Room Schedules and Finishes

[Jun Austria]

This is my first time to go deeper with this. So please bear with me. :-)

I have a Room Schedule with "Name/Floor Finish/Wall Finish and Ceiling Finish" Schedule fields. We are indicating finishes by legend. I mean instead of "cement render floor finish" we indicate it as "c1". My question is, can I tie this back to a "List" of finishes?

[phyllisr]

...can I tie this back to a "List" of finishes?
If I understand your question correctly, this might be possible with a Key Schedule. The attached screenshot shows how we use this for door schedules to populate Hardware Set information but the concept is the same.

In your case, the Key Name would be the designation (for example) for Floor Finish. You would enter C1 or CPT2 or other as the key and populate any other information like color or manufacturer or anything else you do not include in your specifications manual. In the actual Room Finish Schedule, you only see the Key Name referencing all the other detail information. You may enter all your possible keys in advance before you have the materials selected if you prefer.

If I misunderstood your question, let me know.

[Jun Austria]

If I understand your question correctly, this might be possible with a Key Schedule. The attached screenshot shows how we use this for door schedules to populate Hardware Set information but the concept is the same.

In your case, the Key Name would be the designation (for example) for Floor Finish. You would enter C1 or CPT2 or other as the key and populate any other information like color or manufacturer or anything else you do not include in your specifications manual. In the actual Room Finish Schedule, you only see the Key Name referencing all the other detail information. You may enter all your possible keys in advance before you have the materials selected if you prefer.

If I misunderstood your question, let me know.

Thanks for the tip. I will look into "keynoting". I believed this is the "Key" :-) to my problem.

[phyllisr]

...I will look into "keynoting"...
Remember that a key schedule is different from keynoting. If you cannot find what you need in the Help menu, let me know and I will create a quickie example for you to deconstruct. Language and syntax are an eternal problem when discussing software. :)

[rudolfesterhuyse]

I have a problem with this because I cannot get the room to tie to the key note only the material butI have not tried key scheduling. The problem at the moment is that I have to double up on work ie. specifing the finish once for the room and once for details. I am not sure how to overcome this yet but will look into key scheduling which I haven't heard of before

[t1.shep]

Because rooms might have more than one finish on the walls or floors, the parameter for Wall Finish, and Floor finish that are built into the Revit Room, don't really get you much...
Does anyone have a good method for creating a room tag and schedule that will recognize the different materials that are actually on the walls in a room and also list the materials/finishes used in a project? I need to be able to tag the finishes in a room and also have it update a finish schedule. I've tried creating a material tag that can tag the materials on the wall, but those tags (I seem to recall) need to be "attached" to the wall by a leader or if the leader is off the tag must be "on" material. This prevents you from consolidating the material tags into a common location where the room finishes can quickly be found in a singular graphical symbol. Also, off the top of my head, I don't know if you can then schedule wall materials, floor materials, base, and ceiling materials by room? Is it possible to put that information into a room schedule? So that if you can't make a room tag that reads the actual materials in the room, a schedule of materials by room and surface (walls, floor, base, ceiling) could suffice?
The issue I have with a Key Schedule, or other methods (I've in the past just made separate parameters for the room for the different walls that can have the material filled in manually and read in a tag and schedule) is that it requires manual coordination and is independent of the actual materials in the model. It would be nice to have all the materials update in all the rooms if it were to change or if a new material was added and replaced some of the previous material.
For example, I might have school where all the classrooms have walls painted P1. If this were a Key Schedule or a Material tag, either would work. But then I decided that all the rooms will have one side painted P2. If it were a Key Schedule I'd have to add P2 then go through my schedule and manually change each wall using the drop-down menu. If I were able to tie the room tag to the material tag, I could create a new wall type with the new material, then select the specific walls and change them. My room schedule would update, my interior elevations would update, my material take-off would update, my material/finish schedule would update. I then have a new wall finish type that i can change globally if the material changed again. By using the actual material of the model element vs a manually filled Key Schedule, you seem to have greater coordination and consistency throughout all views and schedules...if you can do it?? Do I make any sense?

[kris.atkinson]

Hi am having a similar problem and am a bit out of the loop with Key scheduling.

I have created a room schedule from my school project. As i had a set format for my room data sheets i set up a number of project parameters (eg skirting, wall substrate, wall finish, ceiling type, ceiling height etc) these are fine and set my schedule up exactly how i need them however they are dumb fields and are filled out manually by txt and not linked to my model. What is want to be able to do is to hace the wall type, ceiling type and ceiling heights be linked with the model so that when i change the type or height in the schedule it will update in the model and vise versa?

ive looked on the net and noticed people having similar problems. apart from setting up a number of schedules ie one for rooms, one for ceiling and one for walls is there any way around this??

