Rooms, Room Tags, and Phases

[aretap]

OK so here is my issue!
I have a project that has 6 Phases total and multiple rooms in each phase. The problem is that rooms that were created in Phase 1 are not taggable in future phases. (i.e. - in a plan view I show a phase 3 plan and am able to tag all the phase 3 rooms however, the adjacent rooms that were created in phase 2, 1, and existing do not show up and are not taggable.
I know there is the layering of views trick but in this project that is being built in phases and multiple areas the idea of doing this is simply ridicules. I would have to layer 6 views on a sheet to show a simple area plan. With all the of the plans needed and 6 views need in each plan that would be hundreds of views just to show the plans correctly.

:shock:Please tell me there is another way to do this???

[aggockel50321]

Copy paste the rooms (the ones that did not change) from the previous phase to the view showing the newer phase.

[Steve_Stafford]

I've also seen people export the rooms (combine from several views) to cad and then import/link that. They copy it to various views. Then to update they export it again. Either way it is more work than we think it should be. Hopefully they'll resolve it in the future.

[aretap]

Yeah that was what I was afraid of! If only Rooms could be Demolished that would solve everything. Create a room in Phase 1 and it appears in all phases there after until it is demolished. Oh how I wish Revit 2009 has that ability!

[dbaldacchino]

Unfortunately, a room is not a physical entity; it's "abstract". It does not depict a physical object, but a "function" or a "state of mind". You could use the Living Room as a Bedroom, but nothing is different physically in the surrounding walls. The room exists because it has walls or imaginary lines (room separation lines) defining it. It is quite difficult to code for abstract concepts. Unless rooms change to real objects that have boundaries independent of their surroundings (God forbid!!), then I don't know how one could implement it. I for one would love to see improvement, but understand the current dilemma. Perhaps we're looking at the problem from the wrong angle.

[David Conant]

It is even more complex than that. Because the elements that bound rooms can change between phases, then a room would have to be able to store multiple values for the same parameter i.e. Area = 225 sf in existing but in new construction Area = 246 sf. Removal of walls can put two rooms in an enclosure in one phase and not in another. A room has an association with many other objects. If rooms span phases, these associations would change over time making tha data tracking much more complex.
Data complexity in a design application does not mean that we should not look at ways to solve real problems elegantly. There may be other solutions possible to this issue, but using simple phasing as with other elements is unlikely to work. Discussions of the real tasks that need to be done will help us evaluate possible strategies.

[aretap]

I see your points - however, why couldn't rooms behave similar to ceilings or floors?? They are associated with walls and phases?? I agree with baldacchino why can a room be a real object??

[Steve_Stafford]

...It is even more complex than that...Coming up for air David? Nice to see you post here again! Are you accusing us of over-simplifying something complex? We never do THAT! In my simple mind I imagine that a room who's defining boundary is altered by demolition would get demolished as well. A room whose boundaries remain intact in a future phase would also remain intact. It wasn't so much me imagining that I'd demo walls and then demo rooms or vice versa. More that Revit would recognize that the demolition causes the demise of a room. A change of a room's boundary means it really isn't the same room anymore no matter how slight. It isn't like Spinal Tap's, "but this one goes to eleven" sort of change...

In the end, as you suggest, I'm not as concerned about a room actually getting phase created/demolished parameters as I'm interested in being able to document things properly, orderly and obviously. A demolition plan has to show existing room information because the contractor has to know what room he/she is working in and we need to be able to show and discuss it with the owner to get things done. To get it done by Phase Filters would suggest that we'd need a "Future" phase state too...which might cause this thread to degenerate into a whole other conversation.

So...get'r done! :smile:

[robert.manna]

I got bounced here from another thread (Steve ;) ). My 2 cents for what its worth.

Dave C. I agree and understand, I brought up the same thing in the "other" thread (PM me if you want). However, I can't beleive that the MEP guys aren't screaming for rooms to exsist over phases, yes it means tracking a great deal of data, but on multi-phase projects or in existing/demo/new the MEP guys have got have the same room exsist in some way, or as GuyR suggusts, some way to "link" multiple room objects accross time.

