Room Sizes

[doug.79572]

I was wondering if anybody has figured out a way for the Length and Width of Rooms to be shown in Room tags or in a Room Schedule?

We do single family residential design, and find that these dimensions mean more to our clients, rather than a total sq ft of a room.

I talked to some Autodesk Reps at AU last week - and they had indicated that it should be no problem, but did not tell me how to do it.

Any help would be appreciated.

[sbrown]

You can add a label in your room tag, but you will manually have to type it in. Since rooms aren't all rectangular revit can't tell you the length and width.

[Michael Coviello]

This has been a request for a long time. I too find that residential clients want this information on the drawings. They are thinking in terms of what they have now (14x16 room etc).
It frustrates me that softdesk (auto-architect) was doing this back in 1994.
Why can't revit determine the room size (l x w) by the longest walls then have a check box over-ride?
The over-ride could be tied in to either the area tool or the room separation lines.
This would be very helpful for our single family work.

[aggockel50321]

As an alternative, you may want to look at exporting a room/area report, under file/export.

It'll give you all the wall segment dimensions, as well as room area, in an html document.

[Michael Coviello]

Thanks Andrew.
I can see the information is in the model, it's just a matter of the developers reliably (and predictably) extracting it to populate a room tag.
I will try your alternative for now.
thanks.

[Scott D Davis]

Remember geometry class? Remember cussing at homework saying "I'm NEVER going to EVER use this!" Now is the time to use it to create some calcualted values for Revit to use!

Here's some info I found on the web, that discusses how to find the length and width of a rectangle when given the Area and Perimeter, which are what Revit reports to us in a room object. Basically, you need a calculated value that solves for L (the quadratic equation below) and then you can have another calculated value that solves for W once you know what L is.

http://www.analyzemath.com/Geometry_calculators/dimensions_rectangle.html

Formulation of Problem

Let P be the perimeter of a rectangle and A its area. Let W and L be, respectively, the width and length of the rectangle. Find W and L in terms of P and A.

solution

P = 2W+2L (1)

and

A = WL (2)

solve equation (1) for W: W = P/2 - L and substitute in A = WL

A = L(P/2 - L)

Rewrite as a standard quadratic equation in L

L 2 - L(P/2) +A = 0

Solve the above equation for L and find W using W = P/2 - L.

[sbrown]

Scott, you can certainly figure it out and schedule it, however I don't think a calculated value can be a shared parameter, so it won't be able to be displayed in a tag unless you create a shared parameter that you then have to fill out based on the schedule.

[Scott D Davis]

Scott, you can certainly figure it out and schedule it, however I don't think a calculated value can be a shared parameter, so it won't be able to be displayed in a tag unless you create a shared parameter that you then have to fill out based on the schedule.
Yes, unfortunately...you are correct. Calculated Values cannot be placed in Tags. You'd have to make a shared parameter, place the shared parameter in a tag, and then create a "comparison" schedule to compare the calculated value to the shared parameter...then it's up to the user to type in the value of the calculated value into the shared parameter in the comparison schedule.

So when all is said and done, there is still manual data entry that needs to be done to accomplish this. Easier to put dimensions across the room.

[robert.manna]

I'm just theorizing but it seems like something like this, given that you can drop a dimension, or solve for, and then perhaps confirm what you solved for, and given that perimeter information is available about a room object, including bounding objects. One could or might accompish this all via some sort of API tool. That performs the required anaylsis, then populates shared parameters automaticall in the room objects, and these parameters could even be hidden, but would be taggable and or show in schedules.

-R

[Scott D Davis]

Here's a solution to at least get the values into a schedule automatically for length and width of rectangular rooms. This uses calculated values and the quadratic equation i posted earlier in the calculated value to determine the length of the room.

I've included dimensions just so you can see that moving a wall changes the length and width values in the schedule to the correct value, but the dimensions are not part of the solution. You can delete all of them and the schedule will still read the correct length/width dimensions.

This ONLY works for rectangular rooms. As soon as you throw one wall off orthogonal, the lengths reported in the schedule will not be correct, as its trying to determine the length/width for a rectilinear object.

I've also created ceilings in this space, and since Revit now knows the length and width of the room, using another calculated value we can have Revit report the Ceiling Height in a Room Schedule.

Enjoy!

ps. Revit file is in 9.0 for those that may not have upgraded yet....

Edit: don't want to mess with shared parameters? Make schedules that report the room info and place them on top of the floor plan on the sheet. Basically, make a schedule look like a room tag.....see screen capture image attached:

Edit 2: Here's the crazy little calculation that makes this possible, for those that didn't want to open the RVT file and reverse engineer it: (and who says you can't "program" Revit??? ;) )

((Perimeter / 2) - sqrt((Perimeter / 2) ^ 2 - 4 * Area)) / 2

[doug.79572]

YOU GUYS ROCK !!!!!

(bowing in a ' I'm not worthy ' pose )

Many many thanks !!

[kpaxton]

:shock: WOW :shock:

Scott D.- first off... Golf clap for YOU, buddy! (for staying awake in Geometry class!!!!!)

Second, I may be off my rocker, but this MAY be the most perfect example of "getting caught up in Revit". This is similar to modelling TOO much in the program (ie- the bathroom faucets DON'T need to be modeled guys!)

I too do my fair share of Residential projects. I too have requests in my room tags to show the Width x Length of the room. But as Scott Brown mentioned, not all rooms are nicely rectangular. Suffice it to say that I select my walls, mentally make note of that dimension, do the other wall, then type this into my room tag. This is for a 'design' tag anyway... my dimensioned construction floor plans are going to detail this puppy out to the n-th degree anyways. ;)

Let's not forget the fact that sure... Revit should report back to you the LxW, and there certainly is a way of making a formula for this. But in the amount of time that it took to make the explanation, and make the program interpret this, manipulate the API... I could have entered this into my tags and been done by now!

My 2 cents,
Kyle

[Michael Coviello]

Let's not forget the fact that sure... Revit should report back to you the LxW, and there certainly is a way of making a formula for this. But in the amount of time that it took to make.....
Kyle
I feel this is a legitimate and useful request and hope the factory can incorporate this into the rooms and room tags.

Kyle, during design development as rooms grow/shrink, it's would be nice to know that the LXW are adjusting for me. It's one less to explain away to the client if it isn't updated (which NEVER happens, (kidding)
If it is a priority and enough people WANT this feature then it will be implemented
The developers can have this value calculated just as Scott and it would be beneficial to everyone who uses the program.

[wbs69117950]

Has this feature been implemented in RAC 2008? If so, how do I make it happen?

Thanks,

[tomnewsom]

Nope, this feature does not exist.

[josh.made4worship]

Any chance anyone out there has written an external command via API that would perform the calcuation and automatically fill in a selected parameter with the associated calculation. I know this could be done, but unfortunately, I don't have the code experience to write it myself.