How To Measure Egress Travel Distance

[nancy.mcclure]

...I am wondering what people have done vis-a-vis scheduling to deal with "shared" path of travel. Like when three paths come together for a segment before exiting. I want to see all three paths as a total length of each path, but the one leg has to be counted three times in effect, and the schedule wants to only show it once.

Gordon

Why not name the routes (comments or custom parameter) with Route 1ABC (shared length) and the spurs as Route 1A, 1B, 1C, etc? Then the schedules could be filtered using wildcards including the shared length plus it's appropriate spur.

[Gordon.Price]

Why not name the routes (comments or custom parameter) with Route 1ABC (shared length) and the spurs as Route 1A, 1B, 1C, etc? Then the schedules could be filtered using wildcards including the shared length plus it's appropriate spur.

I have tried that, but then you need a different schedule for A, B & C, because 1ABC can't show up three times to give appropriate totals. By actually repeating each path you can have a single schedule that tells you that 1B is the longest of the three, for example. And I have seen jurisdictions who want that called out in bold text on the number showing length of each leg. Neither is ideal, and both work.

But the truth is, as lame and non BIMmie as this approach is, it is a ton better than punting plines to autobad and doing manual or Excel calculations. And while I would love to see a fully realized Exiting tool, the truth is that every jurisdiction requires their own approach to documentation, making a single highly refined tool hard to do. And I want Site Tools that actually fail to suck long before I want a better approach to exiting!

Gordon

[twiceroadsfool]

I cant even say that its a Non-BIM approach. I mean, what does that even mean? BIM is a catchphrase that sadly gets thrown around as the sgapegoat for the all-encompassing-problem herein: Were upset that the program doesnt do our jobs for us, LOL.

I mean, dont get me wrong. I love all that "BIM" is, but im really curious how a piece of software is supposed to BETTER handle this situation. There are a dozen SMALL things we could ask for that would help US custom tailor it (Like doors and door parameters being available in room and area schedules... I mean the doors supposedly know what rooms their in, etc, and like letting shared parameters cross pollenate catagories (scheduling egress width of doors per area in an area schedule), but even then its all going to be custom tailored.

Auto check Egress distances to a specific door? Soooooo- The room/area would have to have an "Exit" specified. Then it would need rules. What can the "distance finder" walk through, and what cant it? Then were all upset because we did a nifty trick where we used a railing to make track lighting, but oops... The railing is one of those catagories that Egress finder cant walk through, and were "MAD AT HAVING TO FIND WORKAROUNDS." Meanwhile in a fit of anger we demand here that autodesk do something about my track lights stopping the man running from the fire, and we delete the track lights, which makes the interior designers mad (but theyre mad anyway because railings cant be ceiling hosted. BUT TRACK LIGHTS GO ON CEILINGS!!! who can i sue!?!?!?!?1?1!?). And all of this is superfluous because- lets be honest- I cant get a quantity takeoff for the entire number of bricks in the building when i have my first Pre-design programming layout, so this program is junk.

(If you didnt catch on, thats totally a joke..... )

At the end of the day, in 2008 when Line Based families came out, the potential was endless. We can extrapolate models/data/whatever, along a variable length path, and quantify it. It *is* what a polyline used to be. Only better. I use them for a ton of things. Is it unBIM? I cant really say so. Because BIM is a process (if anything) and this is the PROCESS of getting this information faster, and eliminating the error and rework associated with constant redrawing and requerying a series of TRULY unintelligent lines.

Plus (if youre really BIM crazy like we are) you can put something in to that "family" that has space protection qualities, and clash detech against it later to make sure that no only is the floor space clear, but that ALL the space is clear. It doesnt get much more BIM than that.

But i digress.

[Steve_Stafford]

As the guy that can probably fairly claim starting the Line Based Egress craze...it never started out that way. It was just a demonstration of the new family feature that showed up in 2006. I showed the example in front of 600+ people at AU2006 and I still get an email for it now and then. Can't fight gravity?

Revit MEP calculates the length of electrical circuits once a device is connected to a panel. The length however is a bit crude...essentially an x,y extrapolation of the position of the device and the panel and a little bit of addition.

I'm sure the Revit developers could fashion a clever egress tool that you could sketch and finish, resulting in a single entity. Taken a bit further it could do some reporting etc. As clever as it might get I seriously doubt it would satisfy every last jurisdiction or user's process...not an excuse for doing nothing.

You could distort a railing's purpose I suppose by sketching the railing and examining the length or displaying it in a schedule but now I'm going to really spin Aaron's head.

