Schedule Multiple Phases

[cpiper]

Is there any way to show rooms from multiple phases in the same schedule? We are using revit to do some area calculations for our entire building and I would love to save the step of adding the three phases together for each category. Any thoughts?

More specifics:

We are using the room area in our calculations and since rooms are phase aware, we have to create three seperate schedules (one for each phase). What I would like to accomplish is to have one schedule showing all of the rooms from all of the phases.

[jcoe]

Unfortunately, Revit will not allow you to schedule more than one phase at a time. For area calculations, I would suggest using area plans. They allow you a good deal of flexibility when defining areas and you are not held to the limits of the room object itself. In addition, area objects are not phase aware/ specific and therfore area schedules do not have a phasing component.

With the improvements to color schemes and color fill legends in RAC 2008, I like to use area plans in conjunction with fill legends for all my code review drawings.

[cpiper]

Jason,

Thanks for the reply and the thoughts. Specifically we are working on calculating occupant loads which requires us to assign an occupancy type to each room (project parameter added to rooms). From there we schedule the rooms with our occupancy parameter turned on. Since net square footage is important here, the area plan would be very cumbersome in calculating each room. In addition, we would have to figure out a way to add a parameter for occupancy type to the areas.

I know that we all love Revit (As do I) but I think there needs to be some more flexibility in the program. I am bracing for the flood of responses telling me not to use the software the way that I am, but architecture and the design process is so intricate for each firm let alone each project we work on. The software needs to come a long way in addressing the fact that each architect/project is different. I understand that Phases are a specific way to document the processing of building a building, but Autodesk needs to acknowledge that they have other good and purposeful uses.

In this circumstance our project is very early in the schematic phase and it doesn't make sense to analyze our data in separate phases or to present our client with separate documents for each phase. All they really care about is what it looks like when completed, the steps we take to get there will be important later.

As I see it there are two solutions to the problem. Allow us the flexibility to use the software the way our circumstances dictate rather than trying to force each project into one specific design model. Failing that, there needs to be an easy way to transition from schematics where everything can be thrown on one phase, to a DD/CD phase where things can get split up. I think it would be a lot easier to schedule across phases early in the project rather than spend a good deal of time later changing the phases to accommodate a new design phase.

[Scott D Davis]

For the Occupancy Load Factors (OLF), use a Key Schedule. We created a Key schedule which was a copy of Table 10-A of the code. Then in a Occupancy Calculation schedule, we simply assigned the room "classification" from table 10-A to the room itself. This was a drop down list inside the schedulke that allowed us to pick 7-Classroom for instance, that would tell Revit that this particular room was a classroom. The OLF would automatically populate the schedule from the Key Schedule, and then a calcualted value in the schedule would read the Area divided by the OLF, and give us a total number of occupants.

Very easy to do and made code analysis for OLF a breeze to do...and it was dynamic. If the room sizes changed, the OLF would update instantly.

[Calvn_Swing]

It still doesn't solve the problem of phases...

In a schedule I should get a checkbox with all the phases (and all the links - on a side note) and I should be able to select any phase I want in the schedule, and any link (and thus, I could choose not to have one link or one phase, but all the others...) Yet again, basic database functionality is not provided in a program that is basically one big database with a mediocre GUI in between me and my data! Though, Revit is still the best out there, but that is no excuse for shortcomings.

[ITABWODI]

Jason,

Thanks for the reply and the thoughts. Specifically we are working on calculating occupant loads which requires us to assign an occupancy type to each room (project parameter added to rooms). From there we schedule the rooms with our occupancy parameter turned on. Since net square footage is important here, the area plan would be very cumbersome in calculating each room. In addition, we would have to figure out a way to add a parameter for occupancy type to the areas.

In this circumstance our project is very early in the schematic phase and it doesn't make sense to analyze our data in separate phases or to present our client with separate documents for each phase. All they really care about is what it looks like when completed, the steps we take to get there will be important later.

As I see it there are two solutions to the problem. Allow us the flexibility to use the software the way our circumstances dictate rather than trying to force each project into one specific design model. Failing that, there needs to be an easy way to transition from schematics where everything can be thrown on one phase, to a DD/CD phase where things can get split up. I think it would be a lot easier to schedule across phases early in the project rather than spend a good deal of time later changing the phases to accommodate a new design phase.

I just hit a very similar problem because I failed to read this thread prior to splitting my project up into phases. Not that I would have avoided the use of phases, but I could have at least prepared for the fact that I would no longer be able to count all my rooms in one schedule to confirm my space program.

Anyway, here's a thought I'm going to look into: maybe one can link a room schedule for each phase out to ODBC or Excel, have that program combine the schedules back into a total number of rooms and areas for all phases, and then give you a report that can be pasted back in to a sheet view. I haven't really used Revit to export to ODBC yet, so I don't how tough it would be. It seems to me that if you already have all your rooms drawn, it would be easier to extract the info from the rooms rather than redraw all of them in an Area Plan. If I can't get ODBC to work, I may just export the schedules to flat Excel files and combine them manually :banghead:.

[dhurtubise]

Unfortunately, Revit will not allow you to schedule more than one phase at a time. For area calculations, I would suggest using area plans. They allow you a good deal of flexibility when defining areas and you are not held to the limits of the room object itself. In addition, area objects are not phase aware/ specific and therfore area schedules do not have a phasing component.

With the improvements to color schemes and color fill legends in RAC 2008, I like to use area plans in conjunction with fill legends for all my code review drawings.

Area won't do it either since you would need multiple scheme and they can't be combine.

[ITABWODI]

...Anyway, here's a thought I'm going to look into: maybe one can link a room schedule for each phase out to ODBC or Excel, have that program combine the schedules back into a total number of rooms and areas for all phases, and then give you a report that can be pasted back in to a sheet view...

Hey guys, I just wanted to let you know that ODBC seems to work great for getting your phased rooms into a single schedule! I haven't had much time to play around with formatting yet, but here's the bottom line: when you do an ODBC export of your Revit data base, it puts all of your room elements into a single table called, fittingly, Rooms. The phase is simply a field called "FieldID" which differs for each room record depending on the phase assigned to the room. So once you have all your rooms in one big table, you can either use the database program (MS Access in my case) to query the table and count/sum-up all the rooms or you can link to the database with Excel and list the rooms in a spreadsheet. Then, as you update your Revit model, just do another ODBC export to the same database, and your room data will be up-to-date. Here's the only catch I see so far: the ODBC export only does metric area. So your room sizes will be in square meters, not feet. Just add a calculation to your query or spreadsheet to convert it back to feet.

It's not as nice as an in-program solution, but I think it will work until the factory catches up.