Make wall and floor materials part of the room properties to allow finish scheduling

[Revit Wishes]

Summary: I wish walls and floor materials were part of the room properties and from this generated a finish schedule.

Description: I wish walls and floor materials were part of the room properties and from this generated a finish schedule.

How Used: I would add 3-d materials (e.g. carpet, wall tile pattern) to the Room properies and the material pattern would appear on elevations and on a finish schedule. Interior finishes such as paint would then be part of the integrated model.

Feature Affinity: Schedule tables

Submitted By: Nicole Peterson on March 4, 2008

[greg_gebert]

Originally Posted by Revit Wishes

Summary: I wish walls and floor materials were part of the room properties and from this generated a finish schedule.

Description: I wish walls and floor materials were part of the room properties and from this generated a finish schedule.

How Used: I would add 3-d materials (e.g. carpet, wall tile pattern) to the Room properies and the material pattern would appear on elevations and on a finish schedule. Interior finishes such as paint would then be part of the integrated model.

Feature Affinity: Schedule tables

Submitted By: Nicole Peterson on March 4, 2008

I agree. This should have been incorporated a long time ago. The only way I have gotten around this is by creating project parameters.

[tomnewsom]

I think the associativity would have to be the other way round. It's possible to have many different materials facing into a room and applying them automagically could really break things. Better to scan the room boundaries and pick up the material definitions from the bounding objects.

[greg_gebert]

Originally Posted by tomnewsom

I think the associativity would have to be the other way round. It's possible to have many different materials facing into a room and applying them automagically could really break things. Better to scan the room boundaries and pick up the material definitions from the bounding objects.

<y parameters don't automatically pick up finishes, it just provides us a way of scheduling finishes.

[tomnewsom]

Originally Posted by greg_gebert

<y parameters don't automatically pick up finishes, it just provides us a way of scheduling finishes.

The wish in the OP says

"I would add 3-d materials to the Room properies and the material pattern would appear on elevations"

This implies that the Room object will modify the Wall objects. It has to be the other way round.

[gordon.price]

Originally Posted by tomnewsom

The wish in the OP says
This implies that the Room object will modify the Wall objects. It has to be the other way round.

Given the way Revit works, couldn't it go both ways? If I change it in the room, it pushes to the walls. If I change it in the wall, it pushes to the room? And it still only works if every wall is the same. Or at least if the entire wall is the same. What happens when the north wall has a line dividing it diagonally, with P1 above and P2 below? Does the room info update to say P1/P2. What if one wall has three or four materials, including paint, wall covering and metal? Does the tool work properly with Split Face and Paint Bucket materials, or only when the material is defined in the wall? If the latter, then I would find the whole thing totally useless, as many spaces get more than one finish in our work. the whole thing could be very cool, if Autodesk gets it right. But it is also really complex and would require a ton of input from users to figure out something that actually works. A simple read one material out of the wall type just isn't gonna cut it for the kind of work we do.

Gordon

[tomnewsom]

Exactly my point. The wish, as described, is too simple. Implementing it properly, without Revit making a bunch of assumptions, would be very tricky indeed.

[nancy.mcclure]

Agreeing with Gordon and Tom. The ability to add Shared Parameters is a very flexible way to customize an element to address what is relevant to that project (for purposes of scheduling). There will always be vast variation on how and when finishes are applied - just between projects, let alone across the profession! - that a prescriptive tool would likely always fall short.

We've tasted the honey of bidirectional associativity, and while I would love to see it function across all model data, the specificity of finish application is one aspect that I believe could be hindered by too much automation.

THAT SAID, if Split Faces applied to a wall automatically created a room parameter that you could assign a palette material to.... hmmmmmm.....

[tapping fingers in Montgomery Burns fashion)

[prospero]

I like this idea very much. It's currently very difficult to make finish schedules as FLOOR finish schedules do not allow you to refer to ROOM information... (somehow WALLS let you refer to ROOM information though)