Room Tags and Leaders

For many years I wished room tags would turn on a leader IF I dragged a room tag outside of the room's boundary. I got my wish in Revit 2023.1. I also got more than I wished for which is not that uncommon unfortunately, thus the saying, "Careful what you wish for".

When we are moving rooms around things go awry. If we drag a room to a new location the tag turns on the leader instead of bringing the tag along with it like it would for other tagged elements. When I move a room that already has a tag with a leader the leader will update and point to the new room location. However, if I decide to remove the leader the tag returns to the original room location, not its new home. I have to turn on the leader, to wake it up, so it will point to the new room location. Then I have to turn off the leader to get the room tag to jump to its new home. Here's an image of the sequence I describe above.

I should be careful to select the room tag and move it with the room. That doesn't contend with all the other possible views that have tags referencing the room though.

The documentation review and cleanup we have to do when rooms are relocated is a necessary part of the design process, with all the potential changes that can occur. In the past warnings were generated when a room and its tag(s) were not reconciled. We could then deal with those warnings by activating the Warning dialog and clicking the Move to Room button. When such a warning occurred while opening a model we could resolve them all at that time too.

Yes, we'd still have to review and fine tune them most likely but all the tags related to the room would at least be in the room. We can also choose to delete all the tags in a view and use Tag All Untagged. What if most of the room tags were positioned nicely with and without leaders? We'd lose all that work and have to do it over again.

It's my opinion that dragging a room's tag outside a room should be treated as different from dragging a room outside its boundaries and we should have a different result for each.

• Drag a room tag away from its room and turning on the leader is cool and it should remain view specific.
• Drag a room (to within new boundaries) should leave whatever condition is true for all of its room tags but move them along with the room proportionately (see next).
• Drag a room and if there is no leader the tag should follow the room and not turn on a leader. If the leader is active then it should maintain its position relative to the room but move along with it.
• Delete a room and the associated tags should be deleted too (which is what happens). We can then place that room elsewhere and tag as required.

Documentation review and adjustments are unavoidable but these actions should mitigate how extensive the task might be as well as be more consistent with what I'd expect to happen when I move rooms around.

Move to Room - Element ID - Review Warnings

If we use Review Warnings often enough, and we should be, we'll run into this warning eventually.

Check the item and Click Show to have Revit try to find a view to show it in. Once it is selected we can either drag the Tag where it is suppose to go or Click the Show Related Warnings button on the ribbon to show the dedicated warning it has again.

When this warning is isolated like this the dialog includes the Move to Room button. An aside, is it amusing or worrisome that Revit seems to think the best way to fix warnings is to delete the offending element (via Delete Checked)? Regardless, Move to Room will resolve the issue whether we can see where the tag is meant to be or not.

Another way to tackle it from the Review Warnings dialog is to make a note of the Element ID referenced in the warning. Now we can then use the Select by ID tool. Enter the ID value and click OK.

This will select the tag, even if we're not in a view that it can be seen in, and then we can use the Show Related Warnings button on the ribbon again followed by the Move to Room button.

Revit 2017 - Space Naming Utility Update - It is Available Now

The other day I poked Autodesk about this feature. As it turns out it is deployed slightly more automatically. The catch is that the latest iteration of Autodesk Desktop Application (I'm going to call it AdA) must be used to see these updates.

My first problem was that AdA wasn't working. It just displayed a blank white screen. I also noticed that there was no Autodesk (A icon) in the system tray for an active service. Eventually I used the wisdom of The IT Crowd; turned it off and on again. That restarted the service and AdA started working, displaying information.

The second problem was there were no updates to choose from. I logged out of A360 and closed its system tray instance. I also logged out of A360 via Revit, since I had it open. I closed the instance of AdA in the system tray too. I had a browser open looking at my Manage portal. I thought that maybe my access settings were wrong. I logged out and closed the browser too. Then I logged back into A360 and launched AdA...voila, updates appeared. It made no difference earlier that I used the right-click Check for New Updates option for AdA in the system tray repeatedly.

Once I got it working again this appeared in AdA.

This a tiny bit better.

People will still have to pay attention to be alerted to download and install it. If they don't have enough control over their computer they'll still have to get EyeTee involved. I'll have to see if I notice more people have it installed in the coming months.

