Split Layers

Overview

A wall in Revit is one element, however many layers its type carries. That is fine until the blockwork, the insulation and the render each need to be scheduled, phased, filtered or detailed on their own. Split Layers takes the wall or floor you already have and rebuilds it as one element per layer group.

You start from a list of the wall and floor types actually used in the model, showing how many elements each type has and what its layers are. You group those layers however the job needs - structure and finish, one element per layer, or anything in between. Split Layers makes a new type for each group and places the new elements at offsets read from the original layer thicknesses, so the finished wall or floor stands exactly where the old one did. Resulting wall layers are joined at corners as part of the run.

Doors and windows have to sit in something, so you choose which layer group carries them and they are moved onto it as the wall is split. Anything that could not be moved is listed at the end by family and type rather than quietly lost.

Run it on the whole project, on the walls in the current view, or on a selection you pick in the model. If the scope you chose contains hosted doors or windows, you are told before anything is changed.

Failure is handled one element at a time. A wall or floor that cannot be split is left exactly as it was, named in the summary with the reason, and the run moves on to the next one. The one exception is the new types themselves: if those cannot be created, the whole run backs out and leaves nothing behind in the model. Every run ends with a count of what was processed, what was created and what failed.

Walls have to be Basic Walls with at least two layers and a build-up that does not change up the height of the wall. Curtain walls, stacked walls and types whose layers vary vertically are refused by name, and the type list only offers candidates that qualify. It splits walls and floors - not ceilings, not roofs.

One behaviour worth knowing: the faces of split floors are locked to each other, so they move together. Split walls are not tied that way - move one layer and the others stay where they were.

Everything happens in the open model on your machine. Nothing is sent anywhere, and nothing is read from linked models. The interface is English or Russian, following a language setting shared across the machine rather than a picker inside the window.