topic Re: How to Identify unallocated volume towards rooms and spaces in Revit API Forum

How to Identify unallocated volume towards rooms and spaces

TomB.ADV — Mon, 20 Mar 2023 07:29:29 GMT

Hi, I am looking for a way to "scan" a model in order to retrieve the amount of volume (inclosed by walls)
which was not classified as room nor as space.

I assume this may be a multi-step solution where I need to somehow get and store in memory each
"volume instance" in a List<T> which I will itterate over to check if the volume has a room or a space in it
and subtract the room/space volume from the volume instance.

The problem is that I can't figure out how to get the "volume instances" I mentioned in the first place....
if there is a better idea/approach to solve this I will gladly try it as well, thanks!

Re: How to Identify unallocated volume towards rooms and spaces

jeremy_tammik — Mon, 20 Mar 2023 08:27:10 GMT

Rooms and spaces have a ClosedShell property:

https://www.revitapidocs.com/2023/1a510aef-63f6-4d32-c0ff-a8071f5e23b8.htm

That would be one way to get the enclosed spaces that have been properly defined.

How to determine the entire enclosed building volume is another topic.

Here are some suggestions to determine Gross volume of a building:

https://www.revitcity.com/forums.php?action=viewthread&thread_id=11551

Re: How to Identify unallocated volume towards rooms and spaces

TomB.ADV — Mon, 20 Mar 2023 08:52:18 GMT

Thanks @jeremy_tammik

I did notice that property while reviewing the API docs. The real problem is to get the amount of enclosed partitions in the building and each partition volume.

I was hoping there is some reliable method to do this since the suggestions in the RevitCity forum are extremely outdated (2008).

Is there a way to programmatically identify and quantify enclosed spaces and get them as an Element or as a BoundingBox or an Outline or any other Revit API Class that will allow me to accurately do the task I described without using funky math which probably won't work in a non-typical project environment?

Re: How to Identify unallocated volume towards rooms and spaces

TomB.ADV — Tue, 28 Mar 2023 12:59:41 GMT

@jeremy_tammik after some more research I came accross the below thread:

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-api-forum/finding-a-room-by-wall/m-p/10190251#M54650

def get_rooms(wall): document = wall.Document wall_bb = wall.get_BoundingBox(None) outline = Outline(wall_bb.Min, wall_bb.Max) bbfilter = BoundingBoxIntersectsFilter(outline) rooms = FilteredElementCollector(document).OfCategory(BuiltInCategory.OST_Rooms).\ WherePasses(bbfilter).ToElements() return rooms

The above code by @SergeyShvydko suggests that there is an option to get all the rooms which are associated with a specific wall. This gave me an idea to create a Dictionary<Room, List<Wall>> object to use for my calculations.

First, I will use LINQ to get all the rooms located on the desired floor. Then, I will get a .Distinct() list of walls associated with all the rooms. Afterward, I will calculate the area of all the walls associated with the rooms.

At this point, I will have the Floor Area, All Rooms Area, All Walls Area. Rooms Area + Walls Area should be
approximately equal to the Floor Area. If there is more than x% difference, there is probably a room missing
on that level which wasn't placed.

Any thoughts/suggestions to make this work better or to be more reliable method in general ?

Re: How to Identify unallocated volume towards rooms and spaces

jeremy_tammik — Wed, 29 Mar 2023 06:09:29 GMT

Sounds like an effective and robust approach to me. Brilliant! Looking forward to hearing how it works out in real life, and seeing the final implementation. Good luck and have fun implementing and testing!