Help! Rooms not enclosed out of the blue

[david.kingham]

I have about 10 rooms in the same area that are suddenly not enclosed. The walls are all set as room bounding, they are 8' high, the the view range is set with top at 7'6 and cut at 4'......The only thing that is different about this area is that it is two floors and the area with no problems is one floor.

If i put new walls into this area they will make a room no problem, if they only connect with other new walls, if you put them with the existing walls then it won't make room boundaries. damn this is aggravating.....

[Tom Dorner]

My experience with room bounding problems has led me to offer the following tips:

1. Room bounding lines do not like to cross even by a little bit. This applies to walls that are room bounding as well. Make sure your walls are properly joined and do not cross.

2. If you use architectural columns, make sure the wall passes through the column and does not just stop at the column. Architectural columns do not define a room boundary.

3. Usually the room bounding will have a "leak". Place a color fill into one of your views then go to one of the offending rooms. Use a room separation line to split the room in half and see if either half closes. Do this by moving a tag around and watching the color fills behaviour. Once you have a half that closes, progressively move the room bounding line toward the unclosed half until you can start to isolate the problem. After doing this enough you will probably start to observe a pattern of behaviour that needs to be fixed on all the offending rooms.

4. If all else fails, fake it. Add your own room bounding lines on the inside of the perimeter walls of the room.

Tom

[Scott D Davis]

Are your walls two-story walls? Meaning that they start at level one, pass through the second floor, and then up to the roof? If so, you will need to have the walls start and stop at each floor to have room tags work properly.

[david.kingham]

You have got to be kidding me, do the walls have to stop right at my second level?

And if this is true then why was it working before and now all the sudden it doesn't work?

On top of that I have interior walls that butt up against my exterior walls and they only go one level

[DanielleAnderson]

I was just about to ask these same questions...I'll add one to the mix though:
If I were to create a column as an in place family and call it a wall, would it act as a room enclosure?

[Tom Dorner]

I just tried the inplace family of a column as a wall and it did not define the room boundary. The interesting thing about room boundary lines though is that while they do not like to cross, they will be OK stopping short of each other. So depending on your column size you may not have a problem. What kind of tolerance Revit is using to close the "gaps" would be nice to know.

Just FYI while we are on the subject, Area lines on the other hand like to cross but will not behave if they stop short of each other. Go figure!

Tom

[dg]

I.... that are suddenly not enclosed. ....

I have noticed this a few time with v7 - all my rooms are properly enclosed one minute then after I do some random changes elsewhere, and they become 'ambiguous areas'. It seems like an ambiguous bug!

I have found that if I then use the room separator tool, to draw along one side of a room, and then delete the separation line, then the rooms come back to being properly enclosed again.

BTW, I have no problems with two-storey walls and don't make walls stop at each level

[sjsl]

You will also get this error if you have say a reflected ceiling plan w/tags and a floor plan. If you move the walls around and the tags are in dif. locations on each plan you will have to go in and move the offending tags. Same thing if you create a separate furniture plan and locate the tags in slightly dif. locs. but move a wall substantially in either plan you will get this error.

[Tom Dorner]

If you are having a problem with room tag locations in various views, Revit does provide a way to reconcile them. First create a room schedule. Any rooms with ambigious locations will show that title in the area of the room. See the attached JPG for the next steps to take. The results aren't always perfect, but it beats chasing down the room tags one by one.

Tom

[Scott D Davis]

Room tags now define an 'area' once placed. If you delete the room tag, and then don't pay attention to the dialog box that asks if you also want to delete the room, then the 'definition' of that room remains. If you drop a tag back on the same area, it will automatically fill out with the old name and number. You must delete the room when prompted, or make a room schedule and delete the Ambiguous rooms there, otherwise you will run into many cases where room tags don't do as you expect.

If you draw a room, tag it, and then delete the tag but not the room....then go back to that same room and 'split' the space with a new wall, half of the room will still have the old Room Definition in it, which you can find by placing a tag in it.

hope that makes sense.

