Window Glazing Area Extraction

[The Monk]

I am preparing a schedule for an MEP engineer working in AutoCAD. They are looking for glazing areas and I have been able to create a formula for the simple retangular glazed units. No big deal. However, the odd shapes are another issue. Is there a method for object information extraction like AutoCAD?

If anyone had done that I would be interested .... thanks.

[Paul Monsef]

I am preparing a schedule for an MEP engineer working in AutoCAD. They are looking for glazing areas and I have been able to create a formula for the simple retangular glazed units. No big deal. However, the odd shapes are another issue. Is there a method for object information extraction like AutoCAD?

If anyone had done that I would be interested .... thanks.
I have done it two ways...

1. I add a parameter to my families that list 'Glazing Area' and this can automatically calculated and be as simple as Width* Height or Sin/Cos/Tan blah blah...

2. I used a Material Takeoff and scheduled all my 'glass material'.

There may be others...

[Ning Zhou]

create separate GM shared family for window glazing w/ area parameter, nest it into window family, that will do the tricks.

[The Monk]

Thanks for the information. The attached file is one sample if what I am looking at for data extraction. It gets a bit more complicated with the other project. I am not sure how using nested familys would change anything. But I will try it. The materials scheduling approach would seem to be the most direct route.

Thanks again.

[jamesgchambers]

I would caution against using the Material Takeoff for component families. It is actually reporting the TOTAL surface area of a given material - ie all 6 sides of a cube. For a schedule, you don't want this.

We will typically create parameters as suggested above. If you have non-parametric oddly shaped glazing units, you can put a masking region in the family that will tell you what the area is (but won't schedule it). Then you can add that value to a manual parameter field.

In our experience, the "Material Takeoff" feature is a nice, but misleading tool. You'll also want to watch out for areas of curtain "walls" since you're only really scheduling the panel area, and not the mullion area. Contractors will want to TOTAL (glass + mullion) area for their estimates. And a Wall Schedule will only report from Basic Walls - ie, no curtain walls.

I'm not sure how nested families would help you, maybe joe.zhou can elaborate.

[Paul Monsef]

I would caution against using the Material Takeoff for component families. It is actually reporting the TOTAL surface area of a given material - ie all 6 sides of a cube. For a schedule, you don't want this.

Wow, that's the dumbest thing I have ever heard. I never thought to check that.

I suppose I could divide by 2 and call it good. :banghead:

[jamesgchambers]

haha - for a second I thought you were talking about me, then I realized you were speaking of the program...

dividing by two still isn't accurate, but it's the approach we typically use for users that ask for the results at 4:59, when they need to submit at 5:00

[Paul Monsef]

haha - for a second I thought you were talking about me,
I would never do such a thing!

As it turns out... 7 years later I still can't tell a client the SF of siding on their project. On a brighter note, I can give them the volume.

[bregnier]

It seems that with trapezoidal windows you should still be able to write a formula to get the overall area pretty simply, depending on how the family was created. The real issue is if you want to subtract the mullions and get the "true" glass area (although that seems a bit overprecise to me). Is this for costing? Daylighting? Code?

If you have only one glass thickness in your project you could always divide the volume by the thickness. This is what I've often done with exterior finishes to get a truer value.

[mthurnauer]

I just tried this and it works like a charm. Make a material in the window family called something like Glazing Area. Using the paint bucket, apply this material to one side of the glass. Now, if you do a material takeoff schedule and schedule the Glazing Area material instead of glass you will get the right amount.

[The Monk]

The take of is for the MEP engineer. We have an engineer who is resistaning using Revit. Having said that the oadd shaped windows are in-place family objects. I will try the fill approach. For the other retangular windows I wrote formulas in the window schedule to extract the glazing areas.

It seems this should not be so hard ... after all this is a database!! Thanks for all your help.

[Munkholm]

Have been following this thread, and find the "painting" solution very interesting - will have to test that :-)

But it just occured to me that Phillip Miller posted a link in this thread where it´s explained how to get those areas, by using the API. Might be worth a look ?

[ron.sanpedro]

I just tried this and it works like a charm. Make a material in the window family called something like Glazing Area. Using the paint bucket, apply this material to one side of the glass. Now, if you do a material takeoff schedule and schedule the Glazing Area material instead of glass you will get the right amount.

