How To Measure Egress Travel Distance

[twiceroadsfool]

I do that exact thing, except i use a Generic Annotation, instead of a Detail Component. That way it looks contiguous with the size of Dimension ticks, and it doesnt change scales from project to project.

Since all of our documentation views are set to medium LOD, having this family only visible at Coarse is an easy sell. But there are tons of ways to make it only show up in the one view.

[blacourciere]

What category are you scheduling these line based families under? I am using a similar process and have a tag that displays the Path mark and the individual segment length. I would love for this family to work but for it to be truly successful I need to be able to Tag the path with the overall length of the entire path. I am a little unsure how to create a parameter that calculates the sum of a family.

[twiceroadsfool]

You dont. You schedule it, and put the Schedule on the Egress Plan Sheet, with Totals calculated, and Itemize every instance not checked.

Mine are Specialty Equipment, but it really doesnt matter what you use.

[mthurnauer]

Just to add onto what Aaron said, you need to have some parameter in which you assign a Path ID. You can use one of the existing available parameters for this. When you create your schedule, you need to sort by the Path ID and then calculate totals

[saeborne]

You dont. You schedule it, and put the Schedule on the Egress Plan Sheet, with Totals calculated, and Itemize every instance not checked.

Mine are Specialty Equipment, but it really doesnt matter what you use.

When I try to schedule my Specialty Equipment - Egress Path family, I can't access the "Length" parameter under Fields. I also can not access any parameter that I've created within the family, like "PATH ID."

Do I have to make these shared parameters?

Thanks

[patricks]

When I try to schedule my Specialty Equipment - Egress Path family, I can't access the "Length" parameter under Fields. I also can not access any parameter that I've created within the family, like "PATH ID."

Do I have to make these shared parameters?

Thanks

Yes you have to use shared parameters if you want to schedule them.

[jboersema]

You don't or you can't tag the end segment and have that tag report the total length of the egress path? I understand placing the path id schedule on the sheet view near the end of the egress path, but if that end of the egress path moves the schedule will not move with it. I want to just tag the end segment.

[twiceroadsfool]

Its not a matter of what we want, the software wont do it. I dont put the tag anywhere near it. I tag the segments using Type Mark (thats the value i use to name/number the paths) and then i put the schedule in the top right of the sheet, where schedules belong.

[dkoch]

Some day when I have the time, I will need to revisit this thread and try to get the scheduled line family method to work. Thanks to all for contributing to this thread.

Same thing happens all the time with egress studies...do one, take it off with polylines and then do it again and then do it again. Every time you end up transferring the information to excel or something.

I would point out that while you may need to transfer the polyline information to Excel if you are using vanilla AutoCAD, when using ACA, you can add a property set to the polyline that includes an automatic property for the length, and then add a schedule tag to the polyline that displays the length right in the drawing. Edit the polyline, and the length value in the tag updates dynamically. I find it quite useful when working out which path is the longest and usually have the "trial" polylines and tags on a non-plotting layer for future reference. I understand that Revit is different and that I will have to adjust my expectations accordingly, but this happens to be a task that ACA does rather well.

[mthurnauer]

Another useful tool that I have made using this same method is to make a line-based family that measures egress width. I draw the line across various corridors, stairs, etc. You can makes types in the family for your width per occupant, such as .15, .20, etc. Then it will calculate that for a certain egress component, the allowable load is say 480 occupants. I then tag this with a custom tag that put allowable in the top field and you can enter a value for actual in the bottom field. Unfortunately, you have to add up the actual as it cannot do it for you.