scheduling bathroom tiling

[Max Lloyd]

Hi Guys and Gals.

I've built up a model of a house and all is well, gone in for planning permissions etc. Next phase is to pass the model across to our in house interior designer, who will start designing, amongst other things the bathroom layouts. She will create internal elevations to show wall finishes and details of towel rails, sanitaryware etc. The problem relates to how to deal with tiling schedules as there are say 4-5 different types of tiles used per bathroom, and in different patterns, heights etc.

There are 2 parts to my question:

1: As she is new to revit, she has set up all the internal elevations, but instead of modeling all the components,she has used drafting lines to represent all the details. (seemed like the easiest way to get her going). This is obviously not ideal, but it suits for the moment. However, we now need to schedule the wall and floor tiling. With her AutoCAD hat on, she basically wants to draw a polyline around each of the tiling areas in elevation and get an area. She would then add all these up, for each material and have total areas which she can add to an excel schedule. Question is: Is there a way to get an area from an elevation in this way? My first thought was to use a filled region, but as far as I can see, this doesn't report areas. At the moment, the best solution (and I REALLY don't want to have to do this), is to export each elevation view to acad, and get the areas there! Any ideas?

2: Lets assume she is doing it all again and this time modelled instead of drafted. Whats the best way to take schedules of tiling? I figure its something like make up a separate, thin wall type to represent the tiles, and draw that around , changing its height, shape etc as you go. Or perhaps make an in-place family, under say the walls category so we can schedule it later? Not sure.

Any tips or experience of doing this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Max.

[sbrown]

Well Ideally you would recreate the floor tiles using a floor, then you could schedule the floors and get the quantities, the walls you would build walls(just tile) and schedule those. YOu could then use a multi category schedule to schedule the finishes together.

[Max Lloyd]

Ok, thats more or less what I figured. It'll be a bit fiddly, but then I guess tiling is anyway!

One thing though. As the tiles will be a part of the wall category, when I schedule them, all the other walls will apear on my schedule. Is there a way to only schedule certain walls, or a sub-gategory of walls? Or at least to be able to 'hide' the items in my schedule that I don't want to see.

Any suggestions for the first part of my original question. Can you get an area from an elevation view?

Thanks.

[LRaiz]

In a variation of approach (1) one would split faces of walls and floors instead of drawing polylines and then paint resulting regions with desired materials. Even though I don't think you can schedule areas of split regions you can select them one by one and press properties. Then Revit will report region areas.

[Max Lloyd]

I've already tried that Leonid, but I can't get the split region to report any areas?

[LRaiz]

You seem to be right. When I tried it previously I was probably confused and gotten properties of entire wall not split region.

[dbaldacchino]

One thing though. As the tiles will be a part of the wall category, when I schedule them, all the other walls will apear on my schedule. Is there a way to only schedule certain walls, or a sub-gategory of walls? Or at least to be able to 'hide' the items in my schedule that I don't want to see.
You'll have a Type Mark assigned to the "tile" wall type right? Create a schedule that filters for that type mark and just call it Tile Schedule.

I'm curious why you're going through all this. We do Educational facilities and typically show elevations with different hatches, representing the different tiles. But we don't calculate quantities, that's done by the GC.

As for material tagging, I've added a thread to the wishlist forum just yesterday. I hope we see something similar in a future version. It would be awesome if materials on any surface, splt face or not, can be scheduled, including surface area totals.

[twiceroadsfool]

Im not sure this is correct, but it seems to me youd want to be careful using an area from an elevation to calculate the number of tiles. Reason being that its going to take the entire area, and then youre going to divide it by some value for an individual tile, to get a count. The thing with that is, the area is going to add up all the partials, and assume theyre part of a grand total. But if, for instance, youre wall ht in the bathroom requires you to use 8 and 2/3 tiles to get to the top, its going to keep adding those 2/3's to one another, to get a value like 10/3, which it will then add on to the area as 3.333 tiles. But you cant make those tiles out of 3.3 (or 4) tiles, because youd be gluing pieces together. Yud need 5 tiles, and would have a lot of scrap left over, lol.