Hmm, perhaps a second coincident piece of glass, with painted on material, that is off in all three Levels of Detail? Borderline kludge, and yet perhaps workable until the Factory makes material scheduling work. Worth some experiments. If nothing else, maybe do this for some simplified SD windows, so you can get early numbers.

Gordon

[mthurnauer]

If the model object for the glass is a glass pro-material and the material that you paint to just once side of the glass is also a glass pro-material you should not have to do anything else to make this work and still render correctly. The only one thing that you would have to consider is, IF you like to use material tags to indicate the type of glazing being used, then you might want to paint the interior side of the windows with the material you are using to calculate area so that the main glass material can be tagged. Another advantage to this approach is that you can control specifically which windows/doors/ and curtainwalls get the area material. So, with curtainwall for example, you could use the same curtainwall type for an interior and exterior application and still only apply the glass area material to the one that is exterior.

[The Monk]

Have been following this thread, and find the "painting" solution very interesting - will have to test that :-)

But it just occured to me that Phillip Miller posted a link in this thread where it´s explained how to get those areas, by using the API. Might be worth a look ?

Thanks for the info ... I read the blog. Really interesting and seems so simple. But of course it always is when you understand the syntax.

Great suggestion,

John

[Ning Zhou]

James,

we had a project long time ago using standard windows instead of curtain wall/system so glazing area extraction will be an issue for us, our solution was using shared GM family for glazing w/ shared parameter Area (formula or masking region), then nested into normal window family, you can schedule that Area later.

using Material Takeoff is also a way out as long as you did assign material to glazing, and beware of more than 1-sided issue as you mentioned.

ideally using API will be the best solution.



I would caution against using the Material Takeoff for component families. It is actually reporting the TOTAL surface area of a given material - ie all 6 sides of a cube. For a schedule, you don't want this.

We will typically create parameters as suggested above. If you have non-parametric oddly shaped glazing units, you can put a masking region in the family that will tell you what the area is (but won't schedule it). Then you can add that value to a manual parameter field.

In our experience, the "Material Takeoff" feature is a nice, but misleading tool. You'll also want to watch out for areas of curtain "walls" since you're only really scheduling the panel area, and not the mullion area. Contractors will want to TOTAL (glass + mullion) area for their estimates. And a Wall Schedule will only report from Basic Walls - ie, no curtain walls.

I'm not sure how nested families would help you, maybe joe.zhou can elaborate.

[Joe Fields]

How do you know that the areas being reported are for exterior glazing only? One thought is to filter by the families/types that are used on the exterior only.

I used a combination of the material take-off and scheduling the height and width to check an Archies model for my load calcs. What would be even more helpful for MEP engineers would be to use a space schedule to report the exterior walls and glazing values in each space. This would be more in line with how our load programs work (spaces/rooms host walls, roofs, floors and windows).

It would also be beneficial to report the orientation of the walls and windows in the space schedule. I imagine this is entirely possible using the API since that is how the loads and exporting to gbXml get this data. I am still too much of an API dummy to figure that one out right now and I am sure it would be beneficial to have some of these capabilities hard coded into Revit for even novice users to be able to utilize.

[WYSIWYG-BIM]

Just like Paul Monsef, I too use use a shared GM family for glazing w/ shared parameters tied to width and length. Then I use shared parameters Area formula of width * Length. Then we nest the glazing family into another family being sure the "Shared" box is checked in the Category & Parameters dialog box.

Today I am trying to figure out how I can group sections of my model together so that I can only report on those areas of the building. I did not name my families that way and I'm not about to go in to all 200 of them and change and reload (since that would take away my dimension in the project). What I'm thinking of is adding a custom phase for the area of the building. Then I can filter the schedule by that. What does everyone think of that idea?

Also is there any way to combine fileds into one parameter? For example the part number plus a location number e.g. GL1A + 003 would equal a new field of GL1A-003? I tried a calculated value using text but it said I had a syntax error.

thank you!

[DoTheBIM]

...Also is there any way to combine fileds into one parameter? For example the part number plus a location number e.g. GL1A + 003 would equal a new field of GL1A-003? I tried a calculated value using text but it said I had a syntax error... Sadly NO. Something wished for over and over again.

[WYSIWYG-BIM]

Figures. This seems so simple of a request, doesn't it?

So maybe the workaround is placing two tags (with sepertate fileds) that are open at one end and shove them together to look like they are one tag? I'll try it and let you know.

