Press X for the Pattern tool, choose Windows in its panel and click a wall. A row of windows runs along the whole wall at the window tool’s current preset, no more than 1800 mm apart, with one window width kept clear at each end. They are real windows: the elevations, the 3D view, the schedules and the plan check all see them. Their size and spacing come from one rule, so shorten the wall and they re-space.
Placing the row
The row takes the window tool’s current preset for its width, sill and head height, so pick that preset first if the default is not what you want; the opening type and the panes are set on the row afterwards. The row follows the wall’s whole run, including walls joined end to end in a straight line, and stays inside each corner’s own margin. Placing it is one undo step.
Editing the row
Select any window in the row. Its panel says Generated by a façade pattern and offers two buttons:
- Edit the façade selects the rule, where the whole row is edited.
- Detach this window makes it an ordinary window. It keeps its id and its position, and the row leaves its slot empty rather than placing a twin.
The rule’s panel is headed Pattern and says it Repeats a window:
- Window width, Window height and Bottom above floor size every window in the row at once; Opens (Casement or Sliding) and Panes set the type.
- Max spacing fits as many windows as the run allows at no more than that pitch. Switch to a fixed Spacing and Slack decides where the leftover goes: Split both ends, At the start, At the end or Stretch spacing to fit.
- Margin is the clear length kept at each end of the run.
- Windows counts what was placed.
- Detach windows keeps them all as ordinary windows, with the same ids and positions, and removes the rule.
Each window’s own open state and layer stay its own; everything else is the rule’s. Changing the rule rewrites the windows in place, so a dimension anchored to a jamb, or a mark in the window schedule, survives a re-spacing.
Moving or removing one window
Backspace on a generated window leaves its slot empty; the rule does not put it back. Drag a window along the wall and it stays where you put it, remembered as an exception while the rest of the row keeps re-spacing. The rule’s panel counts the exceptions, and Reset all exceptions returns every window to the rule.
The same row on other storeys
Also on in the rule’s panel lists the other floors by name with a checkbox and the number of windows placed there. Tick a floor and the same row lands on the wall drawn over this run on that storey — the wall has to lie on the same line in plan, or the panel reports no wall is drawn over this run there — nothing is placed. Each storey keeps its own exceptions: a window dropped upstairs is dropped upstairs only. Editing a window on the upper storey works through the same façade, and Edit the façade switches to the floor the rule lives on.
The elevation panes draw a dashed, named datum line for every floor level, so a row that repeats up the building can be read against the levels. The lines are on-screen only; the exported sheet is unchanged.
When a window cannot be placed
A window that would land across a wall seam or a corner is reported rather than forced: the rule’s panel lists it, and the plan check raises A façade window could not be placed — a wall seam or a corner is in the way; shift the spacing or the margin. A window wider than the run between its margins places nothing, and says so. Both are on the free plan check.
What this doesn’t do
- Windows only. A row of doors, panels or balconies is not a mode.
- One wall run at a time. The row does not turn a corner; each side of the building is its own row.
- It never changes the walls. A seam that stops a window is reported, not fused; join the walls yourself if you want the window there.
- Nothing is placed where no wall stands. On a storey with no wall over the run, the row reports it and waits.