window mulled unit question

[MN_JohnH]

I’m trying to model mulled windows the way they’re actually built, and I don’t see a good way to do it.
I have found a little bit of discussion here but no real solutions that I can see.

In real life, a mulled unit is two or more windows with shallow frames where they are joined at the mull. The rest of the frame or jamb extension wraps around the outside of the whole unit to bring it out to the finished wall. There is no jamb extension between the windows, so the mull stays at the depth of the window frame.

Chief uses one frame for both the window frame and the jamb, which creates this problem:

• With Fit Frame To Wall checked, the perimeter looks right, but the frame between the windows is the full depth of the wall.
• With the frame set to a real depth, like 3", the mull looks right, but the frame around the entire unit is shallow too. The jamb extension is gone.

This is not about the mullion trim or casing. Mullion Depth in the mulled unit dialog doesn’t fix it because the depth I’m seeing is the windows’ own frames, not the mullion. The Frame panel also isn’t available on the mulled unit, so I have to explode it to change frame depth, then re-mull it.

I’ve seen the workarounds, like placing a pass-through around a shallow mulled unit or building the jamb extension with a 3D molding. Is there a better way to do this in X18 that keeps it as one window object?

If not, I’d like to see a jamb extension setting that’s separate from the frame and wraps the perimeter of a mulled unit, along with a way to edit frame depth and frame material without exploding the unit.

 

Screenshots attached: what Chief gives me and what I’m trying to get.

window mull question.plan

[Joe_Carrick]

Try using a window with multiple panels instead of a mulled window.

[JonathanK]

The closest I could ever get to "accurate" was by adjusting the frame, the sash, and the mullion depth to achieve a look as close as possible.

The problem is...is that the mullion and the "extension jamb" material cannot be separated.  So if you have wood trim...you see a wood mull strip.

Chief's windows are fine for rough representation...but are terrible if you want to be remotely accurate to how a window looks, and is actually built.
 

[MN_JohnH]

Chief’s Double Awning is stacked. Could a side-by-side option be added to the Window Type list so a two-wide awning unit can be modeled accurately without a mull?
I know I had casements in my example but I would like to have the option to have side by side awnings or double hung too. 

[Joe_Carrick]

41 minutes ago, MN_JohnH said:

Chief’s Double Awning is stacked. Could a side-by-side option be added to the Window Type list so a two-wide awning unit can be modeled accurately without a mull?

I'm pretty sure that's possible but it would require Chief to add the double and triple wide types to awning and hopper windows.

You should make that a suggestion.

[Renerabbitt]

@MN_JohnH I put together a video showing the workaround for separating the shallow frame/mull depth from the full-depth perimeter jamb in a mulled window unit.

It covers combining a shallow mulled unit with a pass-through window, removing the extra casing and sill, excluding the helper object from schedules and labels, and converting the finished assembly into a reusable window symbol. I also show how to Tab into individual windows in the mulled unit without exploding it.

Hope this helps!

 

 

Edited 6 hours ago by Renerabbitt