[twiceroadsfool]

LOL, wouldnt bust my head up at all. I suppose one of the things i still struggle with, is saying what im trying to say, instead of... what im saying.

What would the goal of a native "Revit egress" tool be? Something "railing-esque" may work at "solidifying" the object in to a single unit, with a single sketch... But what does that have to do with BIM? I mean, what makes a single froze dumb object more "BIM Like" than 7 chain'ed objects that are attached and schedule together?

Im all FOR a tool that actually provided more intelligence. But intelligence (to me) isnt looking down a CAD tools sketch. Can it know that it uses a DOOR to pass through a WALL, so that when the DOOR moves or gets deleted it freaks out? Now were talkin. Can it warn us/call us/cry to us when it gets too close (or when something gets too close to it) like furniture that interrupts path of travel? Now were talkin. Can we define minimum space clearances so its not just a length calculator, but its actual manueverable spaces? Now were talkin. Can it know what ROOMS and AREAS it crosses? Awesome.

Thats all im trying to say. A "single P-line" isnt BIM. Maybe a Line Based Family isnt MUCH better, but at least its got data i dont have to query and retype. It has a LITTLE intelligence that i can leverage through design changes. And they ALWAYS change. For all the architects that swear they never do a cope plan twice, im yet to do a project that only did one once.

Now a supper neat tool that did all of the above, and knew all about the spaces and places and faces it crossed? Yeah, im there.

Although Steve, now that you bring it up, i saw someone use a railing as an expansion joint. What a headache it was. They couldnt type mark tag the railing, so they were material tagging, and making every "railing" a different material, at which point it might as well just be text, lol.... Im not against using tools creatively. Im against using them.... Oh how can i say it nicely......

[stuntmonkee]

Is it even possible to get a tag to read a railing length?

I know there is some arguments as to using a family for something it's not intended for, but a railing would cover the issue for continuous measurements, AND work for curved situations plus 3d travel.

Problem that I'm hitting first is that you can't tag the length, you can only schedule it.

Stunts

[markusb]

So this travel line seems like a great tool for egress plans, but I am having a terrible time trying to schedule it. If I use the multi-category I can get it to come up, but there is not field for length. Any help is appreciated.

thanks!

[bhanna]

...
What would the goal of a native "Revit egress" tool be? Something "railing-esque" may work at "solidifying" the object in to a single unit, with a single sketch... But what does that have to do with BIM?

Then what do dimensions have to do with BIM?

To me this is a case of annotation vs. modeling. Calculating egress distance is an exercise in annotating a plan, just like dimensioning is. One shouldn't have to "model" the egress distance any more than one should model individual dimensions. Dimensions describe geometry, paths of egress are inherent to plan geometry. Furthermore their annotation shouldn't show up in other plans, only in the egress plans. Revit gets it right with annotation that stays put with its native view.

The necessity of manually drawing the egress line is the lynch pin that makes this different than simply tagging a door. I would argue that the egress line is a piece of annotation, just like the leader lines for dimensions. Modeling and scheduling them is gratuitous.

[twiceroadsfool]

Then what do dimensions have to do with BIM?

To me this is a case of annotation vs. modeling. Calculating egress distance is an exercise in annotating a plan, just like dimensioning is. One shouldn't have to "model" the egress distance any more than one should model individual dimensions. Dimensions describe geometry, paths of egress are inherent to plan geometry. Furthermore their annotation shouldn't show up in other plans, only in the egress plans. Revit gets it right with annotation that stays put with its native view.

The necessity of manually drawing the egress line is the lynch pin that makes this different than simply tagging a door. I would argue that the egress line is a piece of annotation, just like the leader lines for dimensions. Modeling and scheduling them is gratuitous.

I agree with you there. And when i use my Line Based Egress Family, nothing modeled shows up, and it only appears in one view.

But its MUCH more than "dimensions". Dimensions tie to actual objects, actual references. In this case, that ACTUAL reference is a pathway. An occurance. A specific path through specific objects. When the path has to get updated, the distances have to get updated. The method we are using does just that, with NO OTHER DOWNSIDE.

The fact that "Generic Model" is in its name doesnt mean much. Theres nothing to deal with in other views, nothing to worry about. I click where the line goes in the code plan, and it goes there, and it knows how long it is.

i really cant see how that could be any easier. :shrug:

[markusb]

If the Travel Line that was posted is so great to use can someone please help me schedule the thing. Not sure what I am doing wrong, here's the process:

1. downloaded the Travel Line
2. loaded it in to my project
3. placed it on my floor plan
4. created a multi-category schedule
5. got it to show up by adding the family and type field to the schedule

But the Length parameter does not show up in the fields section!?

Did I miss something?