Area boundaries are no longer functional

[ita]

Well the accuracy of Revit as expressed by the factory is from my experience quite reasonable in the Real Estate world. From past experience, the accuracy of real estate agent's promotional literature and the actual leased areas measured by the surveyor for the Lease Documents can vary to such a % that it would make a building estimator blush.

We do not have to be accurate to the nth degree; buildings areas are not necessarily accurate to 2 decimal places and allow the surveyor confirm that the actual area to BOMA rules in the lease document. I am sure that the small inaccuracies in area will not send the building owner broke - and if does then the building was not going to be financially viable anyway!!

[greg.mcdowell]

that's pretty significan't... I took your file into AutoCAD and the area on the right should be 167sf but it's only showing as 157sf in Revit... not good

[Steve Jager]

If the powers to be in my firm get wind of this they will most likely not use Revit for any area computations and instead rely on a manual effort in plan acad. This just plain sucks!
Furthermore, our Revit detractors will most likely fuel the fire for sticking with acad 2006/07.

After all of my effort to convince my firm to use Revit will probably be wasted. Thanks Autodesk for once again stumbling and crashing again. Who the hell makes these kind of decisions at corporate?

I will now have to spend some quality time away from my family verifying my two school projects and then having to report to my supervisor that there are multiple errors in the numbers we have been reporting to our client and cm. Great news!

[patricks]

If the powers to be in my firm get wind of this they will most likely not use Revit for any area computations and instead rely on a manual effort in plan acad. This just plain sucks!
Furthermore, our Revit detractors will most likely fuel the fire for sticking with acad 2006/07.

this really makes no sense to me. Why would you rely on another program to manually figure area, when you can manually place area boundary lines anywhere you want in Revit?

I guess I'm just not grasping why people seem to be so alarmed that automatic tools don't work. It doesn't surprise me at all that the automatic tools don't always follow the user's wishes. Computers have never been that way since the first punch-card machines. This is why I will often use automatic area lines through the design process to make sure my building area is within budget and to make sure it meets code, local site design requirements, etc, but when it comes time to report the final areas, I will usually just manually place my boundary lines.

It is my opinion that when accuracy is of utmost importance to things that vary so greatly (endless different building designs), you should never rely on the program to place the boundary lines for you. Maybe if the computer was designing the building, but no, the user is designing and drafting the building, so in my opinion the user should be the one placing the area boundary lines according to whatever rules take precedence in the area (BOMA or others).

This is why I don't see this gap issue as that big of a deal. As someone stated, turn off room bounding for columns and move on.

[greg.mcdowell]

check out Wes' file above... he manually drew Area Boundary lines and it still did not calc the area correctly... it's not about whether Revit picks the correct location for the line or not.

my best guess is that this is an unexpected side affect of the new Rooms object... but what do I know <g>

[Wes Macaulay]

Actually, I think this is a case of changed functionality of room and area boundaries. The room boundaries change is great -- kudos to the Factory! -- but the change in Areas is totally unacceptable and needs to be changed ASAP.

[jamesr]

That is the primary issue; you cannot place the boundary lines manually unless the boundary lines maintain a "gap space" of at least 12" or greater. R9 jumps the boundary and deletes any areas that are "not of reasonable size to fit a human being". Imagine that you have an AutoCAD polyline that suddenly moves because of the fact it is too close to another polyline and you do not have the ability to control it. That is what R9 does.

Please understand that the difference here is not in the fabrication of the building, nor is it the provision of building component information to the contractor. This is an issue of providing information to the client, to whom I have a contractual agreement to design a building which meets our mutually agreed upon goals. Our office has a policy of accurate drafting. Walls are 4-7/8", not 5" for example. We expect the software we use to provide sufficient accuracy, i.e. substantially better than construction tolerance, to give us accurate information as we have entered it. There is a huge difference between accuracy and precision. You can have incredibly precise work, but if the base information is erroneous, you don't have accuracy. This is the current dilemma. There are work arounds, but they are just that, work arounds which take time and architectural fee. Fee I would rather spend on providing a quality design.

[jpolding]

Thanks for posting this issue! Is there a setting that we're overlooking, like changing the gap tolerance or precision? I'm looking and can't find anything. If the factory hasn't built this in, please do so or let us know where it can be found.

[iru69]

Yikes! After looking at Wes's file, I get it now. Obviously some of us were under the impression that Revit was simply ignoring small niches when placing boundary lines... but apparently if you manually calculate the area within the visible boundary lines, it does not correlate with what Revit is reporting.

James, it seemed like you were more interested in making an argument for how this problem affects you rather than really describing what the problem actually was which is what led to some confusion. Anyone who looks at Wes's file will get it right away.

[tamas]

I am looking at a fix for this issue with area plans. Give me a few days to report back what I have found.

Thanks for your patience.

Tamas