Area in non-closed spaces

[jmartin.127555]

Hi all,

Just a quick question for someone. I am attempting to sell my company on the purchase of Revit and am doing a small pilot project (5000SF office facility) in the timeframe of the 30 day download. So far I have learned a LOT and have accomplished more in 50 hours than I could have using Autocad. I am working on scheduling the areas for the building and am having difficulty getting things to do what I want; specifically, exterior covered spaces that return areas of 50% of actual. These are areas under overhangs that count toward gross SF but are not bounded bu a wall so I have no idea how to add a room tag (if that is what I should use) to an unbounded space. I am not having problems with making a schedule, I just can't figure out how to add these exterior spaces in the model so I can add them to the schedule. Any help is appreciated.

John

[sbrown]

right click on your tool bar and select the room and area toolbar(if its not on allready) then use the room separation tool to draw lines around the spaces you want enclosed that don't have walls.

[jmartin.127555]

Rock on Scott. That was the last thing I was having trouble with for this project. Thanks for the help. I have been finding it difficult to learn Revit on my own and design all in 30 days before the timer runs out. That helped a lot. Once I get this done I will have about 10 sheets worth of plans and details. Man I LOVE Revit so far.

John

[bbeck]

Welcome to the "family" John.

[s.messing]

Rock on Scott. That was the last thing I was having trouble with for this project. Thanks for the help. I have been finding it difficult to learn Revit on my own and design all in 30 days before the timer runs out. That helped a lot. Once I get this done I will have about 10 sheets worth of plans and details. Man I LOVE Revit so far.

JohnI'd love to take your enthusiasm and bottle it and give it to a couple of doubters, shouters, and pouters who somehow find every excuse to blame the technology for all of their problems.



right click on your tool bar and select the room and area toolbar(if its not on allready) then use the room separation tool to draw lines around the spaces you want enclosed that don't have walls.That aside, keep in mind that room separation lines function like (and in fact are) walls in the eyes of Revit, so if they overlap each other or other walls, you can run into trouble. Trim them up nice and clean when you use them and you'll be a very happy camper. Also, I highly recommend that you make them a very thick lineweight and a bright color so they stand out. It'll keep them clearly differentiated from the other lines in your project and will keep errors and warnings to a minimum.

Keep rockin' n rollin'
Good luck,
Stephen

[whittendesigns]

Welcome to the "family" John.Good one lol

[CADMama]

right click on your tool bar and select the room and area toolbar(if its not on allready) then use the room separation tool to draw lines around the spaces you want enclosed that don't have walls.
Can you get these room separation line to not plot?

Also - Can you have overlapping areas? I have a need to do a room area and within that area I need the "clear space" area also done? This is for a hospital and they have to show the total area and the clear space as seperate areas.

[sbrown]

Yes, they are a subcategory of lines, so just go to VV and turn them off.

[Steve_Stafford]

...so if they overlap each other or other walls, you can run into trouble...They are also NOT bandaids to fix rooms that aren't defining area properly :wink:

[Steve_Stafford]

Can you get these room separation line to not plot?

Also - Can you have overlapping areas? I have a need to do a room area and within that area I need the "clear space" area also done? This is for a hospital and they have to show the total area and the clear space as seperate areas.
With Revit, rooms are rooms. So if you put another boundary using room separation lines inside a room defined by walls you'll get a new "room" inside the other. You may wish to use Area Plans and Area boundaries to describe these related room issues?

[CADMama]

With Revit, rooms are rooms. So if you put another boundary using room separation lines inside a room defined by walls you'll get a new "room" inside the other. You may wish to use Area Plans and Area boundaries to describe these related room issues?
My problem is not getting a "room in a room" it is getting the two items to be complete. In other words - if I put a room inside another room using the separation lines it removes that area from the first room. I need the whole bounding area of the original room to be one room and then just the clear floor space to be seperate. I need to know how much clear floor space there is around furniture, casework and equipment within the original room.
Know what I mean now?

[Steve_Stafford]

I knew what you meant the first time, said another way, you can't do that with rooms. You can describe the clear floor area with an Area Plan using Area elements and tags.

[dbaldacchino]

I guess this is another good example of where a Phase Demolished property for rooms would be useful. If this was possible, you could then demo the original rooms, create a new view and set it for a later phase, create your room separation lines around casework etc and place a new room, thus reporting your "useable" area.

[Steve_Stafford]

Doesn't sound like less work than what I did. :smile:

I just created an area plan to sketch the boundaries, added an area and tag. The room is still there so I can display the room data as well as the area. This is more consistent with what we are trying to say too. To demolish the room so we can show the useable floor space isn't intuitive.

The fact that Areas are not room aware or vice versa makes it hard to include such data in a schedule even though it can be done graphically like the two images I posted.

[dbaldacchino]

Ohhhh Steve, I wasn't disagreeing with your method :p As I was reading through and before reaching your post, I had the same solution in my mind. I was just thinking out loud, trying to figure out how to do it with Room objects. The Area method is fine...if it were possible to use rooms as I described, you're still sketching a boundary with area separation lines, so it's not any faster. You can still schedule areas from Area Plans anyway, so as long as you name them the same as your rooms, it should be fine and dandy.

[jeff.95551]

I'd love to see some kind of "Advanced" report making API that allowed for sophistocated reports and more nuance. I've gotten spoiled with the basic 'schedules,' and the development team has done a fantastic job of taking the traditional reports seen on CD's and automating them - the next step is to open them up to allow us to imagine how better information management could happen - to let us do things we just couldn't practically do in the past. In my construction company, we use Crystal Reports on top of our accounting package, and we can slice and dice the data in just about any way we imagine. People could trade 'schedule' families the same way they do component families. I wouldn't have thought about tracking clear space areas, but I can see how useful it would be. Other people have asked for ways to do building allowable area calcs, and occupant load calcs. Imagine giving the building official a 'read only' building model on disc that they run through a test routine that measures all these things that the codes ask us to show - then we go in the next day and negotiate on the gray areas...