My simple example was, what if I have a living room, and I decide to divide it in half with a wall because I want a library too. The living room doesn't go away, it just gets smaller. To me IMHO it would/should still be the same object/space, it just changed.

To add to all this, with regards to Phase filters, I say get rid of them, instead allow phase to be available via the "View Filters" tab in Graphics & Visibility. Then, make phase a parameter that exisits in all objects, views, sheets etc. Now I can be very precise with Filtering to control the exact appearance of objects. Why, and how might this be helpful...

I have a window, that knows it was created a certain time period. I want to demo only the glazing, not the giant Pre-cast sill, in order to infill the opening with new construction. Imagine if filters recgonized phasing, I could say, allright, on these specific windows (by using mark, or something) from this phase, demo only the glass, not anything else. Now this doesn't address the issue of Revit knowing that I only want to demo the glass, and not the whole object, but maybe more advanced filtering is the way to describe that... I should say my example is based on the assumption that the glass in the window is also correctly assigned a subcategory, and that subcategories are accesible by filter(s).

-R

[Steve_Stafford]

Robert,

In my "mind"...your living room is no longer the same room, it has the same name but it has new properties. It is the same problem Revit has with groups whose plan concept is identical but the floor to floor height is different. Revit thinks they are different and we think they are the same, but some are taller...which is technically different and a computer program has some trouble with the subtlety of that statement.

Clearly though, as your comment about MEP suggests, it is anything but simple.

[aretap]

So this has brought up a very large and heated debate in our office now. If Revit is unable to show the room tags without layer multiple views to create a single plan what is Autodesk doing promoting that it can do phases. It really can't! For us to produce a plan of all three levels of this building for all 5 phases plus the existing phase we have to layer a total of 68 views to simply show 15 plans. That is absolutely ridiculous. Not to mention that both the structural and MEP teams are using Revit and working with the same 5 Phases. This means that they too has to do this to tag rooms and I don't even know how MEP is going to us the rooms with calculations due to the phasing.

Revit should really come with a warning:

Works great with Phases, also works great with Rooms, Just don't try to use the two at the same time!!!!!

[Steve_Stafford]

The emphasis of phasing is on the graphical relationship of New/Existing/Demo/Temp not the build this , then this, then this, then this... I imagine much of what you are doing could be done in one phase and simply called out differently as build this, then this. Unless you are truly doing a phase and then demolishing some work and building something else and repeating.

None of this changes the fact that room tagging does not lend itself to describing demolition. If the rooms of an earlier phase simply continue on then copy/paste will solve that problem, but you'll have multiple copies of the same room if you decide to change something about one of the earlier rooms before starting work.

[robert.manna]

Since rooms are specific to the phase in which they exsist, and do not exist outside of that phase, a new room can be created in the same exact place in a different phase. The room can be named the same, though I suspect you might get a warning/error if you attempt to number them the same. Therefore you might have to number the rooms with a phase suffix/prefix, accpet the warning (if it lets you) or create your own seperate "room number parameter" for the purposes of client room numbering versus Revit room numbering for tracking seperate individual objects.

-R

[dhurtubise]

Since rooms are specific to the phase in which they exsist, and do not exist outside of that phase, a new room can be created in the same exact place in a different phase. The room can be named the same, though I suspect you might get a warning/error if you attempt to number them the same. Therefore you might have to number the rooms with a phase suffix/prefix, accpet the warning (if it lets you) or create your own seperate "room number parameter" for the purposes of client room numbering versus Revit room numbering for tracking seperate individual objects.

-R
You can use the same name and same number in a different phase.

[dbaldacchino]

dpatera, do you see my comment "God Forbid"? I really mean it! Rooms are bound by their surroundings and I think making them become some sort of "physical" object would NOT be a good idea.

