Space Management

[Anonymous]

Hi there,

I'm currently trying to figure out the various 'SPACE' concepts and commands.

I guess what I'm trying to achieve is a fairly run of the mill project, whereby I want to create a schedule of room areas relative to room I.Ds and 'tenants' therein, within a healthcare environment.

I'll be doing this retrospectively from quite an old drawing.

I've worked through various tutorials, which seem to be a bit fragmented in their content, so I'm struggling a little

Here's where I'm at so far:

* Okay with allocating closed spaces, toggling 'bound spaces' accordingly to suit desired enclosed space.

* Imported generic 'Space Styles'

* Had some success creating an intelligent tag to extract property data from the previously created bound areas

Where I'd like help initially is with Property Sets. In one particular video tutorial it mentions adding the 'Space Objects' property set as a minimum, however the 'Add Property Sets' icon is greyed out in my properties dialogue box.

Secondly, after creating copies of spaces styles so I could amend their names, I can’t seem to toggle their colours that they inherited from being copied. Any help with that would be great.

Could anyone please direct me towards a comprehensive tutorial, or advise to the most streamlined method?

Thank you in anticipation.

Tom

[David_W_Koch · Accepted solution]

The SpaceObjects Property Set Definition must not be present in the file in which you have placed your Spaces.  ACA ships with a set of out-of-the-box styles, including Property Set Definitions.  The default location for United States imperial content in ACA 2014 is:

C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\ACA 2014\enu\Styles\Imperial [for Imperial content style files]

C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\ACA 2014\enu\Styles\Metric [for Metric content style files]

Your location for these files may vary, depending upon the version of ACA you are using, whether or not you are using localized content for your country/region and the units system you are using and whether or not you have customized any of the installation locations.

The Propety Set Definitions are in the Schedule Tables (Imperial).dwg file [Imperial content] or the Schedule Tables (Metric).dwg [Metric content].  You can use the Style Manager to copy the SpaceObjects Property Set Definition from the appropriate one of these source files (or from the source file(s) provided for your localized content) to your drawing file.

As to applying different colors to different styles, you may want to look at the out-of-the-box Space Styles, which include styles for various function types, with different colors for different styles.  In the United States content, there are separate source files for Spaces - Commercial (Imperial).dwg, Spaces - Educational (Imperial).dwg, Spaces - Medical (Imperial).dwg and Spaces - Residential (Imperial).dwg with a parallel set of Metric files in the Metric folder.

You can find tools that reference these source file styles in the Content Browser, in the Design Tool Catalog - Imperial and the Design Tool Catalog - Metric, under the category of Spaces, with separate subcategories for Commercial, Educational, Medical and Residential (United States content).  Content for other localities may vary.

The different colors are applied as style-level display overrides, to the Base Hatch component.

[Anonymous]

David,

Many thanks, not only for your response to this post, but while browsing the message board, I've realised you're a massive contributor. I'm fairly sure you've already helped me with a previous query too. You certainly deserve the resident expert status. So thanks again.

Anyway, I've copied over the required PSD, and have managed to alter space style display colours. Very happy with that.

Now going back a step to the space bounding, where I thought I was competant (Not Quite).

...So when a drawing is opened with no defined boundaries, ACAD pops up a window to set the default value of all objects boundaries to 'Yes', or to create a smaller selection window to create boundaries therein, IIRC.

As my initial fettling was experimental, I selected an upper floor with reduced floor area to practice with the boundary properties rather than alter the whole drawing.

Is there a way to set ALL drawing obects boundary setting value to 'Yes' after the initial pop-up?

Tom

[David_W_Koch]

Some objects, such as Walls, are inherently space-bounding.  I assume you are starting out with a drawing done in vanilla AutoCAD, or only using objects available in vanilla AutoCAD.  Objects that are capable of being a boundary for a Space have a property on the Design tab of the Properties palette, at the bottom under the Advanced category, called "Bound spaces".  You can select one or more such objects and then set the value of this property to Yes to make the object space-bounding.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your response again David.

I haven't been overly clear in what my latest issue is...

I am hoping I can make a large window selection of objects, and then set their boundary value to 'yes', or an alternative workaround that achieves the same.

The issue preventing me doing this at the moment, is when text or hatch is picked, the option to 'set as boundary' is withdrawn from the properties dialogue box.

I guess a command to hide all text and hatch would suit, but i haven't been able to summise how to do this, even after searching the AutoCAD 'help' pages.

Any help is again appreciated.

Tom 

[David_W_Koch · Accepted solution]

You could make your selection as you describe, and then use QuickSelect to remove the text and hatches from the selection set.  Or, if you do not have many object types that you want to make room bounding, you can use the drop-down list at the top of the Properties palette to filter the overall selection to work with just one type at a time (just Polylines, then just Lines, etc.) and set each subgroup's Bound spaces property to Yes.

[Anonymous]

Hi David,

I've just tried using the quick select methods. (Long time coming, I know).
Seems to work a treat.

Again David, many thanks for your assistance.