Once it has been downloaded and installed you don't have to rely on AdA to pass it along to others in the office though. You can just capture the downloaded installation file from the location defined when you downloaded and installed it the first time (C:\Autodesk by default).

It is also a bit tedious that every one of the updates is a separate installation; must be run and completed before starting another. If you attempt to run them while another is running you'll run into messages about something already being in process.

By the way, when you run Revit after installing all the available updates you may be greeted by "Security - Unsigned Add-in" warnings. Nice...

I've got my Space Naming Utility! Do you? I hope so!

...and thanks to Paul Aubin for the heads up!

Group Exclude Element and Rooms

We can use the Exclude Element feature on the parts of the model we assign to groups, like this for example (a workstation with chairs).

We can also include rooms in groups. Just be careful if you use Exclude Element on the room(s). If you do you'll see a hint of a room when you pre-select (highlight) the group but you won't find it among the rooms in a room schedule...because it/they is/are excluded.

A potential gotcha for users.

Doors and a Sliver of a Room

Following on my post yesterday regarding Doors and Rooms, if you happen to have a room that is NOT at least 14 inches deep you will find that Revit is unwilling to report either its To Room or From Room parameter. If you've been reading this blog a long time you may remember a post I wrote which included a short video that mentions this issue?

A room like pictured below will work because it is 14" deep.

However the room pictured below won't be recognized and the corresponding parameters will be blank, in this case the To Room parameters.

If you are familiar with the Room Calculation Point (I call it RcP) feature it can be used to influence this issue.

Keep in mind it will also negatively affect which room you can regard as the To Room, if not for this door specifically any other doors that need the opposite behavior.

The Room Calculation Point (RcP) feature was added to doors to provide a way to change how the To Room assignment is controlled. Originally the To Room value for a door was (still is without the RcP being enabled) decided based on the side of the wall the door swings in toward.

There are doors which must swing out of a room but still belong to the room they swing from. For example a classroom's door (like shown in the images above) often swings outward to the corridor (often set into an alcove), for exiting requirements usually. However we still think of and document the door as belonging to the classroom, not the corridor.

If the door is placed so that the panel swings into the classroom (using stock doors) then the To Room parameter is assigned to the classroom. If we then flip its orientation so the panel swings out of the classroom the To Room value remains associated with the classroom (check out the post I mention above for a video of this behavior).

The RcP feature changes that behavior to alter the To Room value to follow the flip of the door orientation regardless, which means in my example, and the images above, the To Room value would change to reference the Corridor instead.

May you have sliverless designs...

Doors and Rooms and Rooms and Doors

In the year 2016 we find Revit is still utterly clueless about the relationship between doors and rooms. We have this quirky documentation habit of using a room's number to derive a door number, not to mention it's room name to define its location in a building. I know they've noticed because each door has a From Room and To Room parameter.

Recently Elon Musk and his SpaceX team sent a rocket to space and returned the first stage to an upright position back on earth. A feat engineers have long dreamed of accomplishing.

Yet after 15 years Revit continues to rely on third party applications to bridge this feature crevasse.

Don't get me started on the Space Naming Utility being a separate application...grumble grumble...

Revit 2016 - IFC Links and Rooms

A linked IFC file can provide room boundaries.

Revit 2016 - Place Rooms Automatically

If you've seen a demo of Revit MEP and Spaces or if you have used Spaces yourself then you may already be familiar with the new Rooms version of Place Spaces Automatically...called( shocking I know) Place Rooms Automatically.

This will create new rooms in all room-bounding elements on the same level with one click. It's like a shotgun blast of rooms, fill all the rooms. You'll find it on the Architecture tab > Room and Area panel > click Rooms then a button for Place Rooms Automatically will appear on the Modify|Place Room tab.

All the room-bounding elements that can define a room will end up with a room created. All the Rooms will share whatever Room Name is entered in the Properties panel when you start the tool. Their number will be increased incrementally from whatever the next available number is.

Practically speaking the Spaces version works better than this one because engineers need to create spaces where nearly all of the rooms are in the model (usually a linked model) already and the Space Naming Utility can speed up matching Space name and number to Room name and number.

