Schedules - Wall Window Calculated Values Using Totals

[3dway]

This has been asked in a few different ways with regard to other categories of objects but the answers didn't seem to work for my categories so I have to ask again:

Situation:
Fire exposure calculations.
We need to show the area of wall facing one direction, including window area, then also calculate the window area, then use those numbers in a calculation to show % of the area at the perimeter of the wall with is made up of windows.

To do this I create a special phase. We'll call if "fire phase" - because our building code calls it something more complicated.

I create walls offset from my model in the fire phase. The building face can undulate in and out, and it doesn't matter. These walls represent the wall area facing one property line projected onto a common plane. I can schedule these areas.

I also schedule the glazed area from the window schedule, which is a parameter, and I've given my windows a parameter called "facing" which lets me sort the schedule by windows which expose any one property line (direction).

My window schedule shows up nicely on the schematic elevation for this, where I show windows facing one way, and the individual glazed area of each window, and the total glazed area facing that way using the calculate totals option.

The problem I'm having is:

I can't schedule wall areas, and areas from a window parameter in the same schedule so that I can use the total glazed area (which is added up from the parameter in my window families) in a calculated value.

What I want to do is use a total area from a window schedule, and the wall area from a wall schedule in a calculated value, to tell me the % of unprotected openings compared to the wall.

Is this possible?

[Devin_82]

Is this possible?

The answer is yes, but not necessarily in the way that you explain it. As with most things Revit, if it isn't out of the box, you can probably get there, but there are likely a few ways to do it all with advantages and disadvantages.

For our office I have created a special family with two types ("wall" and "opening") to do this and have embedded some of the calculations into the family. The objects only job is to perform this calculation. It is a little too complicated to fully describe here and has quite a bit of manual input and some schedule magic to get there, but it works for us. In its simplest terms it is a generic mass family that has H, W, L and these are used to get fire separation distance (L) and wall and opening areas (HxW). By having two types you can schedule and organize the data in the schedule to meet your specific needs. It does, however, necessitate placing instances of the family at every major wall plane and every opening (for us its not just glazing, its any opening in the exterior bearing wall), and as such we tend more towards the approach of saying "All facades not shown in this exhibit comply with... Exhibits shown here are to demonstrate compliance with... in close cases..." or something like that. That way we only need to go through the process if its close rather than every wall and every window on the facade.

Another option is using the Autodesk add-in for wall opening area:
(http://apps.exchange.autodesk.com/RVT/en/Detail/Index?id=autodesk.appstore.exchange.autodesk.com%3AADNPlugins_WallOpeningArea%3Aen).
It might get you closer to a more automated approach using walls, though it isn't truly parametric, it needs to be run and updated with changes.

You could also get tricky with the Dynamo (http://autodeskvasari.com/dynamo) plug in and leverage some shared parameters to make parametric connections between objects. I'm no pro with Dynamo, so you would have to give it a go and see if something works.

Hope this helps...