You could do it, mind you... With some fairly simple calculated values in a schedule... Wall ht / hit of tile (and i recall theres a way to make this round up or down, i dont remember how tho.) Then have a value for wall length / width of tile (rounded, same way), then have a third value that multiplies the two together...

Am i making sense? Or am i being stupid? lol.

That being said, we too are trying to use more of the Take Off capabilities of Revit for things such as this, but an important thing to consider is what information you actually need/want to get out of the model. For example, i could write some values to tell me how many individual 8" CMU blocks i needed to build a wall, but it might not be a good idea, because of the end conditions/how the contractor joins them, etc. But, it may be a more useful (and safer) tool to know how many linear ft. of 8" CMU wall i need to build, so i can provide THAT to a contractor off a quick schedule, you know? In a way, it relates back to the tile math i was talking about...

Just some thoughts...

[Max Lloyd]

You'll have a Type Mark assigned to the "tile" wall type right? Create a schedule that filters for that type mark and just call it Tile Schedule.

I'm curious why you're going through all this. We do Educational facilities and typically show elevations with different hatches, representing the different tiles. But we don't calculate quantities, that's done by the GC.

As for material tagging, I've added a thread to the wishlist forum just yesterday. I hope we see something similar in a future version. It would be awesome if materials on any surface, splt face or not, can be scheduled, including surface area totals.The reason for this is simply that I work for a developer, and as such, we are involved of every aspect and detail of the construction process from buying the land to detailing bespoke furnitures.

The job of scheduling the tiling has historically fallen to the interior designers, and I guess it is checked by the QS. Thanks for the tip on filtering and using a wall mark.

What I now intend to do is build the tiling as walls, filter out the other walls on the schedule, and the issue of materials not scheduling, in this instance, should not be a concern, as the wall types will be unique to a particular tile type and material (all of which will be in the name of that wall type)

With regards to ordering per tile, I think what I will do is make the tiled wall a certain thickness, say 10mm, then report the volume of that wall with a formula to work out the area per sq.m (not sure why, but I don't trust the area calc given by wall, just not sure how its measuring it?) They will then order the tiles per sq.m and account for any wastage at that point.

Well I guess this should work well for the next time.

Still no one got any ideas on simply taking areas from an elevation view? (oh for a simple area command!)

Thanks for all your help and suggestions.

Max.

[dbaldacchino]

Ahhh I see, you're the GC, sort of :) No wonder you need to do a take off!

Where is the polyline command when you need it?! I think this little drafting tool is lacking from Revit and is a really needed feature. In ADT/Acad it's easy, but Revit lacks this flexibility. So I'm afraid that perhaps the quickest way is to save dwgs of the elevations and measure them with polylines in there.

As for making a schedule just for tile, I noticed you can only input up to 4 filter entries, so if you have more than 4 tile types, you have a slight problem filtering for type marks. I think your best bet is to create a project parameter and assign it to walls, make it a type parameter. Then, in each tile wall style, enter a value for this parameter, say "Tile". Then, create the schedule and just filter for this parameter, value "Tile". Now you can have any number of tile wall styles defined and used.

As for calculating the tiles, I think you need to talk to an experienced tiler and see how they do it. As far as I know, they typically figure an area and add a percentage which includes a factor for waste, defective tiles, mistakes etc., say 10%. So you would just take your area reported in the schedule and multiply by 1.1. Don't make it too complicated on yourself :)

[Max Lloyd]

So I'm afraid that perhaps the quickest way is to save dwgs of the elevations and measure them with polylines in there.

Noooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Somebody tell me this can't be true!


PS: thanks for all your help ;-)

[sbrown]

for filtering, you just need to create a yes no parameter. Call it tile schedule or something, then just check the wall type you want, then filter by that parameter.

