Area extraction

[Joef]

What is the best way to extract an area? I've drawn the outline of some buildings on a site plan; nothing fancy, just some lines. And now I would like their area. In autoCAD I just use the area command. What is the equivalent in Revit? I usually export to AutoCAD, but I am thinking this is probably not the right way to go about it. Thanks in advance.

Joe

[Scott D Davis]

create an area plan, drop in area tags for individual areas, create areas schedules to get total areas.

[Dimitri Harvalias]

Joef

Check out this thread
http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=4519
You may find you can't create an area plan from the work you have already done. Lines won't display as underaly items in an area plan.

[Joef]

I went to View - New - Area plan and it asks what levels I want to create area plans on. None of them are the site plan. All I am trying to do is get a rough idea of the areas so I can see if the proposed building ( a glorified garden shed) is permitted in the zoning.

[Dimitri Harvalias]

Was your site plan created in Revit or is it an AutoCad drawing imported in?

[Joef]

I created it in Revit. I think I should be doing this in AutoCAD though. Some things are just overkill for Revit.

[Dimitri Harvalias]

Use your site plan and create walls over the lines you drew. Set them to level 1 so they are visible. Use the pick tool to prehighlight the lines (tab to get the chain of lines) and it should take you all of two seconds.

Once they are walls you can do one of two things.
If it's just one or two spaces I would just insert a room tag that has an area parameter and get teh info from there.
If there are a number of spaces and you need to schedule them, create the area plan from the level 1 plan and insert area tags, create your schedule and you're off to the races.
Don't give up on trying to learn the quick and easy stuff in Revit. In general once you've gone there you discover an easier, faster way to do things. Once learned it pays off to have everything in one file, live and instantly updated.
Hope that helps

[Joef]

I won't need to update this or schedule it. I just need the area of some lines that represent the outline of an existing building on a site plan. This is just too simple a task for Revit. I'll use Revit's idiot cousin AtuoCAD. He's good at this simple stuff.

[Wes Macaulay]

Hey Joe.

Area Plan lines are view specific to each area plan -- you don't see the area lines in Area Plan for Level 1 on the Site Plan.

Usually the Site Plan is another view of Level 1 out of the box (see "Associated Level" in the Site Plan's view properties).

I'm with you, tho - it would be nice sometimes to have a polygon-like object for generic area calcs. I know what you mean about "overkill"! Dimitri came up with the idea of using site-type family objects modelled up to show the basic forms of buildings, then add some parameters to them to calculate gross floor area as a shared parameter. You thrown these things all over your model, and voila, large-scale massing study on a large development that also tells you your build-out!! Too cool or what?? Caveat: since there's no polyline-type object, you have to calculate the area of a typical floor plate in these models manually, then enter it into the parameters of the object.

[Joef]

Hi Wes,

The work I do is really at the bottom of the drafting food chain. (well not quite, if I look down I think I can see some steel detailers :-) Residential stuff. Sometimes a small renovation and sometimes a complete house. Very competitive work (and enjoyable ) so you have to be really fast to make any money. I look forward to someday actually using all the scheduling features of Revit, but right now everybody is in such a hurry to get the drawings to city hall for a permit, they have no idea what kind of windows or doors they are going to use, let alone finishes of any kind.
Thanks for all the tips. I'm sure I'll use them when I move up the food chain! See you Thursday!