Chapter 13

Fine-Tuning Your Preliminary Design

The next step is to take the preliminary building design and begin some basic spatial analysis on the
Revit model. You’ll see how creating some simple schedules of building and room areas can be
used to verify program data and start some preliminary cost analysis.
In this chapter you learn about verifying program data and evaluating a project’s initial feasi-
bility. You’ll learn how to do the following:

◆

Create your own dynamic area plans

◆

Perform an initial cost estimate for the project

◆

Create a schedule of materials from the model

Preliminary Design Tools

At this point, we are going to introduce a scenario we will be building upon for the next several
chapters. As this is a Mastering book, we will not go into significant detail about how to perform
some of the more basic skills in Revit, such as how to make simple walls, floors, and roofs. Instead,
we will work off of an existing design that is more developed and build skills by adding and
extracting information from this base model. In this and the following chapters, we will take the
design and push it from a preliminary design level into a set of design documents with many of the

Figure 13.2

Another view of the
Foundation model

To get familiar with this model, we recommend doing a few things:

◆

Open the project, and in the Project Browser, choose View (All). This will give you a list of
all the views in the model and give you an opportunity to browse through them and see
what has been given focus and importance.

◆

Take a look at the generic 3D view. Spin it around a bit and kick the tires, so to speak. Take
a look at the overall building form and geometry to help acclimate yourself to the overall
design so you have a sense of direction within the building.

◆

Browse through any sheets that have been set up. This will not only give you an idea of what
the building looks like, it will tell you what stage the project is in and where the focus has
been given to date.
In the Foundation model, you will find many preestablished 3D views as well as some sections
and generic plan views. A set of sheets have been started, and views placed on those sheets. A struc-
tural grid, elevations, and primary building materials have all been defined. Based on the plans,
you can get a fairly clear idea of what the building program is and how the spaces are organized.
At this stage in a project workflow, we need to take a short time out of design and do some program
verification and evaluation. Our goal is to make an initial cost per sq. ft. assessment. To do that, we

the room tag

Revit will calculate this area by finding all of the entities that touch the floor bounding a space
and report back that square footage. As you can see in Figure 13.4, it will not include things like
columns 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.

Figure 13.4

By default, Room
areas do not include
columns

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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 takeoffs.

Area Plans

Area plans


.
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. To add or modify the area set-
tings, choose Settings 

Room and Area Settings.

Figure 13.5

The Room and Area
Settings dialog

The Room Calculations tab allows you to change how the areas are calculated for each area
scheme. You can set the calculation height and boundary type that Revit uses to autogenerate
room areas.
The Area Schemes tab, shown in Figure 13.6, lets you add different schemes to calculate
room areas, allowing you to calculate multiple area types.

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431

Figure 13.6

Area Schemes tab of
the Room and Area

CHAPTER 13

FINE-TUNING YOUR PRELIMINARY DESIGN
3.

Revit automatically adds a new folder called Area Plans to the Project Browser and adds
plans for each level you selected.

4.

In the View window, you’ll see a duplicate plan view of the level you selected with purple
lines defining the area boundaries, as shown in Figure 13.8. These lines are placed on the
walls according to the type of area plan you selected. You can move or delete the lines if they
don’t appear where you want them.

Figure 13.8

Area boundary lines
for gross area

To add additional area boundary lines, use the Area Boundary tool available in the Room
and Areas tab. Area boundaries must be closed loops of lines in order for Revit to be able to
calculate the area. Any breaks or gaps in the area lines, or lines that don’t intersect, will result
in Revit returning a Not Enclosed value for the area. (Should you get that error message, try
trimming the corners.)

5.

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, we want to modify the results slightly from what Revit has provided by
default. For our program and client on this project, we are not going to calculate core areas (areas
around the elevator and stair cores) as part of the rentable area, so we will need to adjust the area
boundary lines around the core walls to reflect our needs and turn the many spaces into one area.
In the case of our restroom core, we can start by deleting the lines that separate the restrooms
from the janitorial closet (see Figure13.9).

Figure 13.9

Modifying an
area plan

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 to aid you so as your design changes and walls are relocated, the area boundaries will
automatically update as well, keeping your area plans always up-to-date.

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In our case, however, we needed to make some changes and we now have more areas than we
have spaces. So let’s jump back to the warning dialog: We have been given two choices. We can
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, we do not plan to subdivide the room again,
we can click Delete Area(s) to delete the extra areas and continue with our work. If we had deleted
these lines with the intent of drawing new ones in a different location within this boundary, we
could click OK knowing we would have redundant areas for a short time until we finish this area
of the model.

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Clicking OK will delete the redundant areas and give us a single core area for the restrooms
shown in Figure 13.12.

Figure 13.12

One area is used for
the restroom core.

Since we do not want to count any of the core areas, we will need to move the boundary lines
from the centerlines of the walls to the inside face of those walls. Because the area boundaries sur-
rounding the restrooms are locked to the walls themselves, we will need to delete those lines and
redraw them in their desired locations. We will be expecting a warning message about redundant
areas, but we will know in this case we want to keep the areas and simply click OK in lieu of the
Delete Areas button.

To copy the area boundaries between floors, select them and copy them to the Clipboard.

1.

To select area boundaries, you have several options:

◆

Ctrl-select each line individually.