If you are careful to create a list of rooms for your project in a schedule prior to having walls or at least at roughly the same time as walls are getting sketched this tool won't really help. If you import rooms from a list in Excel it won't speed up their placement because it will just blast new rooms into any valid room bounding area. It won't create rooms where rooms you've already placed are though.

If you're looking for a quick way to make rooms and don't care about naming (or other data) yet then this tool may be perfect for YOU!

Spaces instead of Areas

Area plans have their quirks. They can only exist in their own special area plan views. They've got rules and quite often people want to break those rules. If we need to do that then we end up sketching boundaries a lot. Areas don't know anything about Rooms either. That means we're probably going to have to enter some data twice if we must use Areas pretending to be Rooms, all to document fussy Room area requirements

If that's the situation we find ourselves in...do we have access to MEP's Spaces? If so we could consider...this...

The plan in this image is an architectural model (yeah really simple mock-up). Is it obvious what I've done? I've got Room tags reporting area only as well as Space tags reporting a little different area value along with Room name and number. It also has a Color Scheme applied to Room departments.

It's also a separate model I called Area Calcs. I linked the Architecture model into Area Calcs. The Room tags I mentioned a moment ago are actually Room tags, tagging each room's area in the link. For Spaces however I opted to just sketch Space Separators over the linked model since I need to identify different parts of the room's boundaries to calculate area anyway. A Space isn't different from a Room when we rely on walls for their boundary, in how they calculate area at least. Sketching our lines gives us complete control over the results without dealing with Area Rules.

A Space Separator is a linestyle (like Area Boundary and Room Separator) and I changed the appearance to a much thicker burgundy line so it stands out against the linked file's plan. I ended up applying transparency to Walls too. Once I defined the boundaries I needed I used the Space tool and opted for Place Spaces Automatically. This creates a Space wherever one is possible within the boundaries I've created. This is done floor by floor, assuming there is more than one floor.

Just in case you weren't aware of this already, a linked file has a Room Bounding option.

If this option is selected then Place Spaces Automatically creates Spaces wherever Revit finds Rooms and valid boundaries even where there aren't any rooms (note my interior design comment later). Since I need to define room area differently that's not going to help me now. It's intended to speed up the process for engineers while they are preparing their project to start work.

Now that I've got Spaces I can take advantage of a separate tool called Space Naming Utility (SNU). It is crazy that this tool is still a separate installation but it is. At least it isn't locked away in subscription only access anymore. I keep hoping it will show up inside Revit in the next release.

Sorry I digress, it (SNU) will read (from the linked file) each room's name and number and pass it to the equivalent Space's name and number.

One risk here is Revit might not figure out which Room is supposed to be related to a Space. However, if we examine the properties of a Space we'll see right away whether Revit can see a room relationship or not. Plus any Spaces that don't update will be a clue or at least identify a Room that hasn't been filled out with information properly yet. I'm hoping to apply the 80/20 rule here and win.

If I want to use Fill Patterns too, like below, I can create a separate view that only shows a customized Color Scheme that applies Fill Patterns instead of a solid color fill. Then I just stack (overlay) this view on top of the other floor plan on a sheet. I just need to make sure the view is using Wireframe so it doesn't mask the floor plan.

I can even add a separate Color Scheme legend to the other view that's stacked over the floor plan.

Choosing this route might come down to how I answer these questions:

• Do I have Spaces? (Are they part of the Revit version I use?)
• Which is worse, sketching Space Separators or Area Boundaries?
• Which is more fun, using Space Naming Utility or manually updating Area data to match relevant Room data?
• If I know a Dynamo/API programmer then maybe I can improve the Room to Area process instead?

This popped into my head last evening while I was mulling over a client's email. I've suggested using Spaces in the past to help deal with linked interior design models so this time around it didn't seem quite as crazy to me as it did the first time.

Want to poke around the files (Revit 2015) I used for this post?

Area Plans
Area Calcs

Your mileage may vary...