Thanks David C for elaborating. I think Steve has hit the nail perfectly. I was going to make a similar argument but decided not to because the thread could get out of hand haha. For example if a wall is demo'd, the room being bound by it would get "unplaced" and report itself as being "demolished" but would not be able to be placed again. But anyway, I agree with the example that Steve used. If a bounding element is demolished in another phase, we are likely to schedule that room as having new work in it, as we probably would have some new finishes, ceilings, fixtures etc. After all, we disturbed a wall, so there HAS to be new work in that space. But in essence the room has changed, even if we just took a wall out and put it in exactly as it was originally (perhaps we had to take large equipment out of a space that was inaccesible). Now what if the space remains constant and no bounding elements are touched? I would want the ability to have the room "persist" and show up in a schedule for the newest phase of construction and report as "Existing to remain". If all that is going to change is finishes and ceiling type/height, then we would need to "demo" this space and re-create a new one that would allow us to use the same room number and name, so we can communicate the new finishes. This would eliminate having to store information in each room from separate phases. This is identical to how phasing works now.

So in summary: if the room and it's bounding elements are to stay the same, it would "persist". If new finishes are to be applied in the space or the bounding elements are demolished & rebuilt, the room would "die" and a new one would have to be created.

As to Phase Filters, I totally agree with Robert. I made that suggestion a while back somewhere; don't remember where. From a consistency of the UI standpoint and teminology (it has "filters" in it's name!), it makes total sense. With filters, we can make "oranges" look a certain way in one view and make the same "oranges" look different in another view. But with the current implementation of Phase filters, we cannot. If Demo is assigned a red dash lines, then you're stuck with it the same verywhere. So for example if we had the ability to create phase filters the same way as we create filters for any other applicable parameter, we could show New Construction as dashed in a view and voila....you have your "future" phasing plan. In a new construction view, you could apply a different filter and make it look just as usual. This is the "orange" being depicted in two different ways because Revit knows what it is and is following my rules as to how I want it displayed. This implementation would let the user choose which phases to show, rather than make the gross assumption that all you want to see is from this phase backwards, and you're not allowed to see anything beyond that (into the future).

Good stuff guys, keep it coming.

[robert.manna]

Name I knew, number I didn't, good to know. Haven't had to deal with it myself yet.

-R

[robert.manna]

But anyway, I agree with the example that Steve used.

I don't disagree with your's and Steve's idea, however I would still maintain there needs to be some way to mainating consistency for the MEP folks... some sort of link from a "demo'ed" room to a new room, such that the systems are contiguous, unless I'm misunderstanding something about how MEP systems work.

-R

[iandidesign]

Rooms are bound by their surroundings and I think making them become some sort of "physical" object would NOT be a good idea.

This abstract concept is true from a design point of view. But Revit rooms are also being used as thermal zones and lighting zones by 3rd party software (and MEP too?). In these cases they are already being treated as "physical objects", essentially chunks of atmosphere that require conditioning. And having rooms fulfill this second function is no mean feat judging by this 17 page document. (http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/files/building_performance_analysis_using_revit.pdf) And herein lies part of the rub. Rooms as a space planning and design tool overlap with, but are not entirely compatible with, the various energy analysis zones, which themselves are not necessarily compatible with each other (thermal v. daylighting). My point is, as A'desk works to fix these room phasing issues they, and their partners, should create another way to define these physical zones and stop asking rooms to pull double duty.

[aretap]

The idea of keeping rooms "abstract" keeps popping up. I truely do not understand what the issue would be of having rooms physical objects?? Please elaborate on why going to objects is bad??

Also, in terms of phasing we are doing a hospital renovation and yes we are using the phases to demo then add a new space in its place, then demo again and move a space (can just shut down a hospital during construction so temporary walls and demolition is occuring constantly and must be corrdinated. So yes we must use phases.

Back to the rooms - second thought even if they were left as is maybe that would work but is there a way to develop them to still be able to be tagged in later phases that they are not present in??? May open a can of worms that results in more problems then it solves - just a thought!!