(edit! Also, i did a test, walls can run continuously from level one to level X, and the tags will still read unique rooms! No reason to start/stop at each level.)

[bowlingbrad]

Are your walls two-story walls? Meaning that they start at level one, pass through the second floor, and then up to the roof? If so, you will need to have the walls start and stop at each floor to have room tags work properly.

Tell me this isn't true!!!

We have a 7 story condo, and made all of our shear walls full height. You mean we can't schedule any rooms above the lowest level? :shock:

[david.kingham]

I don't think that is true, I have shaft walls that run 2 levels and the exterior walls with no problems.

BTW my problem was that I had my interior stud wall butted right up against me cast concrete exterior wall, when they're butted up they're considered overlapping, luckily I have an air space so I just deleted the air in the wall and just placed the stud 1/2" away from the ext wall

[DaveP]

If i put new walls into this area they will make a room no problem, if they only connect with other new walls, if you put them with the existing walls then it won't make room boundaries. damn this is aggravating.....
I had a very similar symptoms (and a very similar emotion).

Turned out that we had Storefront Windows embedded in the Exterior Walls, and the Storefronts were defined as Room Bounding. Once I turned off the Room Bounding parameter of the Storefront elements, all of a sudden I could make Rooms again!

Another trick that I found very helpful to diagnose this was to add a Color Fill with the Scheme set to Color Area By Value. You get a great big Legend with pretty much one color for every room, but it helps you see very quickly where your Room Boundaries are & it helps identify the leaks. Then once you've found your problem, you can delete the Color Fill

BTW, I submitted this to Revit Support & they couldn't figure it out. That's pretty rare.

[beegee]

Tell me this isn't true!!!

>>>
Its not true....


>>>(edit! Also, i did a test, walls can run continuously from level one to level X, and the tags will still read unique rooms! No reason to start/stop at each level.)

[lev.lipkin]

Please post here model with room trouble if it is reasonably small or contact Support to pass model to us.

A few answers to questions at this thread:

Rooms and areas do not handle intersecting bounding elements, there are plans to address this issue, but current implementation would not handle such case.

Area lines just look intersecting because their display is adjusted to location according to rule, they are trimmed only when actual areas are computed.

Gaps up to 1' when clearly resolvable are being closed.

Overlapping walls also could be cause of trouble, inc. embedded walls.

Hope this helps, and sorry for trouble current limitations causing.

[k.armstrong]

My experience with room bounding problems has led me to offer the following tips:

1. Room bounding lines do not like to cross even by a little bit. This applies to walls that are room bounding as well. Make sure your walls are properly joined and do not cross.

2. If you use architectural columns, make sure the wall passes through the column and does not just stop at the column. Architectural columns do not define a room boundary.

3. Usually the room bounding will have a "leak". Place a color fill into one of your views then go to one of the offending rooms. Use a room separation line to split the room in half and see if either half closes. Do this by moving a tag around and watching the color fills behaviour. Once you have a half that closes, progressively move the room bounding line toward the unclosed half until you can start to isolate the problem. After doing this enough you will probably start to observe a pattern of behaviour that needs to be fixed on all the offending rooms.

4. If all else fails, fake it. Add your own room bounding lines on the inside of the perimeter walls of the room.

Tom

This should be in tips & tricks - especially #3 thanks Tom

Ken

[Alex Page]

Please post here model with room trouble if it is reasonably small or contact Support to pass model to us.

A few answers to questions at this thread:

Rooms and areas do not handle intersecting bounding elements, there are plans to address this issue, but current implementation would not handle such case.

Area lines just look intersecting because their display is adjusted to location according to rule, they are trimmed only when actual areas are computed.

Gaps up to 1' when clearly resolvable are being closed.

Overlapping walls also could be cause of trouble, inc. embedded walls.

Hope this helps, and sorry for trouble current limitations causing.

So......8.1, has this been resolved?

[tamas]

So......8.1, has this been resolved? Not yet, but we are actively working on it for the next release.

Tamas