Shared Parameter for Area of Glazing

[Devin_82]

I would like to be able to pull the area of glazing from my window families into a schedule in my project for the purposes of calculating lighting and ventilation on a per window basis. I feel like there should be a way to pull an area from the window family that can be flexible enough to calculate different areas based off of the window type. For instance I would have a 2'x2' fixed window with a glazing are of about 4sf and a 3'x3' window with an area of about 9sf. can anyone think of a way to automate this? If I were to create a new window type that is 2'x3', could it figure out the glazing area automatically and show it in my schedule? I know Revit already calculates areas for a lot of things like filled regions and masking regions that i might be able to use, but how do I squeeze it out?

[Justin Marchiel]

if you where using a curtain wall you could schedule the area of the curtain panels. as for window i think you might be out of luck, unless you wanted to created some complicated formulas. for example you could define some reference planes that defined the extent of the glass (height and width). in a schedule you could then do a calculated value of the width x height. the complicated part comes when the window if divide into 2 or 3 or 4 or........

this would really complicate your family. i would suggest making a working view of the elevation then just creating a filled region. i suppose this is probably what you already do to get the values in any case.

Justin

[twiceroadsfool]

There is a Width and a Height in the Window template as it is, so depending on how you build your famil (IE do you use that for the outside of the glass, the outside of the frame, etc), you could make a parameter GLAZING AREA = Width * Height. As long as you were consistant in your family building it would work fine. If all of the windows have the same Parameter, set up the same way consistantly, it would be very simple to get the schedule to work.

Unless youre going to sit there and subtract out the area for the muntins, etc... And if you are, well.... good luck with that anyway, hehehehe....

I personally wouldnt be handling this with filled regions, but depending on how your windows were built...

[Justin Marchiel]

this method would only work if your window is a picture window. if it where divided by mullions you would have in accurate values.

Justin

[twiceroadsfool]

Fair enough... I guess it depends on how the windows are modeled though. WIndows with multiple units like that, i would either do with nested families or a curtain system. But yeah, i can see it getting complicated pretty quickly.

I guess id rather spend the time once, on one project, tossing an extra parameter here or there to make them work for me, instead of having to draft the filled regions on elevations, then adjust them everytime something changes in the fenestration...

But i DO have a penchant for modeling and writing formulas more than i should, i concede...

[Devin_82]

Thanks for the input. In this case I am planning on subtracting the muntins and I have some windows with up to 8 panels. I am also trying to pull out ventilation values for the openings. So far I have created a shared parameter for "light" and for "ventilation" that are area based. I am then drawing masking regions in the window family itself that arelocked to the elements of the window and change based on type These masking regions automatically tell me their areas in their properties. At this point I am just typing in the area I get from the masking region properties in this parameter for each type in the family. That way once I load it in the project I can schedule those values in my window schedule. It is definately not a perfect solution, especially using the masking region in the interior elevation view to get the areas, but since I rarely show and interior elevation of an exterior window, I think I should be OK. There is still some manual work typing in the values, but at least I control it at the family type level rather than just typing it in the project schedule.

Thanks,

[The Sweg]

I have just such a shared parameter built into my window families. I know, a lot of folks say that the more parameters and formulas you have in a family it starts to slow things down, but I've usually favored taking a hit in performance (as long as it's not too bad) to save myself manual coordination or drafting just to get something that the program is capable of providing for me.

For bedrooms, we need to have windows that have a glazing area that is at least 8% of the square footage of the room its in. My window family knows the glazing area of each window size based on a formula, and another parameter gives me the maximem square footage a room can be to have that window provide 8% glazing.

When designing a home, I can place a room and tag to see the area and place a window that I know will fulfill the 8% rule.

My advise is to let the program do as much as possible.

HTH

[Devin_82]

I like that train of thought, but I don't think it is going to work with multi-pane windows in which we want to exclude the muntins. I am toying around with a few ways to use mutiple reference planes and labeled dimensions. I will post it if I have any success...