Room Area Calculation

[cowendalton676638]

I am a lighting designer receiving an Architectural Revit model, dropping in our light fixtures, and then calculating room areas and fixture quantities for an energy calculation. I have three questions:

1. Room Area Calculations

How can we manipulate Revit to compute room areas? Ultimately, this information will be entered into COMcheck, however we do our own preliminary calculation before hand. How can I dictate how the room area calculation is computed? It is important to note that the areas must be computed by measuring to the center of interior walls and the exterior of perimeter walls. I am working as a Lighting Consultant and we are determining the allowable watts/sq.ft. on a room by room basis.

2. Limiting The Schedule

Can we create a schedule of these room areas for only the selected room areas in our scope of work? Generally, as a lighting designer, we receive an Architectural Revit model with more rooms than are in our scope. If I automatically generate a schedule of room areas, names, and numbers, Revit will do this for every room in the project. Is there a way to limit the number of rooms that the schedule displays? Can this be dictated by which rooms I "tag" with room tags?

3. Fixture Take Off

Can I assign a type or instance parameter to each light fixture I create and drop into my project that will correspond to the room that it lives in? I want to be able to generate a schedule with room names, numbers, and areas along with which lighting fixtures are in each room. This way I can enter this data into an energy calculation that will ultatemly be put into COMcheck. I am fairly certain this is possible, however I need some direction.


Thank you!

[dhurtubise]

1. Room Area Calculations
How can we manipulate Revit to compute room areas? Ultimately, this information will be entered into COMcheck, however we do our own preliminary calculation before hand. How can I dictate how the room area calculation is computed? It is important to note that the areas must be computed by measuring to the center of interior walls and the exterior of perimeter walls. I am working as a Lighting Consultant and we are determining the allowable watts/sq.ft. on a room by room basis.
Thank you![/QUOTE]
Rooms are calculated to a single boundary. You can pick from Wall Finish, Center, Core Layer or Core Center. There's no way to use 2 different boundary. To do that you would have to turn to Area but then you won't be able to schedule your lighting fixtures with they're area location.



2. Limiting The Schedule
Can we create a schedule of these room areas for only the selected room areas in our scope of work? Generally, as a lighting designer, we receive an Architectural Revit model with more rooms than are in our scope. If I automatically generate a schedule of room areas, names, and numbers, Revit will do this for every room in the project. Is there a way to limit the number of rooms that the schedule displays? Can this be dictated by which rooms I "tag" with room tags?

You will need to find a way to filter. The obvious one would be by name. The fact that a room is tag won't report anywhere to use as a filter. You could enter a parameter and use that to filter. To do this you will need access to the architect rooms. It's an easy collaboration process. that shouldn't be a big deal though.



3. Fixture Take Off
Can I assign a type or instance parameter to each light fixture I create and drop into my project that will correspond to the room that it lives in? I want to be able to generate a schedule with room names, numbers, and areas along with which lighting fixtures are in each room. This way I can enter this data into an energy calculation that will ultatemly be put into COMcheck. I am fairly certain this is possible, however I need some direction.

Technically Revit can do that for you. Meaning that you can create a lighting fixture schedule and report which room they are in. Your problem is that it will work only if the rooms and the lighting fixtures are in the same file. You can find addins or macro (http://boostyourbim.wordpress.com/2014/07/10/get-room-data-for-elements-in-rvt-links/) to help you with that though.

I hope it helps

[jsteinhauer]

1. There are four different boundaries to choose from, but its one or the other, or the other, or the other.

2. Use Spaces in your model.

3. Use Spaces in your model.

[MikeJarosz]

You should mention that spaces are an object in Revit MEP. If there is a way to access them in Revit architecture without MEP, I sure would like to know how it's done!

[jsteinhauer]

Upgrade to Revit 2014. If you have access to an MEP model with spaces in it, you can copy & paste one to your project file, or into your project template, and then they will be available. If they are a lighting designer, I would hope that they are using Revit MEP or 2014 setup as MEP.

[dhurtubise]

Using Space will only fix one issue. They still behave like room when it comes to boundaries. One other problem with Space is that, using Autodesk utility, you can only sync Name & Number. If you have any other parameter they won't go through. You also nee to recreate the Space yourself, i hope it's a small building

[jsteinhauer]

Using Spaces will allow the lighting designer/engineer to schedule their fixtures by room (Spaces) name & number that can match the Architectural model. Yes, they will have to download and install AutoDesk's Space Naming Utility. See the following link to see how Revit will create spaces automatically. You then need to run the SNU, and your model will be synced. I wish this was available in RA-2012. Would have made my last project so much easier.

http://docs.autodesk.com/RVTMPJ/2010/ENU/Revit%20MEP%202010%20Users%20Guide/RME/index.html?url=WS1a9193826455f5ff-7f10494411f03a24f24-4c3d.htm,topicNumber=d0e9458

[andrew.hosking]

We use Room Separation lines. And turn off the room bounding option of walls/partitions. Our rules include the corridor side of corridor partitions, ignore columns protruding into rooms, exclude services risers. Yes it's double the number of lines to edit each time something changes, but not too difficult to manage.

As for lighting schedules - there are shared parameters that can be used for identifying which room something is in - I haven't done it. But should be do-able.