Curved Curtain Wall Panels in Revit

Curved curtain walls are one of those things that pop up occasionally in an architectural project. If you are willing to live with a modified basic wall, HyunWoo Kim has a wonderful solution using wall sweeps. I had built a custom curved curtain panel family for a client a couple of years back and I recall the effort being a confusing mess of trigonometric functions. So when another client asked for pointers on building a curved curtain panel family, I decided to revisit the family and see if I could re-create the one I had built earlier (in Revit 2013). What I ended up with was a pleasantly clarified version without any of the trigonometric functions to muddy the waters.

Revit Adaptive Component: Practical Archetypes - Curved Glass CurtainWalls

[caption id="attachment_455" align="aligncenter" width="480"] Panelization of the Curved Surface using Adaptive Component Families[/caption]

Curved panels are particularly gnarly! Curved and Non-rectilinear are more so. This is one of those situations where you don't have a choice but to use Adaptive Components.

In this post I'm going to attempt to show how simple the building of a curved and trapezoidal panel can be. So, bring out the rusty trigonometry toolbox (or googling skills) and let's get started!