open that PDF again.
I'll bring that over here so we can look at it, and you can see we're looking at our south elevation, so we're going to have pretty simple windows going across with a head height of eight feet, so we'll have a sill of three feet and a total height of eight feet, meaning the head height is going to be at 11 feet. Knowing that, we can go in and draw those windows, so I'm going to jump back to Revit and go ahead and draw in the curtain wall. I'll go to architecture, wall, and for this one we're going to pick exterior glazing as our curtain wall type because there are parameters in there that will be helpful for the creation of this wall. So I'll pick exterior glazing, and I want to use this vertical grid and horizontal grid to my advantage here, so I'm going to go ahead and click 'Edit Type', and I'll change the type to have a couple of different things here. I'll change the vertical grid layout to 'Fixed Number', which will allow me to pick the number of vertical grids within the wall that I've drawn.
For the horizontal grid, I can leave it at fixed distance, but I want to be strategic about the distance I pick here, as we don't have many walls, as you can see in the PDF example, that have many varying different horizontals, except for this one here, and you can see that the value is set to eight feet one and a quarter because that's going to give us precisely an eight-foot door. When we look at the other elevation page, you can see that we're going to have the same thing with the eight feet one and a quarter head height for that curtain wall that's on the north side as well. So I'm going to jump back into Revit, and we can change this value to eight feet one and a quarter, and to type that in, we type '8' space '1' space '1/4' and that gives us eight feet one and one-quarter inches.
The other thing we want to do is ensure these walls are embedded within our basic walls, so I'll make sure that the 'Automatically Embed' option is checked. By checking that, when I draw the wall on top of our existing EFIS wall that we drew originally, it'll actually cut it out automatically for us. So I'll hit okay, and then the next thing we want to do is make sure we have that sill height set correctly, and so this is the same window type that we have on the south side, but you can see the sill's set three feet, and the overall height is going to be to eight feet.
We can work it through that way if we wanted to as well. So I can look at it, and I can say my base constraint is level one with an offset of three feet. Okay, and you can see my unconnected height is currently set to 25 feet.
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If I were to set this to level two, which had a floor-to-floor of 14 feet, then I see that I've got three feet, 11 feet, but I'm slightly too high, so I can set my top offset to negative three, and that gives me an eight-foot window. Now I'm ready to draw it out. We will go in and make this adjustment. You can see the number is set to four, which works well for us in this case, but I will just go ahead and draw it in, and I'm picking the centerline of my wall and the intersection of that reference plane, and you can see as I draw it, it'll set it up exactly the way I want it.
Now, when you look at this, the glass is on the inside face of the building. I want it to be on the outside face, so I'll hit spacebar, and then it'll draw in my window. One thing that happened is that it drew in our grids, so when I look at it in 3D, it didn't actually give us the mullions we're looking for. So what I could do is I could select this, go to 'Edit Type', and then set the mullions for the vertical and horizontal types.
When we go down, you can see there's settings for vertical mullions and horizontal mullions, and we can set those to the types that we want to use. So I can go ahead and say interior type is going to be the rectangular two and a half by five, and that's what I'm going to set this to for all of them. Again, rectangular, two and a half by five, and I'll just set that to all six of the parameters we have here.
Looks good, so I'll go ahead and hit okay, and now we've got our window set up on level one, and this is going to really set us up so that we can create the rest of this very quickly.
