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Door schedule - door swing direction

29 REPLIES 29
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Message 1 of 30
Anonymous
12327 Views, 29 Replies

Door schedule - door swing direction

Can you show the direction of swing in the door schedule?

29 REPLIES 29
Message 2 of 30
Alfredo_Medina
in reply to: Anonymous

You can use "room: to", and "room: from" for that purpose, but changes to the swing will not update the schedule, because the swing does not determine which room the door belongs to.

 

I have read in another forum that it is possible to write some API code to catch the orientation of the swing of the door, and keep the information updated if the door is flipped.


Alfredo Medina _________________________________________________________________ ______
Licensed Architect (Florida) | Freelance Instructor | Autodesk Expert Elite (on Revit) | Profile on Linkedin
Message 3 of 30
Anonymous
in reply to: Alfredo_Medina

I found a plug in for Revit which claims to scheule the door swing direction. I haven't tried it yet though.

 

http://www.revittools.com/index.htm

 

 

Message 4 of 30
gary
in reply to: Anonymous

The options or methonds Revit scheduls door swings ignore industry standard terminology.  Saying that the door swings ‘Room To’ or  ‘Room From’ is not the way architects, door specifiers, and door estimators refer to swing or more properly, handing.  There are only four states of handing; right hand, left hand, right hand reverse, and left hand reverse.  All are referenced from the outside of the room, facing the door.

 

Why do the ‘programers’ ignore the standards of the industry for which they are creating software?

 

Gary Striyle, AIA

Architecture Cubed, Inc

Message 5 of 30
vojkos
in reply to: gary

Not all... Archicad has this by default. And i hope revit will implement it in one of the future versions.

 

Btw, this plugin should do the trick http://web.tools4revit.com/dynamic-legend/e-help-090511/dl-create-door-legend-with-swingdirection/

 

Hope this helps.

 

Regards,

Vojko

Message 6 of 30
rshiordia
in reply to: Anonymous

I did not use the plug in listed below, but I created a new project parameter for doors. It was an instance text parameter called "Door Swing." Then, when I created the doors, I simply wrote down on it "right hand swing" or "left hand swing." As I create new doors, these options are saved on the drop down menu, and I simply choose which one I want. Finally, I added this parameter to the door schedule. I was inspired by the following source:

 

http://revitclinic.typepad.com/my_weblog/2011/01/what-if-i-dont-want-this-door-in-my-door-schedule.h...

 

I followed the same procedure, but changed the parameter type to text. Here´s what my schedule looks like:

door swing on schedule.jpg

 

You can also change it in the object properties. Like this:

door swing text parameter.jpg

 

 

 

Message 7 of 30
Keith_Wilkinson
in reply to: rshiordia

The trouble with that solution though is that it's not directly linked to the door - ie if someone flips the direction of the door your schedule won't automatically update and without a reminder to do so this is bad as data can easily get out of sync.



"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."
Maimonides
Message 8 of 30
SteveKStafford
in reply to: Anonymous

The use of From Room and To Room for doors documentation (in schedules) has been around for a long time. I've worked for two firms that used that nomenclature exclusively and have encounted quite a few others that have as well over the last decade. Naturally I've also worked with firms that find that practice quaint and old fashioned and focus exclusively on a door's handing.

 

In my view just expressing a door's handing isn't as owner friendly a method wheras From/To is immediately meaningful to them, this door goes FROM here TO there. A door manufacturer doesn't really need to know which room the door goes from/to, though the installer will. It just needs to know how to prepare the panel and frame for installation. The installer still needs to put it in the rough opening correctly since they could get it backwards.

 

The trouble with standards is that as soon as someone claims they adhere to a standard it pretty much guarantees there is another one (at least one) that deals with it too. I read a funny programmer's blog post where he declared "Standards are unicorns".

 

Revit's developer's built this behavior to conform to processes that the architects they worked with described and they themselves were familiar with. Fwiw, the earliest staff the founders of Revit hired to be responsible for developing features and provide support (called Client Support Architects or CSA's) were all either architects, working in architecture or at the very least had been through architectural training. Despite any claims otherwise they all had precedent knowledge and experience with the business, in most cases many years of it.

 

The reason or logic that applies to this, that From/To is not altered when a door is flipped or mirrored, is that door swing direction does not always define ownership. When a door is placed initially the direction that the door swings determines its To Room value. That's true at least of all stock door content but since doors can be built by others it can't be guaranteed they've been built the same as the stock ones. The door's exterior side (have to examine the door in the family editor to see this to be sure) is the To Room side.

 

For example, a classroom door that must swing out into a corridor, for exiting requirements. These are often set into an alcove so the swing does not block/reduce the corridor width. If the door is placed so the swing is into the alcove/corridor initially its To Room value will be the Corridor. The To Room value usually is meant to tell us which room the door belongs to. If we place the door so the swing is into the classroom the To Room value is the classroom. We can then flip the door so it swings into the corridor but the To Room value remains intact because that's the room we want everyone to understand that it belongs to. Regardless we can change the To Room or From Room value anytime we need to from within a door schedule, so the correct orientation is described.

