Doors and Room Calculation points

[david_peterson]

So I ran into what I'm going to call a major flaw in Doors and the Room calculation point option (which in my opinion shouldn't be in doors anyway).
We have a room that was only 8" deep. The door wouldn't take on that room for the To/From Room parameter in the schedule. I would allow me to use the room outside the door, or the room on the opposite side of the wall beyond the room.
So I did a little digging. Turns out that if you don't have the room calculation point checked in the family it's default point is about 1 foot beyond the face of wall. so I turn it on and move it to 6" beyond inside face of wall and the room I was looking for was able to be scheduled.
So I figured great, it's fixed.
Then I thought hmm, what happens if I have a really think wall and I try this approach.
So I made the wall 3' thick, set the room calc to center of wall and I was unable to select the room in question.
So it would appear (I've had this situation on a project I did in the past) if I was to say have a door that I wanted to use in both a 3'-0" thick wall and a 6" wall, depending on the size of the room I might need 2 different families.

This makes no sense. It should be calculated from either the face of the wall or from the origin point or from something. But it would appear that if the room calculation point is inside the wall (regardless of room settings) you can't select the room in question.

By default I'm not sure why they don't just give you the option to not use them at all. You should only have 2 rooms to pick from, ever. I can't think of a situation where you ever wouldn't.
Anyone have a good work around for something like that?
Thanks in advance.

[jsteinhauer]

Hi Dave,

Dumb question, are the reference planes on the face of the walls in the door family labeled as Front, Back, Strong, Weak, or Not a Reference? Not sure if that will have any affect on this issue, but it might be worth a shot. I would be interested in hearing from others if they can reproduce this issue.

Thanks,
Jeff S.

[DaveP]

Other major flaw:
That Room Calculation Point should be an Instance and allow you to drag every single Door's RCP to wherever you want it.
The main problem with this feature is that it was originally designed for Diffusers and Lights which are often above the Ceiling.
It was adapted for Doors, but needs to work differently for Doora (and even Signange) than it does for Diffusers or Lights

[david_peterson]

It should be simply removed from doors by default. I really don't know why you need them.
You should have a room on both sides of a door unless it's and exterior door in which cause you only want the interior room.
I see them simply as a hindrance to the revit process. What is the point of having them in doors?
Can someone from the factory tell my why anyone ever wanted them?
And then can they tell me what the work around is other than needed a unique door family for these situations.
It just seems pointless.
Maybe instead of "Fixing" Doors, they come with with a keynote family or a text editor that functions correctly and looks like a conventional drafting standard.

[DaveP]

What I'd REALLY like to see is when you place a Door (or later) you can select a Room Object to associate it with.
The Door would remember its Room Object and be able to pull information from it - like, maybe Room Number?
And then, of course use that in a Tag.

[david_peterson]

Trying to use the room number in a tag works great until you have more than one door in that room.
So I'm ok with having to fill out the number, but man alive, please Revit, stop trying to do my job for me. I'm smarter than you are.
Revit can't do Left hand reverse swing and associate it to the correct room with out that being a separate type.

[DaveP]

Trying to use the room number in a tag works great until you have more than one door in that room. .

True. However, I just trying not to complicate my Wish too much.
To expand:
I'd like to be able to use the associated Room's Number in a Door Tag and add a prefix or suffix.
So my tag would have - scratch that - my Door Number would actually be:
Room: Number & DoorSuffix
If there's only one Door, the suffix is blank and the Door Number is the same as the Room Number.
If there's more than one, the first DoorSuffix is "A", the next one is "B" (or "-1", -2")
I'm still responsible for adding the A, B, C and it's up to me to make sure I don't have duplicates, but Revit should be able to provide me with the first part - the Room: Number

[david_peterson]

Hey that would be sweet.
I'm sure they'll get around to that by version 2023. ;)

[nod684]

Trying to use the room number in a tag works great until you have more than one door in that room.
So I'm ok with having to fill out the number, but man alive, please Revit, stop trying to do my job for me. I'm smarter than you are.
Revit can't do Left hand reverse swing and associate it to the correct room with out that being a separate type.

sorry to butt in...but how do you associate the Room Number to the Door / Door Tag?

[david_peterson]

Using the to room/from room parameter would be my guess.
I know you can do it in a schedule so you should be able to do it in a tag I would think.

[dkoch]

Using the to room/from room parameter would be my guess.
I know you can do it in a schedule so you should be able to do it in a tag I would think.

Works for a schedule, but not for a tag.

Cleverer folks than I have figured out ways to get Dynamo to figure out what Room a Door swings into and to push that room number onto a parameter on the Door. I found one that allowed you to add a prefix and a suffix, as well. That will not give you the right value if the Door swings out from the Room whose number you want to have as the Door Number, but at least it is a start, and, depending upon your design, might get 80% or 90% of the Doors done right.

[david_peterson]

http://archi-lab.net/doorwindow-numbering-with-dynamo/
I'd check that out.
Might get you closer to what you're looking for.

[Steve_Stafford]

It IS ridiculous that after 15 years Revit still doesn't provide us with at least one built in way to sync door and room information.

There are free applications from several companies that provide a way to do this, each using slightly different logic. Dynamo is also free so the solution mentioned in the prior post qualifies too.

Regarding the RcP feature, it was added to doors to provide a way to change how the To Room assignment is controlled. Originally the To Room value for a door was (still is without the RcP being used) decided based on the side of the wall the door swings in toward.

There are doors which must swing out of a room but still belong to the room they swing from. For example a classroom's door often swings outward to the corridor (often set into an alcove), for exiting requirements usually. However we still think of and document the door as belonging to the classroom, not the corridor.

If the door is placed so that the panel swings into the classroom (using stock doors) then the To Room parameter is assigned to the classroom. If we then flip its orientation so the panel swings out of the classroom the To Room value remains associated with the classroom.

The RcP feature changes that behavior to alter the To Room value to follow the flip of the door orientation regardless, which means the To Room value would change to reference the Corridor instead. It has been my observation that there is a decided split among professionals regarding which approach is better, correct or desirable.

As for the sliver of a room, that is the external struggle of software development. They design it to resolve specific situations and inevitably miss one or more.