How to get room calculations under doorways

[iwalker673339]

Hello everyone.

I work for a production home builder so some of my criteria and workflow may be different than what some of you are used to but I think this issue may transcend industries. I'm hoping this is a simple fix with some setting I've simply missed. I have been asked to correct an issue on our standard plans where our calculated areas for flooring is off. We have schedules on every house that show various rooms and their associated flooring type (i.e. carpet, tile, hardwood etc and this changes constantly) the areas are then sub-totaled. We have found this subtotal to be off significantly in some cases and have traced it back to the areas under the doors. Currently we use the information generated by the identity data in the room's properties for these schedules (room name and floor finish). Our room boundaries themselves are calculated up to the finished face of the wall. This is where the problem begins as the area under the door does not get included in the calculation. Simply changing the wall to calculate from its center also yields inaccurate information. I have checked the room heights and my rooms go from the top of my sub-floor to the underside of the ceiling so the room is completely enclosed. Is it a simple setting? perhaps the door family is flawed? any ideas or insight would be wonderful.

[PijPiwo]

I’m sorry, but I don’t have an easy way that I can think of. The PITA way is this: split the wall where the door is, draw room separation line in the doorway. In the elevation, 3d or section view, select the wall piece hosting the door and uncheck ‘room bounding’ in the properties. Hopefully, you don’t have too many doors.

100045

[iwalker673339]

Thanks for the reply,

I have to admit I was thinking along the same lines but in my case a number of doors within the models could change widths or move outside of those newly created room separation lines depending on the customer's demands. Unless I find an alternative solution though, this might be what needs to happen and it would then become the normal workflow moving forward.

[cliff collins]

The method in the 1st reply can work, but is very tedious. If you must use Rooms / Room Schedules for Area calculations this is the way to do it. Lots of work.

Another way is to model the floors, then do a Material Takeoff to get the total area of the material (assuming you use a single material in all rooms--which is probably not the case.)

Another ( and preferred method) is to use Area Plans. You can place the Area Boundary Lines exactly where needed, and have a separate set of Area Plans and Area Schedules.

[iwalker673339]

Your modeled floor ideas is intriguing but you are correct in your assumption that we don't simply have 1 flooring type throughout the model. I could create a separate floor type / "skin" if you will, in each room and apply materials to it and have it schedule it in any number of ways. Again a bit tedious in the set up but it could work.

On another note, I've also tried paint recently but couldn't get it to schedule.

[Duncan Lithgow]

You can schedule Paint, take a look here: http://phil-osophyinbim.blogspot.dk/2013/08/tracking-paint-surface-and-schedule-in.html

[iwalker673339]

Since mentioning in my last post that I was unable to schedule paint, I've been able to make some strides. I can schedule the materials and their associated ares however I'm still not able to have it associated with any rooms. I might be able to convince our estimating department that they just get a lump sum total (which is more accurate now than it was before) but it wouldn't include the associated rooms that we were getting with our old (and inaccurate) schedule. Any thoughts?