[kyle.bernhardt]

This abstract concept is true from a design point of view. But Revit rooms are also being used as thermal zones and lighting zones by 3rd party software (and MEP too?). In these cases they are already being treated as "physical objects", essentially chunks of atmosphere that require conditioning. And having rooms fulfill this second function is no mean feat judging by this 17 page document. (http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/files/building_performance_analysis_using_revit.pdf) And herein lies part of the rub. Rooms as a space planning and design tool overlap with, but are not entirely compatible with, the various energy analysis zones, which themselves are not necessarily compatible with each other (thermal v. daylighting). My point is, as A'desk works to fix these room phasing issues they, and their partners, should create another way to define these physical zones and stop asking rooms to pull double duty.


Geoff,
I believe you just explained one of the main justifications for the creation of the Space element (http://inside-the-system.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/02/a-volume-for-en.html) in Revit MEP 2009.

Cheers,
Kyle B

[dbaldacchino]

Kyle, I was about to paste a link to your blog video and then realised you had already replied :)

[patricks]

I don't really understand why rooms CAN'T have phase parameters included with them, especially now that rooms are, in fact, actual elements with volume, beginning back in version 9 I believe.

With the current room elements, you have sort of an "origin point", which is where the blue control cross appears and you have 45 deg. lines going in 4 directions outwards to the bounding elements that surround that room element.

So I don't see why that room element couldn't find the room bounding objects in each phase it exists, if it had phase parameters. So say you had 2 existing rooms and you place a room element in each room. Those 2 room elements could have a Phase Created: Existing and Phase Demolished: None.

Now let's say you want to demolish the wall in your New Construction phase. If you did that, Revit could give you a warning saying something about rooms created in a previous phase are now in the same space in the current phase. Both room objects now occupy the whole larger space that used to be 2 separate spaces.

So you say OK to close the warning, and then you have a couple of options: either change one of the room objects to demolished in the New Construction phase and let the other room occupy the whole space (if the intent was to make that one space larger), or demolish both rooms in the New Construction phase, and create a new room element altogether (if the new, larger space has a completely different function).

It doesn't seem like it would be that difficult to make rooms elements act that way, but maybe I just don't know much about what goes into making the program work.

[aretap]

I don't really understand why rooms CAN'T have phase parameters included with them, especially now that rooms are, in fact, actual elements with volume, beginning back in version 9 I believe.

With the current room elements, you have sort of an "origin point", which is where the blue control cross appears and you have 45 deg. lines going in 4 directions outwards to the bounding elements that surround that room element.

So I don't see why that room element couldn't find the room bounding objects in each phase it exists, if it had phase parameters. So say you had 2 existing rooms and you place a room element in each room. Those 2 room elements could have a Phase Created: Existing and Phase Demolished: None.

Now let's say you want to demolish the wall in your New Construction phase. If you did that, Revit could give you a warning saying something about rooms created in a previous phase are now in the same space in the current phase. Both room objects now occupy the whole larger space that used to be 2 separate spaces.

So you say OK to close the warning, and then you have a couple of options: either change one of the room objects to demolished in the New Construction phase and let the other room occupy the whole space (if the intent was to make that one space larger), or demolish both rooms in the New Construction phase, and create a new room element altogether (if the new, larger space has a completely different function).

It doesn't seem like it would be that difficult to make rooms elements act that way, but maybe I just don't know much about what goes into making the program work.


HOLY COW!!!!!

I thought I was taking crazy pills or somthing for a little while there!! Finally someone else sees my point as well!!!

[robert.manna]

I don't really understand why rooms CAN'T have phase parameters included with them, especially now that rooms are, in fact, actual elements with volume, beginning back in version 9 I believe.

With the current room elements, you have sort of an "origin point", which is where the blue control cross appears and you have 45 deg. lines going in 4 directions outwards to the bounding elements that surround that room element.

So I don't see why that room element couldn't find the room bounding objects in each phase it exists, if it had phase parameters. So say you had 2 existing rooms and you place a room element in each room. Those 2 room elements could have a Phase Created: Existing and Phase Demolished: None.

Now let's say you want to demolish the wall in your New Construction phase. If you did that, Revit could give you a warning saying something about rooms created in a previous phase are now in the same space in the current phase. Both room objects now occupy the whole larger space that used to be 2 separate spaces.