Deleting Spaces or Rooms in Schedules

Want to delete all the Spaces or Rooms you see in a schedule? Take these steps:

• Scroll the bottom of the schedule
• In one fluid sequence click to select the last row (left mouse button) and...
• Drag your cursor UP until it is over the ribbon (yes, beyond the schedule)
• Let go of the left button
• Click Delete

Revit will prompt with a total number of elements that will be deleted. It should match however many was listed in the grand total. Wherever you put your cursor in the schedule and drag up to the ribbon, Revit will let you delete all rooms from there to the top of the schedule even though it is off screen

If you try the same thing from the top down you only get as many rows as are visible in the schedule window.

2014 Revit OpEd

Room Area Net vs Gross

When it comes to documenting room area we have one global setting called Room Area Computation, found in the Area and Volume Calculations dialog.

We get to choose from four options that affect the entire project's room area calculations: Wall Finish, Wall Center, Wall core Layer and Wall Core Center. Wall Finish tends to work for net area calculations while Wall Center works better for gross area.

When we need to be able to show both net and gross one approach we can take is to use Area elements and Area plans. Unfortunately area and room objects are totally ignorant of one another. That means an area plan using area elements is NOT a room so we've got a lot of redundant data entry to deal with. Another way to deal with it is to print sheets with the Room Area Computation set for one condition and then switch to the other setting for other sheets intended for that condition. We'll need some "redundant" views with tags etc. but perhaps it will provide the necessary differences required.

Another possibility if we are using Revit, the version that includes all the disciplines tools, is to take advantage of MEP Spaces. They ignore the Room Area Computation setting, they only reference Wall Finish. This means I can create a space for each room, yes some redundancy. I can use the Space Naming Utility (subscription extension) to pass the name and number of the related room to the space name and number parameters so I don't have to enter the redundant information. The end result could look something like this, where I use a plan focused on spaces and another focused on rooms to show both net and gross area calculations.

This nexst image is Gross Area using Wall Centerline as the Room Area Computation settings.

This image is the Net Area using Spaces instead, leaving the Room Area Computation the same as for the above.

This is using Area elements instead matching names and numbers manually. The API might be able to be harness to resolve this to some degree.

Something to consider.

Change a Level Association for a Room

I read a wish at AUGI asking to be able to change the associated level of a room via the Properties Palette. My initial reaction was, "Yeah I can see that".

As I thought about it a bit more I believe that the process has been limited to using Delete and then placing the room again or using Cut to Clipboard and then using Paste elsewhere because simply changing the level relationship in properties does not ensure that Revit or the room will find boundaries.

If there are no boundaries to be found Revit would generate a warning and the room would have a record against it in Review Warnings. To resolve that the room would either have to be re-positioned or walls would need to be created to provide the boundaries. If we compare that effort with deleting the room from a plan view and placing it again on a different level it doesn't seem like much difference to me.

In general I think it would be nice to have more flexibility to alter element properties via the properties palette. The context we often need to appreciate how they work in the model may not be represented by a list in the palette though. Changing the value might be easier but it might not be less work overall.

Where did these Rooms Come From?

When you examine the Options Bar while the Rooms command is active you may find something like this image.

Rooms in that list are "Not Placed" but we (someone) may have created them by placing a room and then deleting them later. They could also be left over from when the project template was created, rooms that were created along the way but not eliminated before turning the template over to the project teams. Rooms are to be managed with schedules. We have final control over the reality of a room there. If we don't want them in the list on the Options Bar we can either place them where they should go in the model or delete the room's row in the schedule.

Deleting a room in a floor plan does not remove the room from the Revit database permanently. Deleting one from a schedule does. This allows us to move a room to another location or another floor without recreating the information. I can delete a room on the second floor (in a plan view) and then use the "Not Placed" record of this room to put it where it should go on a different floor. If I decide I don't really need a room I can just open the schedule and delete it for good.

For some background, Revit allows us to create a list of rooms prior to any actual walls defining where they could go. Imagine having a meeting with the client and they give you a list of rooms they want or need. You can create a basic room schedule with number, name, and area for example. Then each time you click the New button in the Row panel Revit generates a new "Not Placed" room. Repeat and fill in information until all of the project's program information is entered. Now as users create walls the room are "waiting" to be placed where they should go.

By the way the same things are true for the Area and Space elements.

