Life Safety and egress plans

[MikeJarosz]

I'm updating our master office template. We never had egress and life safety in the template. Every project was done from scratch, consequently there was very little "intelligence" built into the families and procedures. Somebody did some calculations and entered them manually into the family parameters. Then, tallied it all up in Excel and pasted it onto a sheet. Part of the reason for this is that we work nationwide, and every state is different.

I think we can do better.

I have heard some firms have developed sophisticated procedures for egress analysis. Anyone know where I can research this topic?

[david_peterson]

We've done a few things to our Fire Extinguisher Cabinet family so you can display the coverage area to make sure you have enough of them. I believe we've also created a generic model that is the "egress path" and limits it's distance based on code. I believe it's a line based family. I don't have access to it, but Yes, we've done a few things like that.
As for where to look, I don't know.

[Steve_Stafford]

I've written about Egress Paths using a line based family on my blog over the years. THIS (http://revitoped.blogspot.ca/2012/08/egress-post-summary.html) is a link to a summary of those posts. You can download examples there or HERE (http://www.aecadvantage.com/home/links2). The summary includes some mentions of other approaches that have evolved over the years like using a railing and adaptive point families.

[jsteinhauer]

We use the line based egress family, but not to it's full potential. Well Railings and Adaptive components are cool, we typically only calculate the travel path to the exit door or stair tower, so the line based family works just fine. I suggest to people to label their paths within the Egress Path Name parameter or the comments. The other thing people don't like about this family is that the line has a profile associated with it and it shows up in sections elevations if users don't know to turn it off.

[Steve_Stafford]

My examples were (are) a proof of concept, created when the feature (line based families) were first introduced about eight years ago. I included a profile so there was something to see in 3D or other views than plan, and because I wanted to demonstrate it at Autodesk University (the first place I showed it). There's nothing that requires it to be there. It's easy to make one that doesn't include it all, easier actually.

[jsteinhauer]

No complaints from me Steve. I like the way that egress path line family. :)

[dhurtubise]

We use to use Line-Based families but we have switch to Adaptive now. We find it more flexible in tagging and reporting.
I guess you can find a link in Steve's post :)

[gary.63284]

Hey Steve, It looks like the link to your blog is broken. Can you update it? I have been trying to solve the 'egress plan' issue also.

Thanks in advance.

[gary.63284]

Steve,
Nevermind, I found all the posts in your blog related to egressing by doing a search of 'egress'. Imagin that, my typical advice to employees actually works!

[Steve_Stafford]

Gary, sorry about that. The link had an extra http in it, that'll make a browser mad every time. Glad you found what you were after though.

[MikeJarosz]

You can download examples....

I downloaded them, and it works....but I'm not sure how. You use a shared parameter "Path of Egress" and set it equal to the length of the line.

95743


I saved the Path of Travel family (Start, Middle, End) and the two tags as RFAs. I edited the downloaded family and the formula (Path of Egress = Length) wasn't there.
Without editing my shared parameter file, I inserted the Path of Travel family into a project anyway and tagged it. To my surprise, the tags worked. I expected it to fail because I don't have "Path of Egress" in my shared parameters file, and the formula didn't show in the family type window. Afterwards, I did add it to my SP file. I then tried to insert the missing formula (Path of Egress = Length) into the family types parameter window and it told me Path of Egress is already in use.

It seems that copying someone else's family that uses a shared parameter brings that parameter with it and hides I somewhere I can't find. What's going on here?