[phyllisr]

This issue of "intelligent" finishes and ceiling heights and materials in room schedules has been an ongoing topic of discussion and I read many posts where people consider this a serious problem. Personally, I think the finishes should remain manual and ceiling information belongs on a ceiling plan. Before deciding that this is a Revit failure may I ask that you consider a few things?

Revit will not report the finish on a wall as a material in a Room Finish Schedule but is this something you really want to do in the first place? Assume that Revit is able to report this information. Further assume that your building is really simple with only 3 5/8" metal studs and one layer of gyp on each side. You would have to create a wall family for each different paint color in your project. Since only a membrane can have a 0" thickness and a membrane layer will not show in a shaded view, this means you must either create a Gyp Bd material for each paint color or give the paint a thickness. You must also create separate wall families with different paint color combinations for the gyp on each side of the wall in every location where there is a finish change. You must also develop some complicated naming convention for all these families.

Next, you must be prepared to split the wall at every single location where you have a color change and swap (for example) the beige wall for the gray wall. You must also be diligent placing the interior and exterior face of the wall. All this for a really simple building... Can you imagine the wasted energy trying to do this for even a mid-rise spec office building? Is there enough benefit in a BIM world to justify this overhead to a model? Are your teams sufficiently disciplined to make it work?

It is possible to include the ceiling height depending on how much effort you want to make. Ceiling heights and materials were traditionally on schedules for contractor and bidding convenience and cause more problems than it is worth. We only include that information on a schedule if it is a very simple, small TI project and we are not creating a ceiling plan. If you have multiple heights (perhaps a soffit and an ACT ceiling creating a tray effect), which ceiling height would you expect Revit to report? What if you had a stepped soffit so your ceiling has 3-4 heights? Would you want multiple columns that you would have to define for every possible height combination in a room? In traditional drafting, we always had a remark that said SEE CEILING PLAN anyway so why not use the ceiling plan for all materials and heights? This forces the bidder to look at the ceiling plan which every sub should be doing anyway.

If you have a consistent height (perhaps all your ceilings are ACT at 9'-0"), and you really want it in the schedule, you can use the unbounded height parameter. It is accurate but you must create a level line for the ceiling height unless you want to manually change all your ceilings after the fact if the height changes during DDs or CDs. Best practice would also be to use that level for the ceiling itself then at least the ceiling and the room can be controlled with a level. Even with this solution, are you prepared to create multiple levels for multiple ceiling heights for every floor then use other tricks to hide those levels in views where they are meaningless? I attached a clip demonstrating what the process but like the walls, there is not enough ROI to make this effort.

Sometimes, old and trite phrases are worth repeating.

Be careful what you wish for lest it come true...

[nharburger]

Revit will not report the finish on a wall as a material in a Room Finish Schedule but is this something you really want to do in the first place? Assume that Revit is able to report this information. Further assume that your building is really simple with only 3 5/8" metal studs and one layer of gyp on each side. You would have to create a wall family for each different paint color in your project. Since only a membrane can have a 0" thickness and a membrane layer will not show in a shaded view, this means you must either create a Gyp Bd material for each paint color or give the paint a thickness. You must also create separate wall families with different paint color combinations for the gyp on each side of the wall in every location where there is a finish change. You must also develop some complicated naming convention for all these families.


OR.... You could just paint the interior surface of the GWB with the paint finish you want - using the paint surface tool... but you know - i guess you could do it your way too...

<sorry for the snark>

[patricks]

OR.... You could just paint the interior surface of the GWB with the paint finish you want - using the paint surface tool... but you know - i guess you could do it your way too...

<sorry for the snark>

And what do you do when the same wall runs past 2 rooms, with different colors in each room? As Phyllis said above, you will have to split the wall at every location. Phyllis's post above is spot on the money.

[phyllisr]

... using the paint surface tool... but you know - i guess you could do it your way too...
Before recommmending something like this, you may want to consider testing what happens with your method in a real project. Though I am not as careful about this as I would like and have certainly made mistakes over the years, it is helpful if those who read your suggestions can be confident you have resolved any problems and that you understand the implications. Please note also that I was not recommending any particular method and was merely providing information and options. There are many circumstances and situations unique to each project and each market and I trust the judgment of those who post questions to make wise decisions once they have accurate information. "Should" is one of the worst words in the English language.

Yes, the paint tool will work. However, you still cannot avoid splitting the wall. The split face tool will not allow you to have a boundary line that overlaps or intersects the face's edges. Even if the wall is a single color, you must paint each side which means working carefully in a 3D view or creating elevations for every wall you want to paint. Additionally, you may want to do some testing with a Material Schedule in a project using both methods. I suspect you will be surprised at the results, particulary if you are interested in mining any data related to a any specific room...

Finally (something I learned with age and maturity that I wish I knew when I was younger), if I am inclined say something that requires an apology in advance, I set aside the inclination and say nothing at all.