The model we'll be using for the next several chapters can be downloaded from the book's companion web page, www.sybex.com/go/masteringrevit2010. Called "The Foundation ch17," it was part of a design competition for a university alumni facility and was created by BNIM Architects. The building is approximately 46,000 square feet and comprises office space, meeting areas, and multipurpose space spread out over three floors. It is located at a major university in the Midwestern United States (see Figures 17.1 and 17.2). Under a leaseback agreement, the building will be owned by its builder rather than the university—hence you will need to calculate rentable area.

Figure 17.1. Perspective view of the Foundation model.

Figure 17.2. Another view of the Foundation model.

We recommend doing a few things to familiarize yourself with this model:

In this Foundation model you will find many preestablished 3D views, as well as some sections and generic plan views. Sheets have been started and views placed on those sheets. A structural grid, elevations, and the primary building materials have all been defined. Based on the plans, you can get a clear idea of what the building program is and how the spaces are organized. At this stage in a project workflow, you'll often need to take a short timeout from design work and do some program verification and evaluation, with the goal of creating an initial cost per square foot assessment. To do that, you will first create area plans for the Foundation's total and rentable areas and then create schedules of materials so you can check costs against some square foot assumptions. This is where we'll begin with this model.

For the purpose of program verification, you need to establish how area values are calculated and represented. The simplest method is to use room tags, which can report room area, but you'll quickly see the limitations of that approach. Room tags only report the carpet area of the room and the calculated room surface does not take into account walls. For the feasibility study in this chapter's example, you'll need to create area plans for both total area and rentable area. Then we'll show you how to add areas and area tags manually.

The room tag shown in Figure 17.3 has been placed in the model and is tagging a room. This is used to label the room and its surface. The surface value or the value expressed in square feet (SF) on the room tag is the usable area within the room, sometimes referred to as the carpet area.

Figure 17.3. Room area as a property reported in the room tag.

Revit calculates this area by finding all of the entities that touch the floor bounding a space. As you can see from the thick outline of the room in Figure 17.3, it does not include things like the area below the column (at the upper left) or other objects that penetrate the space, giving you a truly usable floor area. Later in this chapter, we will discuss how to schedule those areas so you can report them in a way that they are all visible at the same time.

While this is certainly a useful feature, it does not accommodate calculation of the precise areas you will need to verify your program or perform any cost take-offs.

Area plans are views of the model used to calculate the areas of your model according to various calculation standards. Some of the standards for area calculations are as follows:

Revit allows you to choose from two predefined area schemes, or it gives you the option to create your own scheme based on standard area calculation variables.

All area- and room-related tools are available on the Home tab (Figure 17.4).

Figure 17.4. Room and Area tools panel located on the Home tab.

To add or modify the area settings, on the Home tab click the arrow in the Room and Area panel to expand it. From the expanded menu, select Area and Volume Computations. The Area and Volume Computations dialog box shown in Figure 17.5 will appear.

Figure 17.5. The Area and Volume Computations dialog box, with the Computations tab displayed.

The Computations tab allows you to change how the areas and volumes are calculated in the model. Here you can set how areas are calculated relative to the wall geometry (wall finish versus wall core, for example).

The Area Schemes tab, shown in Figure 17.6, lets you add different schemes to calculate room areas, allowing you to calculate multiple area types.

In the sample Foundation model, you first need to establish the gross area per floor of the building. To do this, begin by adding an area plan to the model.

Figure 17.6. The Area Schemes tab of the Area and Volume Computations dialog box.

Creating a Rentable Area Plan

Now that you have defined the Gross Area and have a good idea of what the floor plate sizes are, you can move on to getting a better understanding of the building program. For the program verification, you need to figure out the rentable area for each of the spaces so you can see how well you fared against the program supplied by the client for this project. Using the same process described earlier for the gross building areas, you can make rentable area plans for the building. Repeating the technique described earlier but selecting the Rentable option, you'll create a new view in the Project Browser: Area Plans (Rentable).

You'll notice that in displaying rentable areas, Revit draws the area boundary on the inside of the exterior walls (unlike with the gross area, where the lines were drawn on the outside of the exterior walls), but it also draws boundaries down the centerline of the interior walls. All of this happens automatically—all that is left for you to do is to verify the lines and make sure you have them where you need them.