Choosing a Room Name

The Properties Palette lets us make some choices before placing elements that in the past were not possible. For example we can decide what elevation mechanical equipment or air terminals should be first. When we place rooms, without bothering to fill out a room schedule in advance, we can decide what name to use before we place one. In the image I've changed the room name to Office.

If we need to place several rooms that use the same name all we have to do now is type it into the room's name parameter within the Properties Palette. If you don't like the name you see when you place a room later, just check the Properties Palette. Revit remembers the last value you put there.

Remember that you can easily place rooms that are defined in a schedule but not yet placed in the model, just check the list!

Linked Files and Delete Rooms

When you are opening a project with linked files (or reloading one) if you see a dialog giving you the option to Delete Rooms, please don't click the Delete Rooms button. Please!

Nobody will be happy with you if you do, not even you. It would be wonderful if Revit stopped offering the ultimate in self-destructive options in warning dialogs. Too often Revit's solution to a problem is a delete button. As the knight's in Monty Python's Holy Grail movie said, "Run away, run away!"

Tag All is Faster

No kidding you say. When rooms are involved the room tag feature is painful because it has to query all rooms in the view and turn on the special highlighting mode first. You can beat this if you select rooms first and use Tag All instead. You'll get much faster results, more responsive. That assumes you can effectively select them first.

Room Separation Lines - Agida for MEP?

Via email the other night, he writes...(edited a little)

We use Revit MEP. I’m doing some research on Room separation lines, as to how and why architects use them, and when is appropriate. The problem I am consistently running into is that room separation lines divide spaces as well. These divisions, while relevant to the architectural model, are ruining the possibilities of creating gbXML files without extensive work on the part of the engineer to remove the room separation lines, and then repair the damage done to the room names and numbers.

For example, imagine open library stacks with dedicated study areas. In the architectural file, they used room separation lines as a rectangle to create rooms and tags for these study areas. They were also used to define a corridor along one side of the stacks (but still in the same open area). For MEP these are really all part of one big room. We won't need to add dedicated air terminals to these areas, nor special lighting just for these areas. So any of the analysis tools in Revit using spaces will be wrong, as most of them use an average over the entire area, (CFM/SF, Average illumination levels/SF etc..). Further, we are unable to accurately or efficiently create a gbXML file for use in Green Building Studio, HAP, Trace, etc. This complication is greatly hampering many of the benefits of using Revit for engineers.

I’m not saying that room separation lines should never be used, there are perfectly good places to use them. Rooms or spaces that are actually going to be treated as a separate room, not a room with in a room.

I initially thought that architects were using these (in addition to the obvious) to check for programming requirements, and code compliance for areas and such but it turns out a lot of architects are using the area tool for those purposes. They were however using them for the room finish schedules.

From a program standpoint, I was surprised to find out that while room separation lines can be assigned to a workset and that workset can be unloaded (through a linked file) from the MEP model. However the Room Separations still existed. We just couldn’t see them. And even if that did work, we engineers would still need to correct/edit the space names and numbers manually now since the spaces wouldn’t match the rooms (Space naming tool wouldn't work).

He closed wondering if I could offer any advice, ideas or a solution.

The essence of my response via email:

HVAC Zones are meant to combine spaces into larger more coherent collections for engineering purposes. The example given above for the library is pretty common place, need to know how much area is dedicated to carrels as well as a corridor within the open space of the library. From the HVAC engineer's perspective irrelevant but not from the client's or the architect trying to satisfy them.

If room separation lines are "off the table" then the architect would end up using something else like actual walls and hiding them. They might end up asking Autodesk to make more elements room defining? Area plans could help document such things but then floor plans would be "ignorant" of what these kinds of "areas" are, no tagging possible, just "dumb text". Not ideal either. My greatest concern about room separation lines is when they are used as "band-aids" to try to fix room area issues, where rooms aren't bounded properly and not generating area values.

Regarding the workset comments. Worksets unload information but that doesn't mean Revit isn't aware of the elements that are assigned to the unloaded workset. When we unload a workset the walls are still there and that means so are Room Separation lines.

Any comments from readers??

Room Name Alternates

This is a repost of one I wrote back in December 2008. It came up again recently in a question via email and I noticed it's a pretty old post so I thought I'd plug it again.