[dbaldacchino]

Scott, I was going to suggest that. For some reason though, the Yes/No parameter was uneditable (greyed out), both when set as an instance or a type parameter. I don't know why. A text parameter showed up as editable in both cases, that's why I suggested it instead. Any ideas why?

[Max Lloyd]

Hmmm. Monday morning, fresh brain. In a desperate attempt to keep this away from autocad, I'm considering trying a new option. If I save out all the elevations as dwg's, then re-import them all together in one area floor plan, I could trace over area lines onto the flat elevations. This would benefit as the area tags could then be scheduled and at least would total up al the areas instead of having to do it manually.

I'll give this a go, but it should work...?

[ejburrell67787]

Hmmm. Monday morning, fresh brain. In a desperate attempt to keep this away from autocad, I'm considering trying a new option. If I save out all the elevations as dwg's, then re-import them all together in one area floor plan, I could trace over area lines onto the flat elevations. This would benefit as the area tags could then be scheduled and at least would total up al the areas instead of having to do it manually.

I'll give this a go, but it should work...?You mean make 'rooms' for all your elevation areas in a plan view and then schedule the areas? Thats getting a bit desperate isn't it? We do all our tiling as 10mm thick walls in front of the main walls, it doesn't take much time - draw them in plan then edit profiles in elevation and align tiling surface pattern to worktop or floor wherever the tiles are set out from. We don't do areas generally but it would be easy to schedule the tiling walls to get them. No Acad this way either...;) (In fact I don't even have Acad on the PC I'm working on at the moment!) :razz:

[Lashers]

I would guess if you are careful with the naming of your tile walls - Bathroom1Tiles; Kitchen backsplash?? that it should be relatively easy to pick out the area in the element properties. . . Or did you already say that??

Calls for lots of different wall types, but I think it works?

[Max Lloyd]

Elrond & Lashers.

Yep I agree with you both. That is how we'll do it next time (see earleir posts). However, as this has already all been drafted in 2d within revit, I would think that its quicker to go back through just pulling areas, than it is to go back through and model all the tiles, then schedule them.

[Lashers]

Elrond & Lashers.

Yep I agree with you both. That is how we'll do it next time (see earleir posts). However, as this has already all been drafted in 2d within revit, I would think that its quicker to go back through just pulling areas, than it is to go back through and model all the tiles, then schedule them.
Methinks you could be right!

[dbaldacchino]

You have a point. If it's already drawn in 2D, it wouldn't make sense re-drawing/re-modeling. I think your dwg idea should work just fine, you could easily pick the lines and come up with areas or schedule everything you need.

[dimitri]

*bump*

This thread was old, so i figure i'll ask the question on tiling again.

Has Revit come up with a way to tile a section of a wall? Bathrooms are a perfect example of this. Sometimes you want to just tile up to a certain height, then it'll be waterproof drywall or something. Any way to tile up to a certain height and get quantities from that in Revit?

What i did was to create a thin wall of just tiles, which i can then get quantities for. Is there another way?

[patricks]

*bump*

This thread was old, so i figure i'll ask the question on tiling again.

Has Revit come up with a way to tile a section of a wall? Bathrooms are a perfect example of this. Sometimes you want to just tile up to a certain height, then it'll be waterproof drywall or something. Any way to tile up to a certain height and get quantities from that in Revit?

What i did was to create a thin wall of just tiles, which i can then get quantities for. Is there another way?

Your way is best for ultimate control. You can split walls and all that mess, but that ends up REALLY being a pain in the patoot. If you do it as a separate wall layer, you can simply set the height and draw it in plan view, and then join them to adjacent walls to make inserts cut both walls.

[Scott Womack]

As the tiles will be a part of the wall category, when I schedule them, all the other walls will apear on my schedule. Is there a way to only schedule certain walls, or a sub-gategory of walls? Or at least to be able to 'hide' the items in my schedule that I don't want to see.

The easiest approach is to use worksets, and place those thin tile walls on a separate workset. When then either filter, etc. based on that workset.

