Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Existing Rooms and Their Tags

Demo plans need room tags so a contractor knows what room to demo stuff in. Room tags can't tag a room in a demo plan because the current phase is set to new construction.

How can you get room tags to identify the existing rooms? Overlay views on a sheet.

Create a new view assigned to the Existing Phase.
Using Visibility/Graphics turn off all Model categories except Rooms.
Now your view only shows rooms and room tags.

On the sheet that displays the demolition work, overlay this special room/room tag only view above the demolition view. A little bit of extra work but you get automatic display of the correct room information without resorting to "dumb" text and introducing possible errors.

As an aside, I believe that rooms should behave more like other model elements and have a "Phase Created" and "Phase Demolished" parameter. This way an unaffected room can persist across phases. Rooms whose boundaries are demolished should also be demolished and require the creation of a new room. In this way a demolished room would still be visible and New rooms would not according to the view's Phase Filter setting. I'm sure there may be some programmatic conundrums that this might introduce but overall this is the sort of manner in which Rooms should behave...in my opinion.

9 comments:

Dave Baldacchino said...

Agree 100%. I think if a room boundary is demolished, the room bound by that wall (could be two rooms on either side) should be automatically demolished. Now what happens if that wall is to be demolished and rebuilt? Well, we could ask to get functionality to retain the room, but that probably unnecessarily complicates matters. After all, you probably will schedule that room for new finishes anyway, so that room is being "recreated" as new nonetheless.

Unknown said...

What a great idea - until I tried to "overlay". Can you please explain what you mean by overlay? According to Revit help, overlay refers to linked files, not views within a file. I hope you don't mean underlay, because you can only select from a level, not a duplicated view, and I am already using underlay to show a different set of information. I can't find a reference to overlay on Revit City either. I await your wisdom!

Anonymous said...

Create a sheet view and you can have two views overlayed there.

Ree said...

it's 2012
This post was in 2008 and yet I can't seem to find anything adressing this issue sinec. Does anyone know where I might find more current solutions to this issue. I am using MEP2011 and the Architect did use this method of placing 2 views on the sheet. Id'e really appreciate your insights. Thanks Maria
ree.espinoza@gmail.com

Anonymous said...

It is now 2014 and this is still one of the best solutions

Anonymous said...

That's because Autodesk doesn't consider this a defect. They only seem to care about people who build brand new buildings on empty lots (lots that are completely flat).

Architect said...

Thanks Steve, It is 2016 and this is the only solution for projects that have demolition. I appreciate you keeping your blog up and running.

Anonymous said...

...Now it's 2018, and there's STILL no sane "fix" for this (aka giving rooms a demolished phase parameter) from Autodesk. Unfortunately, some projects are too messy even for the overlay method. This should be a top ten on the Autodesk Wish List for sure.

Thank you for your blog. It's been a life saver over the years. I, and thousands of other people, really appreciate all your help!

Loren said...

Now in 2022:

In Revit 2022 (I'm not certain that this existed previously) A better workaround has been found with only a minor brain bender required on the user's part to allow the existing or previous phased rooms to show up in the demolition phase:

1. Create a view of the existing phase with the phase filter set to Previous & New.
2. In Visibility/Graphics Overrides (In your view template if you will have multiple demo views), go to the Filters tab. At the bottom, click on the box Edit/New to modify document filters.
3. Create a new Rule-based Filter for each new construction phase of your project, calling it Demolition, or Demolition-Phase 1... (Make sure you have the new Filter set to Define rules).
4. Check every category that you may have items to demolish. (Some categories can't be added because they aren't phase specific)
5. Filter Rules: AND (All rules must be true), All Selected..., Phase Demolished, equals, Phase 1 (or whatever phase you are setting the filter for). Apply/OK.
6. Back at the Filters tab, Add your Demolition filter. Set your overrides in Project/Surface & Cut to show all of your demo items correctly in the view.

Remember: You will want to create a view template set for each phase & view type needed. Each view will be set to the existing or previous phase, allowing the correct rooms to show.