Sometimes a name is just too much, too long, it just doesn't fit in a room. The stock Name parameter for a room is easy, it's already there waiting for us to us. When we use abbreviations in this parameter we end up with some full names and some abbreviations. An abbreviation of "T." for Toilet might be fine on a plan view but it is less than stellar in a schedule. We could use another stock parameter like comments to store an abbreviation instead but that subverts its usefulness for actual comments.

Shared Parameters to the rescue!

I've written several posts about shared parameters in the past so I won't go into making them again in this post (see bottom). This is what you need to do to get a new parameter working in a project.

Create a shared parameter (called Abbreviation for example)

Create a room tag family that uses your shared parameter, save the Family and load the family into your project

Add a Project Parameter (Settings > Project Parameter) using your shared parameter too. Assign the parameter to the Room Category

Use the parameter in your rooms, set-up a schedule and tag your rooms with the appropriate tag.

This gives the best of both worlds. Supply abbreviations for names that are unruly and don't bother for reasonable names. A schedule will make it easy to define either and those that don't have abbreviations don't "need" them. Just make sure you use the correct tag to display the value you really want people to see. You could also use this technique to provide a room name in a second language, if necessary.

I've posted a revised copy of my Egress Example project that contains a working example of the shared parameter, tag and schedule.

This post Shared Parameter File: A Little Clarification provides a full list of the posts I've made in the past on the subject of Shared Parameters.

Room Renumbering - Autodesk Labs Plug-in of the Month

Autodesk Labs blog announced this yesterday: Room Renumbering Plug-in for Revit

This is one of those that may make you want to write, "It took ten years to get this?", or "It's about time!". Whichever emotion it evokes it is available and you don't have to learn how to write code yourself to make it. You can however use it to help you learn since the source code is made available for the each Plug-in of the Month. Here's what was written on the Labs blog:

...snip
Historically the ADN (Autodesk Developer Network) plugins of the month have been dominated by AutoCAD. This year we are keen on featuring plugins from ADN members who write them for some of our other applications like Inventor and Revit. So it should come as no surprise that this month's plugin is related to Revit.

Download RoomRenumbering for Revit 2011 via Autodesk Labs

Recall that each plugin includes the source code so prospective developers can see just how easy extending the functionality of our design applications actually is. Provding the source code also allows users to modify or extend the functionality to suit their particular needs. Each plugin includes a read me with all of the skinny related to the plugin. This month's read me mentions:

This plugin can be used to renumber or re-assign the "Number" properties of rooms in the order that the user selects while avoiding duplicated assignments. The command allows the user to specify the starting number with the option of the pre and suffix added.

This plugin has been tested with Revit Architecture 2011 and requires the .NET Framework 3.5. A pre-built version of the plugin has been provided which should work on 32- and 64-bit Windows systems. The plugin has not been tested with all Revit verticals, but should work. The source code has been provided as a Visual Studio 2008 project containing C# code (not required to run the plugin).

The Read Me also covers how to install and uninstall, how to use the plugin, known issues, and even includes a reference for further reading.

Let's make a deal. Please renumber some rooms and let us know what you think via EMAIL. In return, we'll keep the plugins coming. Thanks to Senior Developer Consultant, Adam Nagy, who developed this plugin.
...snip

I downloaded, installed and played with it for a bit. It's very simple assuming you follow the readme and get it installed correctly. Once installed you start the tool, enter a few values at the most, and click on rooms. Here's a video I posted if you'd like to see it work first?

Off Topic - Hotel Rooms

I've stayed in a few over the years. Between traveling as a roadie, theater technician, convention services and now consulting I'm not sure I want to know just how many. I'm not an expert on hotel rooms or what most people expect from them but I do know what I like. I'm not after extravagance. My typical choice is Hampton Inn or Hilton Garden Inn or Courtyard Inn by Marriott. They are consistent, have a meal in the morning, free internet and almost always reasonably fresh/new. Two things will ruin a hotel stay faster than anything for me, the shower and the bed. If I can't sleep or have a nice shower in the morning it's hard to get going. Why this post now?

The night before, in the Boston area (Lexington to be exact), I stayed at a hotel called Aloft by Starwood.

