Learn how to create a custom curtain wall pattern using grid lines and curtain grids in a north elevation view of a structure. This article explains the process step by step, providing insight into the importance of precision in the layout, the use of the add/remove segments tool, and the significance of not overlapping the patterns created.
Key Insights
- When laying out a curtain wall pattern, precision is key. Grid lines are used to ensure accuracy and consistency across the pattern, with measurements starting from two feet from the grid line and alternating two bays of six foot eight.
- The add/remove segments tool plays an important role in this process, allowing the user to add in curtain grids at the required locations or remove them if necessary. This flexibility supports a highly custom design process.
- Overlapping patterns can create issues, so it's crucial to ensure that the patterns laid out do not overlap each other. Each curtain grid should be laid out individually, rather than copying across multiple bays, to avoid multiple curtain grids on top of each other which can cause complications in the design.
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Now I'm going to go into our north elevation, and we're going to start from this side. We're really just going to work between grids 5 and 4 here, and I don't need these reference planes anymore, they're just going to kind of get in the way here, so I'm going to delete them, and what I want to do is I'm going to create a pattern where we go two feet from the grid line and then we're going to do two bays of six foot eight, another two feet, and then two bays of six foot eight, and that should close out our entire 30-foot-8 bay here. And so when we look at the dimension across, we have that 32-foot-8—not 30—32-foot-8 across there, and if I were to start breaking it down using my curtain grids, the first one is going to be two feet, and then the next one is going to be six foot eight, and I could easily just take this one and copy it as well. If you're more familiar with that process or comfortable doing it that way, there's definitely nothing wrong with that, and so you can see here I've got two feet, six foot eight, six foot eight, and then I want to make sure that's two feet there. I didn't adjust that dimension, but what we could do, as I learned in our bathroom layout videos, is we can go ahead and we can actually change that value with these dimensions locked, and it keeps everything exactly the way we want. And so I'll take this dimension here; we don't really need it—it's just good to have for reference—but I'm going to go ahead and delete that, and then we need two feet and then six foot eight, and that should close this out here, so I'll use Create Similar to put my two-foot grid in here, and then if we did everything right with our math, then we should be able to just put one in right in the middle there, and that gets us set up with our pattern. What's great about this is that now, because I want to use the same vertical pattern throughout the entire thing, I could go ahead and select my curtain grids. Notice that when I did a crossing right there, I selected quite a few other things, so we're going to use that filter tool and just grab curtain grids, and I should have these eight selected here—one, two, three, four, five, six—so it says I have eight selected, which means we've grabbed many more. This is a cautionary tale where you definitely want to make sure you know what you're selecting, and so in this case crossing is not the way to go; we want to make sure we're just grabbing the elements that are on this wall. So I'll use the mirror tool to mirror it across, and then I'll do it again with those same elements selected, and then one more time for the last part here, and now I've got all the verticals that I want for my wall. We can go in and add the horizontals here, and this is something that we'll go through and do a pattern on; you can definitely take some liberties here and do whatever you want—it doesn't matter. The idea is that we can understand how to go in and make a custom curtain wall with whatever pattern we want. So I'm going to go back to that north elevation because it's definitely easier to work there, and what I'll do is determine a pattern of horizontals that I want to do in here. I'm going to use the level lines as my guide, and that's going to be the basis for how I create each one of these things. So I'll go in and, let's say, here I want to start with my curtain grids again—one segment is going to be our friend for this one—but I can go in and put a horizontal one at this location, and I want to move this guy down two feet. Then I'll just take this one here, and I'm going to copy it down 10 feet, and then 10 feet again, and so we can call this one of our patterns. Now, the next one I'll do essentially the same thing—one segment—but I'll go two feet above the level line here, and then copy that one down 10 feet, and then 10 feet again. What we could do is create a pattern where these alternate; we can even create a third one if we want, but we can go in and say, all right, I want these narrow strips to all have the same pattern. So I can select this one and use Add/Remove Segments, and then say, okay, let's add that one here. As I go through, I'm hitting all of the narrow ones—the grid line and then the intermediates—with the same pattern. I could do that on all three of those going down. Now, on this one, I do the same thing, using that Add/Remove Segments tool, which allows me to add curtain grids at those locations, and then this last one here—you can see I missed this one, so I have to come back and get that. If you accidentally click on it like I did and then miss it, that's okay; just go back in, and if you notice you missed one again, no big deal—go back in and Add/Remove to put it back into place. I could do this pattern here when it's adjacent to the grid line if I wanted to get fancy, so I could use Add/Remove Segments and put them at these grid-line points. Like I was saying earlier, this is definitely pretty subjective when you're doing a layout like this, so you can certainly pick your own layout—you definitely won't be penalized for doing it differently. We just want to make sure you grasp adding these and making a precise design for this type of deal. Okay, now we just need to add a pattern for these two here, so what I'll do for this one is use Curtain Grid again—single segment—and then I'll go four feet from the bottom, then up 10 feet, which will put me at the level line, and then up 10 feet again. One thing you'll notice from all three of these patterns we've created is that none of them overlap, because if they did, we would just be doing the Add/Remove Segments for those as well. This has been driving me nuts the entire time, so I'm going to hide that section because it's made it hard for me to see where I need to create my division. If you have any of those vertical lines—like if it's a dimension or something—feel free to delete or hide them so that you can work effectively without making any mistakes. Okay, and then just these last two here, and the last one. I do want you to notice that we didn't just create this in one of the bays and copy it across for the horizontals, because that's just not how the curtain grids work. If we had done that, we would have had multiple curtain lines and curtain grids on top of each other, which definitely would have created some problems going forward. So there's our pattern; it looks kind of neat. I'll go into 3D, and we can take another look at it.