 

Btw, they added the Room Calculation Point feature to provide more control over how Revit deals with this.

My other older self here: http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/46056
Message 9 of 30
vojkos
in reply to: SteveKStafford

You missed the question a bit...

 

It's not to which side te door opens, but to which they swing... are they left or right...

 

This is industry standard, and other BIM programs have this implemented... Revit should also... 

 

A_WAB_180_Oeffnungsrichtungen.jpg

 

 

Message 10 of 30
Keith_Wilkinson
in reply to: vojkos

The trouble is though that Revit allows you to effectively mirror the door which in turn flips the swing.  However this is only a visual change in Revit it doesn't change any of the parameters - as such it doesn't actually know which way the swing should go.

 

I think to fix this it would have to be a change to the core programming which I suspect would be a massive undertaking... 



"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."
Maimonides
Message 11 of 30
SteveKStafford
in reply to: Anonymous

No, I completely understand. I merely explained why it does what it does now. I'm not claiming it can't be improved upon.
My other older self here: http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/46056
Message 12 of 30
vojkos
in reply to: Keith_Wilkinson

I agree.

 

But this would come in handy when drawing door specification list. At the moment I put this value manualy... but on projects with 100+ doorsit takes too much time.

 

I would also like to be able to tell the width of the wall in which the doors are.

 

This are all thing that have been implemented in other bim solutions years ago..

Message 13 of 30
caseynbowen
in reply to: Anonymous

As a custom home designer and builder, I can attest that the practical benefit of the schedules function of Revit is only as good as the data it contains. When I call up my supplier and say "I need "x" amount of this door in this size", they are going to ask me what handing I want. They wont ask me what room does it swing into and out of. To insinuate that the terminology of handing is "quaint and old fashion" only indicates to me that you have very little concept of how the end user of your product implements this information. There are some very simple pieces of information that I need when I order doors and that is jamb width, door width and height, style, and handing. Also it would be nice for the information to change when you have to mirror the plan due to a lot fit consideration or street slope.

Please consider adding this feature.

 

Message 14 of 30
dbrainard
in reply to: caseynbowen

We have also created an add-in in house called X-RAY (also on exchange) which among many other things, does track the flips of all swing doors and dynamically updates the "Swing" parameter in the doors. There are as we discovered, some caveats to this workflow. One, as the comment before this one mentions, is that Mirroring a Door or Mirroring a Project doesn't register as a door controller flip, so the parameters don't refresh in this case. Two, all of your Swing Doors (All of Them!) must be modeled to have their handing start in the same orientation - You can't mix and match any old door you make or find into the workflow. We have noticed however, that flippping a flip controller twice will reset/correct the values after a mirror.

 

So, with oversight, planning and some programming, door swing handing can be automated and trusted. However, I would agree with the original sentiment of this post, that it is a shame that this functionality does not exist with the core platform.

 

Thanks, Dave

Message 15 of 30

Why not build a macro into flip-control? In family editor You create all doors right handed and give the value Right, R , what ever for the doorhandness and when the user flips the door, the value is changed Left, L or what ever. And if the user use the flipcontrol again, the value changes.

 

Can some do this kind of macro?

 

Esa Vahetera

Message 16 of 30
kjeboe
in reply to: Keith_Wilkinson

That's not really true...

 

This link explains how it's done by using Dynamo and a script wich lockup the API

However, it's a bit technical and you need to run the script manually each time you need an update (unless Dynamo run continiously the script in the background) And every user wich need to use it must install it. 

It's not a longt script, and Autodesk could probably make it a standard feature in short time if they only paid attention to their customers.

pure.architect
http://www.purark.no
Message 17 of 30
kjeboe
in reply to: Keith_Wilkinson

That's not really true...

 

This link explains how it's done by using Dynamo and a script wich lockup the API.

http://archi-lab.net/door-set-handing/

 

However, it's a bit technical and you need to run the script manually each time you need an update (unless Dynamo run continiously the script in the background) And every user wich need to use it must install it. 

It's not a longt script, and Autodesk could probably make it a standard feature in short time if they only paid attention to their customers.

pure.architect
http://www.purark.no
Message 18 of 30
Keith_Wilkinson
in reply to: kjeboe

Very interesting. Some of the stuff Konrad has done is extremely cool. I'll need to take a look at this and see how well it works.


"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."
Maimonides
Message 19 of 30

You can use the easy to use plugin XDoor available on the Revit App Store.

 

https://apps.autodesk.com/RVT/en/Detail/Index?id=2481590927896495348&appLang=en&os=Win64


Luis Santos

archi systems as

Message 20 of 30
adywren
in reply to: Keith_Wilkinson

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