It's a new hotel that features interesting design elements giving it an upscale feel at a mid-range price. Overall I liked the hotel but for some reason this one poked at me repeatedly causing me to think harder about it and its design.

To start with, take the front entrance, two automatic sliders that are offset, from one another, so you have to enter at an angle. The first door slides left from the right side and the second door slides right from the left side. The openings are mirrored from each other but their overall width is aligned and the same. Cool if the angle pointed you at the front desk but it points you toward the lounge. I also would hate to be in a hurry out of the hotel in the event of a fire since I'd be inclined to run out the first slider and head straight into the fixed glass of the second, ouch...my nose!

Once I got to my room the door featured a sliderless key system, just touch the key to the "fob" on the door. At least I don't have to figure out which side of the key to slide. Inside I found the room turned ninety degrees compared with most hotel rooms, the bed facing the exterior wall. The appearance was quite modern and nice. Note the window at the left side of this picture. It is frosted glass and looks into the shower stall.

My focus turned to the windows since I was on the ground floor. I wanted to close the shades which were operated by chains and had aluminum guide tracks at each side. It was a bit hard to reach them and unfortunately the fit and finish was pretty bad. The shades didn't stay in the track and one window's shade wouldn't completely close off the window. For exhibitionists it's no problem I suppose? I ended up climbing up on the desks to try to get them in their tracks again.

I wanted to get my phone charged up. It baffles me when I go to hotel after hotel and find they don't put a convenience outlet near the bed. Most are buried behind a bed or just far enough away that you have to put your phone across the room somewhat. In this case I was intrigued to find what was a great spot for me to plug in except it was filled up with the rooms phone charger and clock. The switches for the reading lights over the beds took up the rest of the space. I saw something underneath that kept me optimistic till I realized that it was a RJ-45 jack and empty slot for something "else". No big deal I suppose, no chance I'd use the phone so I unplugged its charger. I use my phone for my alarm clock anyway so the perfect setup for me is the iPhone ready clock/radios that some hotels are starting to use.

The new light fixtures used in hotels are terrible for a guy in his forties who needs to shave. It is as if the designers are chuckling to themselves, "yeah, let's see him try to shave in this room heh heh!" The "green" "sustainable" lamps just don't put out the color temperature I need to see with my aging eyes. The only rooms that really work for me are the ones that have the magnifying mirror with integral light. I don't need the magnification, just the concentrated light source. I muddled through it here.

The arrangement of stuff in a room is always interesting to me. When you stay in a lot of hotel rooms little stuff starts to pop out at you! The trash bin under the sink was at the end by the sink but the tissue container was at the other end. Plus the bin was right where your left toe wants to be while using the sink. The bin ought to go at the other end methinks. The placement of the refrigerator seems like an after thought, "Oh, nuts we need some place for the refrigerator, ah this'll do!"

Speaking of little stuff. I stayed at an older hotel once that had a small mound of what looked like kitty litter next to the dresser. I noticed it the second night and watched it for the rest of my stay just to see if it would get noticed by the cleaning crew. It lasted for all but the last two days of my stay (two weeks!). I also find it interesting to see when I get a bath mat or not, how many days a tissue box goes unfilled, to see how they rearrange my stuff each day in the bathroom etc. Sometimes they replace the shampoo and soap every day or every other day or not at all. It is also fun to see what cleaning stuff will get left in the room from time to time. A bottle of glass cleaner sat on my sink counter for several days one time. What an intriguing life I lead eh?

Another item, the shower. These cool shower heads that are supposed to rain on us, no thanks. Most just feel like I'm getting rained on instead of taking a shower as it is supposed to be, a nice drenching rain instead! That and reaching the shower controls, it would be nice if we could turn on the shower without getting frigid cold water on us at first.

The room included a large flat screen TV and a remote device to allow you to connect your pc or other video source into it. Shame that it doesn't include a set of cables. I don't travel with a VGA cable though I suppose others do. Not like I had any time to really use it though. If you visit the hotel site you can see some pictures of a typical room, like this one.

As a wrote earlier I liked the hotel and their staff was great. I'd stay there again but it is odd that it provoked so much thought about it and hotel rooms in general. As you were!