topic Re: Automatically place Area Objects in Revit Architecture Forum

Automatically place Area Objects

dtpeter2901 — Tue, 25 Jul 2023 19:58:07 GMT

When you go to place a room, there's an option to Automatically place them. Am I missing something? I don't see this option for Areas. I sure would be really nice to not have to manually place areas. Anyone have any good solutions for what should be an out of the box process?
Thanks in advance.

Re: Automatically place Area Objects

SteveKStafford — Tue, 25 Jul 2023 20:20:11 GMT

I imagine the reason it is not an option is that areas are quite often used to describe how a collection of "rooms" are described for programming reasons, like Department, Zone, Wing etc...

Re: Automatically place Area Objects

dtpeter2901 — Tue, 25 Jul 2023 20:26:27 GMT

Thanks Steve,

They set up areas plans in a pretty decent manner. But there's some things I don't really understand. Automatically placing Areas in an Area plan, for which you have to create area boundaries before you can create the areas object, seems odd. But I'll accept it. Back to trying to make dynamo do the thing I need it to do because the current software doesn't allow. Goes to the same problems with trying to be able to apply a parameter value to the Area Type (it's a read only parameter so 100% manual) and the inability to select multiple walls with a crossing window to generate the boundaries.

The idea of the BOMA(ish) rules being applied is awesome, but the amount of time required to do the basics stuff is just a bit annoying.

Re: Automatically place Area Objects

boyd_johnson — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 14:39:04 GMT

@dtpeter2901 @SteveKStafford, I'm looking for similar "Place Areas Automatically" - any solutions via Dynamo or other? In Revit 2024.

Thanks!

Re: Automatically place Area Objects

dtpeter2901 — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 14:54:26 GMT

We're looking at placing areas via dynamo. but that really only works if you have areas that will match all the rooms. Use Dynamo to get the .xy location of the room center and place an area at the same location. Once placed you can run another graph using similar logic to map/copy the room information (Name, Number, Programming....Use....) to the Area so you don't need to add that information manually.

Re: Automatically place Area Objects

boyd_johnson — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 17:41:50 GMT

@dtpeter2901, thanks!

I was thinking something similar. A somewhat crude workaround to address the "place automatically" need could be to Array Areas across a floor plan (something similar to...50 Areas, every 3ft) then delete any Redundant and/or Not Enclosed Areas via Schedule - pretty crude and messy, but it is a potential workaround.

After that you could migrate parameters in a variety of ways - either via Dynamo or possibly the Room/Area tools in Interoperability Tools (have not tested).