Walls are BIM objects with a wall type, a thickness made up of construction layers, and a height. You can draw them yourself in BIM Mode, generate them from spaces with Sketch to BIM, or bring them in from Revit. This article covers drawing walls, editing them, and how parametric walls behave when you move them.

Before you start

Walls are drawn in BIM Mode, which is available on the Pro, Organization and Enterprise plans. If you are working in Design Mode, click the BIM tab in the top bar first.
To use your firm's own wall types, add them to your team library first (Organization and Enterprise plans; see Related articles). Otherwise you can pick from the default Snaptrude wall types, such as Generic Wall.

Draw a wall

In BIM Mode, pick the Line (L), Arc (A) or Circle tool from the top toolbar. The Draw tab opens in the right panel and lists the object types you can draw.
Select Wall as the object type.
Choose a wall type from the drop-down list. You see the default Snaptrude wall types and, if the project belongs to a team, the wall types added to that team's library.
Set the wall's thickness and height in the Draw tab.
Choose which line you are drawing along: the wall's inside edge, outside edge or centre line.
Click on the canvas to place the start point, then keep clicking to draw the wall profile.
Press Enter to finish.

You can draw walls in both 2D and 3D. The Draw tab stays open while you draw, so you can change the object type, thickness or alignment mid-draw.

Tip: In the Search tools & actions box at the bottom of the screen, type ML or Multiline to start the wall tool directly. This also switches you to BIM Mode.

Draw curved and circular walls

Follow the steps above, but pick the Arc or Circle tool instead of Line.
To combine straight and curved segments in one wall run, switch between Line and Arc while drawing.

Draw a wall with a custom profile

For walls whose outline is not rectangular, use free-form wall drawing: draw any closed profile, and when the loop closes, Snaptrude makes a wall from it. You can then refine the profile with the Edit tool.

Change a wall's type, thickness or height

Click the wall to select it. Its settings open in the Properties panel.
To change the wall type, open the type drop-down and pick another type.
To change thickness or height, type a value or drag the slider.
Check the wall's length, area, volume and story in the same panel.

Note: A wall's thickness is the sum of its construction layers. When you edit the thickness, or push-pull one of the wall's long side faces, only the structure layer changes. If the wall has more than one structure layer, the change is split between them proportionally. Finish layers stay the same. Layers map one-to-one to Revit layers.

Reshape a wall with the Edit tool

Select the Edit tool from the top toolbar (shortcut P).
Click a face of the wall and push or pull it, or type a distance, to change its thickness, height or length.
To slope the top of a wall, switch to the 3D view (Go to 3D, bottom-right), then click the top edge of the wall with the Edit tool and move it.

Tip: While dragging, press an arrow key to lock movement to that direction.

Note: If you edit a wall's vertices or edges directly, its structure layer thickness shows as Variable in the Properties panel.

Other editing tools, such as Copy, Array, Rotate and Flip, work on walls too. The Offset tool is not available for walls.

How parametric walls behave

Walls created from spaces with Sketch to BIM are parametric. Walls placed with Smart Layouts stay parametric too. When you move a parametric wall:

adjoining walls stretch or shorten so the junctions stay clean,
floors follow the new wall position, and
doors and windows in the wall are kept.

These walls are not parametric:

walls drawn directly with the BIM Mode wall tool,
walls imported from Revit, except simple arc walls (see below), and
walls in older projects created before parametric walls were available.

Floor slabs are not parametric, so they don't follow wall moves.

A parametric wall becomes non-parametric if you:

change its wall type, thickness or height,
add a void to it,
use Split Face on it, or
delete parts of the connected wall layout.

Tip: Lay out walls and move them into place first, then change wall types, thicknesses and heights. Once those changes revert a wall to non-parametric, moving it no longer updates its neighbours.

Work with arc walls from Revit

Simple circular arc walls in a Revit model, whether single-layer or multi-layer, import as parametric walls. You can edit their start and end points, radius, height, thickness and layers in Snaptrude.

These arc walls import as non-parametric geometry:

arc walls that host doors or windows,
non-circular arcs, and
curtain walls and stacked walls.

Paint and textures on arc walls are not mapped in Direct Revit Import.

Arc (curved) walls also export from Snaptrude to Revit.

How walls look in plan

In plan views, walls that meet are drawn as one continuous shape with no seams at the joins. Elements cut by the plan's cut plane are drawn with different line weights from elements seen beyond it.

Sketch to BIM
Construction layers
Central library creation: uploading wall types via Revit import
Edit tool (Push/Pull)
Smart Layouts
Revit import
Revit export
Keyboard Shortcuts

Walls