2014 SPACES - NOT WORKING

[FitzUS]

I'm having several issues using spaces.  It may be lack of experience but I considered myself an expert user in R2012 and since then I've migrated to Revit.

My current task is to take some 2D drawings and do fairly basic area calculations.  I've set up 5 area styles. I've traced over an xref of the 2D drawings to create polyline boundaries.  I've made a custom palette for my styles, placed them in the various locations, then used SPACEMAKEASSOCIATIVE to fill in the boundaries.  Should work just like the Autodesk YouTube video, right?  No luck.  At least no consistent luck.  It worked on the largest most complex area, then failed on smaller less complex areas.  In desperation I created a rectangle off to the side.  That fails too.  It is not a gap issue as the BPOLY command works just fine.

I've also tried just creating spaces manually, over the boundaries.  That works, tedious but I get a little farther.  However when I tried using the SPACEINTERFERENCEADD command to remove some areas the hatches and sometimes the space boundary disappears.

Don't make me go back to taking the property data sets from hatches and regions to get my areas!!!!

Any help?  Should I just give up?  I'm considering linking the files into Revit and doing it there but I need to deliver these back in AutoCAD format.

[David_W_Koch · Accepted solution]

There was nothing wrong with your Spaces.  What was wrong was that not all of the polylines and lines that you drew to define the boundaries had their Bound spaces property set to Yes (on the Design tab of the Properties palette, at the bottom under the Advanced category).  Once that was done, and after I added a missiing line, I was able to make all of the non-associative Spaces in your file associative, and they filled the area within the boundary lines.  See the attached file.

[FitzUS]

Thanks David-

I figured that out about an hour ago.

According to the HELP documentation you need to enter the command,  AECSPACEDISPLAYBOUNDSPACESPROPERTY and set it to YES before that will show up in the properties palette.  Once I figured that out spaces worked more like I would expect them for 2D plan area calculations. 

Also in the HELP documentation is a page called About Valid Boundary Objects for Associative Spaces.  That gives better information on what objects will be valid for using spaces.

I found that drawing polylines and then changing the Bounds Spaces property worked well.  ACA would automatically subdivide the space and allow me to change the style to what ever I needed.  I was happy not to have to draw a bunch of closed polylines.

Next step, sorting out the calculation rules and scheduling.

Thanks for confirming my findings.

[David_W_Koch]

On the out-of-the-box Spaces tool palette (Design tool palette group), there is a Space Separator tool that will draw a polyline with the bound spaces property set.  It uses the WALL layer key, which is all right if you are drawing polylines to represent Walls and want them on that layer.  If you are simply trying to define the end of one Space and the beginning of the next in a spot where there is no Wall (such as dividing corridors, or dividing an open plan area), you may want to make a copy of that tool and change the Layer Key on the copy to something else.