For this exercise, you'll want to modify the results slightly from what Revit provides by default. For the program and client on this project, you're not going to calculate core areas (areas around the elevator and stair cores) as part of the rentable area, so you'll need to adjust the area boundary lines around the core walls to reflect this and turn the many spaces into one area.

Automating Area Calculations during Design

When Revit creates area boundary lines, those lines by default are locked to the walls on which they are created. This is a helpful feature: when your design changes and walls are relocated, the area boundaries automatically update as well, keeping your area plans always up to date.

In the case of the restroom core, start by deleting the lines that separate the restrooms from the janitorial closet (see Figure 17.9).

Figure 17.9. Modifying an area plan.

As you delete area lines, you'll more than likely get the warning message shown in Figure 17.10. This message tells you that you have removed the boundary between two areas, and Revit is asking what to do with them. Before answering this question, let's discuss what "areas" means in Revit.

Figure 17.10. Area warning message.

In the context of Revit, areas are elements, just like walls, doors, and furniture. They are selectable, have properties, and can be scheduled. When selected, they will highlight in yellow and appear within the space as a box with an X through it, as shown in Figure 17.11.

Because areas are elements, you can tag them. An area tag reflects the properties of the element it is tagging. The tag itself is only an annotation.

Figure 17.11. Areas are selectable elements with properties.

At this point, you might be asking yourself, "Where did those areas come from? I didn't insert them." The answer is that Revit generated them automatically when you created the area plans. This is the essential difference between rooms and areas. By default, when you create a new area plan, it creates an area element within all of the closed area boundaries, so as long as there are no adjustments for you to make, it is only necessary for you to tag and label the areas.

In this case, you needed to make some changes to what Revit provided by default and now have more areas than you have spaces. So let's jump back to the warning dialog box. You've been given two choices: delete all but one of the areas or click OK and accept having multiple areas in the space. Both of these options have viable workflows. If, as in our case, you do not plan to subdivide the room again, you can click Delete Area(s) to delete the extra areas and continue with your work. If you had deleted these lines with the intent of drawing new ones in a different location within this boundary, you could click OK, knowing you would have redundant areas for a short time until you finish this part of the model.

Clicking Delete Area(s) deletes the redundant areas and gives you a single core area for the restrooms shown in Figure 17.12.

Figure 17.12. One area is used for the restroom core.

Since you don't want to count any of the core areas, you'll need to move the boundary lines from the centerlines of the walls to the inside face of those walls. Because the area boundaries surrounding the restrooms are locked to the walls themselves, you need to delete these lines and redraw them in desired locations. By now, you'll be used to the warning message about redundant areas, and in this case you know that you want to keep the areas and click OK instead of the Delete Area(s) button.

To draw the new area boundary lines, use the Area Boundary Line tool described earlier to add the new area lines to surround the core. If you choose the default Pick option, Revit will automatically choose the line location based on the rules established for that area plan type. Since we specifically want the area lines on the outside of the core, it is best to draw them manually. So, instead of the Pick tool, select the Line tool from the Draw panel on the Place Area Boundary tab. Very quickly, our new core boundary will look like Figure 17.13.

Figure 17.13. Use the Area Boundary Line tool to revise the core boundary.

Creating Complex Area Plans

In some cases, such as General Services Administration (GSA) projects, there is a need to create and maintain a series of possible area plans. All these additional calculations can slow file performance, depending on the complexity of the building. One way around this is to make a separate project file for the area plans. By linking the building model to a separate file with area plans, you cannot improve model performance, but you can create the area plans quickly without interfering with other workflows.

To copy area boundaries between floors, select them and copy them to the clipboard using the following steps.

Figure 17.16. Area and tag graphics.

But what happens if you want to show this information in a tabular, spreadsheet format? Often you'll need to share information of this kind in a table format. Because Revit is based on a bidirectional information model, it can do all of these calculations and update tasks for you in real time. All you need to do is set up a view type in the model that allows you to look at the data in a list format instead of showing the information graphically. For this, use schedules.

The process of creating a new area schedule is best demonstrated with an example. Take the following steps to create a new rentable area schedule for the Foundation model:

You will see a series of tabs that allow you to specify the schedule's graphic appearance and choose exactly what data you would like to show. Figure 17.17 shows the dialog box for the rentable area schedule. As each grouping of elements within Revit is unique, the list of possible schedule values changes accordingly.

Figure 17.17. Rentable area scheduling options.