So you say OK to close the warning, and then you have a couple of options: either change one of the room objects to demolished in the New Construction phase and let the other room occupy the whole space (if the intent was to make that one space larger), or demolish both rooms in the New Construction phase, and create a new room element altogether (if the new, larger space has a completely different function).

It doesn't seem like it would be that difficult to make rooms elements act that way, but maybe I just don't know much about what goes into making the program work.

You're right, I don't think it would too difficult. However it doesn't resolve the issue of how objects idetify where they are accross phases, and the affects on MEP systems. With the new Space feature in 2009 this may be alievated per Kyle's post. However I suspect that in 2009 engineers will have a choice, of using Rooms or Spaces, maybe eventually rooms will be phased out for what the engineers use them for. However per the earlier discussions, simply adding the phasing ability to rooms does not solve the greater workflow issues, beyond the simple explanation you give.

-R

[mattcummins]

I am working on a standard project with existing and new construction phases. I need to show rooms with a color fill showing existing versus new construction (existing versus addition areas). Then I will also need to show complete rooms that do not have that existing to new separation (when a new room has both an existing area and new addition area).
What is the best way to do this? Is there a way to just color code the entire plan according to phase, rather than separating existing from new in each individual room?

Thanks,
Matt

[Steve_Stafford]

As the subject of this thread says...rooms only exist in a single phase so no view can actually show both existing and new rooms at the same time (with the phasing tools) without first copying existing rooms from the earlier phase into the new construction phase. This of course means that they aren't "existing" rooms anymore, according to the Phase Created parameter.

Option XxX - You can use two separate views and overlay them on a sheet, assuming colors don't overlap uncomfortably...though they probably will.

Option xXx - Use your own additional "phase" parameter to tell each room which phase they belong to or came from. Then a color fill scheme could be associated with that parameter and used in a single view. This ought to be simpler but until rooms can exist beyond a single phase we won't get there (or they come up with some other clever simple way to accomplish it).

[marief]

So I have been reading through all the posts concerning rooms and phases...one trick that people keep throwing out is to copy the rooms tags. I thihk this means to copy them from from an Existing view and then paste them into the New Construction view. I assumed this to mean that one would not place a New room object over the top of an Existing room in the New Construction view. However when I try this in 2010, it tells me there is no object to tag and therefore it will be deleted. Am I missing something?

And because the room schedules only have a Phase property, not a Phase Filter, if I need to see all of my rooms, whether New or Existing to remain, in a schedule, it seems like my only option is to place a New Construction room on top of an Existing room or use two different schedules.....

[nancy.mcclure]

marief - welcome! nice 'cutting your teeth' on such a meaty topic!

I like the concept of (forgive me for not citing the original poster - it's late here in my time zone) who suggested that room elements could 'acquire' the (pre)phase of a change of a boundary element that was [deleted/moved/created] in a particular phase. That IS when the room ceases to be X and becomes Y. Maybe this creates a new room element in the current phase, distinct from the previous room, responding to the current boundaries? Dare I dream?

[barrie.sharp]

it tells me there is no object to tag and therefore it will be deleted. Am I missing something?

And because the room schedules only have a Phase property, not a Phase Filter, if I need to see all of my rooms, whether New or Existing to remain, in a schedule, it seems like my only option is to place a New Construction room on top of an Existing room or use two different schedules.....

You can't copy the tag, you have to copy the object (room) itself. This will simply place a new room in the same place which is the same as just using the room tool. If you have a room going across several phases, just place the room in each phase. So yes, you overlay the same room each phase. If you want the rooms to correlate across the phases, you can reuse the room number in each phase even though use can't have a duplicate in any single phase.

[dbaldacchino]

If in your existing view you're only showing room names and numbers for reference only, you might consider only creating rooms in the new phase only (the phase of new work) as typically you'll have new finishes applied to these spaces and thus you might want to schedule them. For the existing views you probably just want to show them for reference only. If so, I'd just use text. There is nothing wrong with that.