◆

Highlight one line by mousing over it and press the Tab key. This will highlight the chain
of all the connected lines and you can then left-click to select them.

◆

Drag a selection window around all of the lines, and using the Filter tool in the Options
bar, filter out all but the <Area Boundary> lines, as shown in Figure 13.14.

Figure 13.14

Filtering your
selection

2.

Once they are selected, you can use Ctrl-C or Edit 

Copy to copy them to the Clipboard.

Now that you have all the areas defined, you can present them by printing the individual
views to see graphically how our spaces are assembled (see Figure 13.16).

Figure 13.16

Area and tag graphics

But what happens if we want to show this information in a tabular, spreadsheet format? Often
we will need to share it in this kind of summary format. If changes were to happen to the drawings, we
would need to go back through the areas and manually verify sizes and recalculate. Because Revit
is based on a bidirectional concept, it can do all of these tasks for us, simultaneously. All we need
to do is set up a particular view type within the model that allows us to look at the data in a list for-
mat in lieu of showing the information graphically. For this, we will use schedules.

Schedules

Schedules

are lists of entities and objects within the model. They enumerate items, including build-
ing objects such as walls, doors, and windows; calculate material quantities or areas and volumes;
and list the number of sheets, textnotes, keynotes, and so on. Giving you the ability to dynamically
create and update schedules is a core aspect of BIM and Revit.
Creating schedules of objects, areas, or material quantities in a project is usually one of the most
painful (if not boring) but necessary evils for architects. Needless to say, performing a manual cal-
culation takes a long time and can result in errors. Using CAD tools can partly automate this pro-
cess, but when it comes to calculating numbers of objects, the calculation can only count the
number of blocks that are predefined in a file. In Revit, all elements have information about their
physical properties, and you can add information to individual elements. For example, doors can
have properties like size as well as material, color, fire rating, and exterior/interior.
Revit lets you schedule any element based on properties of the element. In effect, this means that

This schedule lists the gross building areas created with the area plans.

Areas (rentable)

This type can be created with a rentable plans schedule. Later in this chapter,
we’ll walk through an exercise demonstrating how to create a simple schedule showing the pro-
gram areas we created in our area plans.
Although we’ve listed quite a few, we haven’t included all the schedules available in Revit.
There are still a few more worth mentioning. These schedules can be accessed only from View 

New.

Material takeoff

This type of schedule can list all the materials and subcomponents of any
Revit family and allow an enhanced level of detail for each assembly. You can use a material
takeoff to schedule any material that is placed in a component. For example, you might want to
know the cubic yardage of concrete within the model. Regardless of whether the concrete is in
a wall or floor or column, you can tell the schedule to report the total amount of that material in
the project. As we will show later, you can use this schedule type to make some preliminary sus-
tainable calculations around the use of recycled materials in the project.

View list

This schedule shows a list of all the views and their properties in the Project
Browser.

Drawing list

This schedule shows a list of all the sheets in the project, sorted alphabetically.

ing set or filter it by sheet. The legend can then be placed on multiple sheets.
These schedules are separated from the main list of schedules because they aren’t commonly
used in building documentation. They are primarily for data coordination that happens outside of
the project documentation.

Making a Simple Schedule (Rentable Area)

You can begin making a new schedule by selecting the View tab on the Design bar, choosing
View 

New 

Schedule/Quantities or clicking the Schedule/Quantities button. When you begin
a new schedule, you’re presented with a number of format and selection options. These will
help you set the font style and text alignment as well as organize and filter the data shown in the
schedule. Remember that Revit at its core is a database, so many of the same functionalities that are
available in database queries are also available in Revit.
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:

1.

Open the

Foundation.rvt

file for Chapter 13, found on the website.

2.



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Figure 13.17

Rentable area sched-
uling options

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

Fields

The Fields tab lets you select the data that will appear in your schedule. For the wall
schedule, it shows all the properties available in the wall family.

Filter

On the Filter tab, you can filter out the data you don’t wish to show. You’ll use this
tab, for example, to restrict displayed data so that only information about the concrete walls
in the project appears in the schedule.



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5.

Moving to the Sorting/Grouping tab, we want to give the schedule some parameters to sort by.
First, let’s sort by level so we can see which floors we have the areas on, and then let’s sort
by area name. We will also want to see a total of the areas by floor, so let’s include a footer
showing totals only for the levels. Also check the Header check box so we can tell which floor
we are on in each grouping. Finally, we want to see a grand total of all the areas in the build-
ing. Your dialog should look like Figure 13.18.

Figure 13.18

Set the sorting/
grouping to
match this.

6.

Now, on the Formatting tab, we will also want to make a couple of changes. Highlight the
Level parameter and select the Hidden Field check box. We don’t need to see a level heading
for each item in the list, especially since we have one established already as a header for each
floor. We also want to select the Area field and make two changes. First, right-justify the
areas so they align properly, and then check the box to have the schedule calculate totals as

its properties and make some modifications. Choose the Filter tab this time, filter out any
name that does not contain the word

Core

(with a capital

C

), as shown in Figure 13.21, and
click OK.

Figure 13.21

Filter the areas to
remove the word Core.

9.

Pan down to the bottom of the list and you will notice that we still have the name Restroom
core in the list (see Figure13.22).

Figure 13.22

Check the schedule
to see the effect of
the filter.

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