Placing Rooms - lots and lots of Rooms

[DaveP]

We're doing some Facilities work for a hospital. Creating their entire campus in Revit (generic walls for now) and then placing Rooms in each building. We've got 8 buildings, each as separate models. Each building may have up to 12 floors and well over a thousand rooms.
We import the Room data from Excel to create unplaced Rooms.

Here's the rub. when we're placing these Rooms, it takes about 8-12 seconds to drop down the list, select the room, drag the Room into place, and actually place the Room. 12 seconds times 1800 rooms means I'm staring at the hourglass for about three days.

I'm wondering if there is any way I can tell Revit to not worry about looking for the boundary of the room while I place each room. I'll take care of that after they are all placed. Most of my time seems to be either waiting for the "X" to appear or watching the View Regenerate.

Does anyone know of any tricks to make this go faster?

Turn off area calculations?
Turn off all Wall worksets?
Any secret Debug.INI settings to tell Revit: Don't bound Rooms (yet)Any other ideas? Seems like this could go really fast if I didn't have to worry about Room Boundaries until I'm done with everything.

[aggockel50321]

One thought:

Be sure that room volume calculations are disabled...

[Clyne Curtis]

Hey Dave,

I would be interested in more information on importing the room data from Excel.

Thanks!

Clyne

[DaveP]

Yup, got that. I was kind of hoping there was a secret "Disable Room Area" setting somewhere, too.

[DaveP]

Hey Dave,

I would be interested in more information on importing the room data from Excel.

Thanks!

Clyne
Sure thing.
We bought a program from the Autodesk Consulting Group called the Data Transfer tool. they probably don't want me to disclose the price, but it wasn't cheap.
The "Import Rooms/Areas from Excel" app from reviTTools (www.reviTTools.info (http://www.reviTTools.info)) does some of what the Autodesk tool does, as does the RDBLink that is now included in the Subscription Advantage Pack. We found the Data Transfer tool to be the most flexible with the least amount of customization on our end.

I can put you in contact with someone if you'd like to pursue the Data Transfer further.

[SCShell]

Hey Dave,

I would be interested in more information on importing the room data from Excel.

Thanks!

Clyne


Hey Dave,
Is this similar to what Onuma's on-line service can do for a monthy charge? I saw this too at AU in Scott Brown's Class.
Thanks
Steve

[aggockel50321]

Sounds like the drop-down is possibly choking on the number of rooms. Have you tried importing then placing the rooms floor by floor?

[DaveP]

Hey Steve;
I'm not familiar with the Onuma program, but looking at their website, it looks like there are some similarities.
The Data Transfer Tool will read any parameters from any Revit Category (Rooms, Doors, Equipment, etc) and export directly to Excel (no intermediate .CSV file). It adds a Unique ID parameter so you can modify things in Excel, and then re-Import to Revit.

[DaveP]

Thanks, andrew
Yes, I have imported them floor by floor.
Looks like the main thing slowing me down is Revit searching for the Room Boundary. So maybe it's the size (and complextiy) of the building, not the number of Rooms.
I've noticed that the Room Tag starts draggin around fairly quickly, but it says eithe Redundant Room or Not Enclosed until I get into an enclosed area. Then after 4 or 5 seconds, it finally displays the area, and then a couple seconds later, the "X" shows up.
I realize this is just REvt being Revit, and I DO want the Areas and Boundaries (eventually).
I was just hoping aginst hope that there is a way to tel Revit "Don't think about this until I'm done". I' like to place several dozen Rooms, and THEN turn calculations back on & figure out all of their boundaries at once.

[Mike Sealander]

Hi Dave:
Have you tried placing the rooms outside the building first, just to get them on the right floor level, and then (with reference and interior fill on) grabbing them and placing them where they need to go?

[DaveP]

Ahhh. There's one I haven't tried.
I'll check it out Monday & report back.

In the meantime:

Happy New Year, all!

[aggockel50321]

Or try this:

Either create or go to an empty level, and set the floor you want to place rooms in as the underly.

Place your rooms. You'll get a boundry error message, but ignore it and proceed.

Once you've placed all the rooms, select them all & cut them from the view.


Then do a paste aligned, selecting the view you want the rooms to reside in.

Not sure, but it might speed things up...

Hi Mike.

Be sure to buy lots of food and beverage for the long weekend, looks like some nasty weather is coming our way...

[greg.mcdowell]

What if you selected all the walls and set them to be not room bounding before you placed your rooms and then reset them back to room bounding when you're done? You'l get lots of errors of course but maybe that's more acceptable than the current delay.