[SUB]

split face would be a pain in the butt and hard to manage....
host sweep doesn't work well either.... can't change length on plan...and move around too much
hm... model the way it is built or efficiently.... sometimes a balancing act

[dimitri]

Your way is best for ultimate control. You can split walls and all that mess, but that ends up REALLY being a pain in the patoot. If you do it as a separate wall layer, you can simply set the height and draw it in plan view, and then join them to adjacent walls to make inserts cut both walls.
Yeah i'm realizing this is just about the best bet. Thanks for the advice though.

[cliff collins]

DO NOT draw tiles with lines, filled regions, etc!! Anti-BIM. Do it "right"--the upfront effort will pay itself off later.

Here are a few different ways to develop tile patterns for walls in Revit:

1. Split-face of wall and "paint" materials onto split faces.
( Watch out--if adjoining walls get edited or detached, the split faces can be deleted!!!!)

2. Make individual thin walls for each tile, and position them where needed.

( a bit tedious, and results in lots of separate walls--hard to manage if design is complex.)

3. Create a Stacked Wall from the various tile wall styles.

( This seems to be the best solution.)

You can schedule areas for all the various tiles for any of the above methods--
we use these with success in our Interior Design models.

As for Floors, the same thing--do it "right". Build separate floors for each floor material.
Or, split face of a single floor and "paint" materials onto the split faces. Depends on scope and complexity of the design. See above.

cheers....................................

[dimitri]

DO NOT draw tiles with lines, filled regions, etc!! Anti-BIM. Do it "right"--the upfront effort will pay itself off later.

Here are a few different ways to develop tile patterns for walls in Revit:

1. Split-face of wall and "paint" materials onto split faces.
( Watch out--if adjoining walls get edited or detached, the split faces can be deleted!!!!)

2. Make individual thin walls for each tile, and position them where needed.

( a bit tedious, and results in lots of separate walls--hard to manage if design is complex.)

3. Create a Stacked Wall from the various tile wall styles.

( This seems to be the best solution.)

You can schedule areas for all the various tiles for any of the above methods--
we use these with success in our Interior Design models.

As for Floors, the same thing--do it "right". Build separate floors for each floor material.
Or, split face of a single floor and "paint" materials onto the split faces. Depends on scope and complexity of the design. See above.

cheers....................................
Cheers Cliff!
But what do you mean by 'paint' materials?

[cliff collins]

Use the Paint Material tool.

[niki_funky]

I use Curtain walls with custom panels and no mullions. I can split the panels very easy and later Schedule them.
niki

[arqt49]

My approach is to draw the tiles using the paint bucket (walls and floors).
As my materials are keynoted using masterformat (other classification systems can do the same), I can filter the material quantity schedule by keynote, using begins with "09 3" (means finishes - tiling).
As for tiles, I normally use multi-category schedules and filter things by keynote.
I believe this is the simplest approach.

[niki_funky]

Here is how ArchiCAD doing Wall tiles.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmjMExxnBoA&feature=related

[iandidesign]

It should be noted that this is an $80 add-on for ArchiCAD. But does look like it’s well done. The method of using the edge hotpspot to change the contour line is unconventional, but clever. And the handling of the returns/reveals at the window opening appears uncommonly simple. A good reminder of the value of leaving room for small fish in the big pond.

[cliff collins]

The Revit Factory should be looking at these kind of modeling tools as shown in the Archicad demo. I'd pay $80 for a Revit plug-in that could model like that!

It's just easier to use. Yes we can do the same thing in Revit--but the way you get there
is not user-friendly and not intuitive.

i.e. Try getting the tile to wrap onto the window sill that fast in Revit--LOL.

The Revit response--"build the tile sill into the window family", "use this work-around"
or " in the wall structure edit, click "wraps at inserts"---blah-blah-blah--
just not very good or valid answers............

cheers.....................

[dbaldacchino]

And imagine that...editing in a perspective view. It's 2009 and we STILL can't do that in Revit :(