Thanks for the reply!

[WYSIWYG-BIM]

Today I am trying to figure out how I can group sections of my model together so that I can only report on those areas of the building. I did not name my families that way and I'm not about to go in to all 200 of them and change and reload (since that would take away my dimension in the project). What I'm thinking of is adding a custom phase for the area of the building. Then I can filter the schedule by that. What does everyone think of that idea?

What are you thoughts on this idea? anyone?

[DoTheBIM]

Figures. This seems so simple of a request, doesn't it?

So maybe the workaround is placing two tags (with sepertate fileds) that are open at one end and shove them together to look like they are one tag? I'll try it and let you know.Simple?... Not my call. Legitamate request? Definately. High priority? Depends on your point of view unfortunately. Fact of life... Everything's relevant.

If your just needing it for tags you can use the label fuction in the tag family to combine fields and add prefixes and suffixes, etc.

[WYSIWYG-BIM]

Both tags and scheduling prefered. The tags need to relate directly to the schedule so one can visually cross reference to know where the schedule galzing goes on the building. Thanks for the tip though.

I agree with how it may not be a priority but isn't that what makes BIM stand apart from CAD is the "I" for information? This shouldn't be that tough should it?

[DoTheBIM]

Both tags and scheduling prefered. The tags need to relate directly to the schedule so one can visually cross reference to know where the schedule galzing goes on the building. Thanks for the tip though.I think I understand what your doing. You want to make an intelligent tag for identification? to reference in a schedule. Maybe in future Revit. For now I'd combine what you wanted in a tag via the label editor. Then in the schedule add all parameters that are in the tag and use a grouped heading in the schedule. May or may not work depending on what you're trying to accomplish.

I agree with how it may not be a priority but isn't that what makes BIM stand apart from CAD is the "I" for information? BIM takes on many definitions nowadays. Information is only part of the picture in many cases.
This shouldn't be that tough should it?Only a Revit programmer can answer that and even then it might depend on his/her competency level. File a support request to request an enhancement. The more people that request stuff the higher priority it gets... in theory.

[jyurasek]

So if I read this thread correctly, the basic curtain wall family doesn't have a glazing component to it? This seems like basic information coming from an HVAC engineer, we need glazing areas vs. wall areas to show compliance to ASHRAE 90.1 standards.

Should I ask my architect to include the glazing area as a part of the curtain wall assemblies?

[cliff collins]

see attached.

Glazing area shows in properties of the curtainwall/storefront.

It may be possible to create a schedule with filters to get total glazed area?

Will check on this.....

Edit: Schedule does work for curtain panels, does not include mullion
area, only glazed panels.

cheers

[The Monk]

[QUOTE=
It would also be beneficial to report the orientation of the walls and windows in the space schedule. I imagine this is entirely possible using the API since that is how the loads and exporting to gbXml get this data. I am still too much of an API dummy to figure that one out right now and I am sure it would be beneficial to have some of these capabilities hard coded into Revit for even novice users to be able to utilize.[/QUOTE]

Joe ... the window tags can be setup to identify individual windows just like doors. What I am working on is a parameter that idenifies orientation. It may end up becoming a text field that will need to be filled in.

For the project that was the reason for this thread, we provided the MEP with the information they required with big exceptions notes. Makes one wonder how this IPD thing is really going to work!

I think Autodesk opened up the API to allow some creativity on these things. And to let everyone see the difficulty of writing code for some of this. But just like AutoLISP this to will be the new speak.

John

[damon.sidel]

I was looking through the forum for a way to schedule glazing (for solar gain calculations, etc) and found this thread. Reading through here there are some ideas dating back through last year. Anybody find a good way to do a glazing material takeoff? The orientation would be helpful, too, so I can get E, W, N, and S facing glazing for the calculations.

Right now I'm using the paint-outside-face-a-new-material method mentioned earlier for the area. For the orientation, I'm adding a "North", "South", "East", or "West" into the family instance Comments field. Not a very elegant solution, but it also allows me to add some finer grain, like if a window has any shading device.

What I'm trying to do with the shading is add a Shared Parameter. I haven't decided what kind I'll do (Length to equal overhang amount or separate a fixed sunshade tied to a type and then an instance parameter for other?).

Has anybody else dealt with these kinds of things? If so, what have you found is best practice?