Each tab controls different ways to sort and view the data within a schedule. Here is a basic explanation of their functions:

The following example walks through the different options in the New Schedule dialog box while you create a new wall schedule.

In this example, you'll create the schedule, filter out all but the concrete walls, and calculate the volume of recycled content in the walls based on the assumption that you're using 15 percent recycled content in all the concrete you pour on this project.

Now that you've created the schedule for the program, you need to put it on a sheet. As you've figured out by now, schedules work like any other view: to place the schedule on a sheet, drag and drop it from the Project Browser onto the sheet you wish to place it on. One of the nice things about schedules is that you can actually place them on multiple sheets and they will always provide the most current information.

We want to create a set of sheets you could provide to the client that demonstrates the program for each floor in both graphic and list format. When finished, you should have an 11×17 presentation sheet that looks like Figure 17.24, with a floor plan and schedule for each floor.

Now, there are two different ways to modify the shape of the schedule directly from the sheet. The first one way is by dragging the triangles that appear on the upper portion of the schedule header. Note that there is one blue triangle for each column. By dragging the triangle left or right, you can resize the width of each column. You will notice some of our longer room names have wrapped to the next line. Grab the left triangle and drag it to the right to lengthen the Name field. Note that this also shortens the schedule by removing the wrapped lines.

Real World Scenario: Keeping Building Area Schedules Updated

To most clients, building areas are a critical part of the development pro forma. (The pro forma is a document, typically a spreadsheet, that outlines the financial goals of the project or development.) In practice, you will create area plans that coincide with how the owner needs areas computed for its calculations. You keep these in a schedule, allowing owners to make regular updates to the building areas so they can compare them to the current pro forma. Since you can keep the schedules dynamically updated, you can set this up once and know that the areas will always be up to date.

Now that you've generated a schedule of spaces, let's look at some of the other advantages of using schedules in the design process. Since Revit is a parametric modeler, all parameters are linked to elements within the model. You might notice that at the top of your schedule, the label is simply labeled Area. This is easy to change.

If we were not using BIM as a modeler, it would become tedious to locate these areas so they could be properly labeled. In Revit, there are two ways to rename these spaces. First, if you know what the areas are supposed to be, you can either type the name in or select it from the list of already used names. However, what happens when you need to locate the room on the plan before making changes to it? This is easy to do within Revit. By selecting the area name in the schedule, you'll get useful tools in the Quantities tab of the Modify Schedule tab.

Figure 17.26. Use the Highlight in Model option to point to the location of elements highlighted in the schedule.

This is a powerful tool because it can be used to locate any of the elements within the Revit model directly from any schedule. Not only do Revit schedules report information about elements in the project, but they can also be used to control elements. If you decide to exchange one wall type for another, you can do so by clicking in the schedule—under wall types, for example. A drop-down menu appears, listing all available types currently in the model, so you can choose the type you want. Again, this automatically changes the instance of the wall to another wall type in all views in which the wall is present.

When you create a new schedule, you're presented with a number of format and selection options on the Appearance tab of the Schedule Properties dialog box. These let you set the font style and text alignment and decide how to organize and filter the data for display in the schedule. Let's explore the options in the Schedule Properties dialog box.

On the Appearance tab (see Figure 17.30), you'll see the options to change the font styles, gridline visibility, and other variables for header and body text of the schedule.

Figure 17.30. On the Appearance tab, you can control font, size, and header visibility.

However, the change you need to make to the appearance of the data in the schedule is found on the Formatting tab of Schedule Properties dialog box. For our purposes in our cost per square foot schedule, select Cost per Sq Ft and make the following adjustments:

Figure 17.31. The Format dialog box.

You also have the ability to add headers to your schedule. By selecting the Headers check box, you can group them under another title.

Figure 17.33. Grouped headers.

New Options in Revit 2010

When you are creating a schedule of elements that need naming and you click on any name in the schedule (as example open the Gross Area BOMA schedule) you will notice three new options on the Modify Schedule/Quantities tab.

The three options are as follows:

Show

In the room schedule, includes rooms that are not placed or enclosed in the building model. Those rooms will be marked as Not Placed in the schedule and the model.

Hide

Filters the schedule so that it only includes rooms that are placed or enclosed in the building model.

Isolate

Filters the schedule to list only rooms that are not placed or enclosed in the building model.