Problems with Color Fills

[weston]

I am trying to create a color plan based on the sizes of the condo units in my floor plan. I have created the color scheme and called out all of the things that are supposed to be colored differently. They colors are displaying funny though. Some of the colors for smaller values appear to be above the correct colors for the correct values. I have no idea what could be causing this. Does anybody have any idesa?
Thanks!

[dbaldacchino]

Could you post a Revit file with an example? You'll have a better shot at an answer that way.

EDIT: Could your area rounding in the project units be set too high?

[weston]

The file is 35m. Is that too big to post?

[Merlin]

Hi,
Several things come to mind...
First make sure it's software related....when you say "displaying funny" is that on your VDU or printed that way?

Revit-wise, there are multiple possibilities....

Have you looked at the Tutorial of the Colour-Fill Area Plans?...Let us know if this is the method you've followed.

John Mc

[dbaldacchino]

Yes 35MB is too big. Make a copy of your file and take a lot of stuff, views, families etc. out to just show us an example (purge too).

[dhurtubise]

[/QUOTE]Some of the colors for smaller values appear to be above the correct colors for the correct values.[/QUOTE]
Do you mean that they are displaying the incorrect color based on the size or base on the color gamut itself ?

[weston]

The way it displays differes. When it is on the screen it is incorrect (Screen Shot attached). The Unit N 1 bed + den should be dark green not light green per the Color Scheme Settings( attached). This is also happening for the smallest of the 2 bed units which is off the screen to the left in the screen shot image. As you can see in the printed PDF the colors are all correct. This is not always the case.

I have three floors that I have been working on. The all seem to behave like this at different times. If I delete the color scheme and reapply it it appears correct. Usually after I do one or two things the colors change to display these incorrect colors. Different floor print differently. As you can see in the printed PDF it displays correct, but yesterday when I printed a different floor it was printing incorrectly. The fact that I cant even get it to behave consistently is what is really frustrating me.

I cheked my area settings. The project settings are set to round to the 0. I was changing the area tags to round to the nearest 10 to account for small changes in the floor plans but changing the areas does not seem to affect how the color scheme behaves.

If you have any more questions please feel free to ask. Thanks for any help you can give!
Weston

[Tom Dorner]

Rather than try to color fill by range and deal with variance in unit areas, it might be better to simply establish a color fill based on "unit type". I would add a parameter called "unit type" to the areas and simply fill in what type of unit it is and base my color fill on that.

A simple project parameter is all that is required as long as you do not want it to appear in the tag. If you want the "unit type" to appear in the tag then a shared parameter is required.

[weston]

That sounds good. I bet that would work. It still does not solve why the areas are displaying incorrectly though. I do not know how to create a shared parameter though. Do you have a resource I could learn that from?
Thanks

[dbaldacchino]

Read your help file regarding shared parameters....they're easy to create and the difference is that they schedule. Then create a project parameter and select the shared parameter option and fill in the rest of the info....you shared parameter is now available in your project.

I agree with Tom. Based on what you're doing, you're better off doing a color fill by space type. It looks to me that there's some rounding or interpolation error which is causing Revit to appear confused (inconsistent). Your cut-off is at 935SF and your problem rooms are at 940SF, so I think that might be causing the issue. I've had some display problems with color fills last night where they were not following the room boundary (wall faces) but going to the center of a wall. Not all of the spaces, but some new ones that I was creating. I deleted the scheme, re-inserted it and it went away. No clue what caused it.

The best method I found for me is to create a key schedule with the space types. Then I add that to my room finish schedule so I can assign the space types to all my rooms in there. You can also do this in your room tag properties. The key schedule parameter name appears as a color scheme option and you just assign the colors you need there and you're done. You can have this set up in your template and always there for your next project if you do repetitive project types.

Another easy way is to use your room names as a basis for classification. In your case, it seems like you're consistent with the naming....1BR + Den, 2BR, etc. So use the color fill by Name and you should be set.

[Tom Dorner]

I've attached the most simplistic way to get this done which is to simply add a project parameter. Project parameters schedule properly, can be sorted and grouped upon and color filled by. Project parameters cannot appear in the tags though which is where shared parameters come into play.

Area style schedules could be used very effectively for this type of thing, but the attached file's methodology will get it done for now and you can learn the more advanced methods down the road.

HTH

[weston]

OK Great. That worked wonderfully. I agree that it probably had a hard time reading the areas. I am not sure exactly why it wouldnt work the way i was trying though.
I did get the Unit Type parameter to work although it took me about 2 hours to figure out how to work it. I am still not quite sure how I did it. Oh well, hopefully next time it will only take me 1 hour.

I have one more question for you guys. Ultimately in my floor plans I want to have interior walls in the units like the attached file. Maybe even some furniture in there. But it shows up white and confuses the image in the colored area plans. I turned everything else in the unit off except the doors and the walls because I need the exterior walls and unit separation walls on for obvious reasons. Is there a way to either turn off or hide or even lighten the way the interior unit walls show up in this image.

[Tom Dorner]

For the furniture to show up without blocking the color fill you will need to make sure that only the symbolic linework of the furniture family is visible in plan view.

Since you are probably using a variety of furniture families from different sources, this means going into each family and turning off the 3D geometry from plan views and making sure that there are symbolic furniture lines in place.

Hopefully there are not a ton of families to modify. The easiest way is to highlight a family and hit the "edit" button.

For the interior walls of your unit plans to show up differently than the demising walls, that is a task probably best handled by worksets. Worksets work great for visibility control in addition to their primary intended use of allowing multi-user access to the Revit database. You would end up with at least three worksets on you project:

1. Shared Levels and Grids
2. Interior Unit walls (possibly everything about the interior)
3. Demising Walls / Corridor Walls

If you have not used worksets before I suggest reading up on them first as they are irreversible once enabled, and bring an additional level of complexity to your project.

Post again if you get stuck.

[dbaldacchino]

Click here (http://www.augi.com/education/schedule.asp?page=292) and take ATP107. You'll learn and understand how great worksets and worksharing are in 8.1. You don't need to worry about worksets as much for worksharing since you can borrow individual elements.

If you have too many families to edit and want a quick solution to get what you want for a presentation, export your furniture layouts to dwg. Turn off the furniture in the view and import/link your dwg. It should come in as transparent with black linework over your color fill.