Getting Floor Gross Area

[Anonymous]

Using the API, I want to be able to get the Floor Gross Area (outside of exterior wall) and the Floor Rentable/Measured Area (inside of exterior wall).

First, is it required to have Area Plans to get these values?  If not, where can they be queried from?

If it is required to have two Area Plans to get these values, is there an example of finding the appropriate area plans for a level, and how to get the area value from them?

Thank you in advance.

-Ed

[jeremytammik]

Dear Ed,

Have you explored what support Revit provides for this through the user interface?

It would help a lot to know the optimal UI workflow and best practices before diving into the API side of things.

In general, if a feature is not available in the Revit product manually through the user interface, then the Revit API will not provide it either.

Therefore, before thinking about possibly automating any task, it is important to explore the possibilities and develop an optimal solution through the user interface first. For that, I would suggest asking an application engineer, product usage expert, or product support for help on finding a suitable workflow and laying down best practices.

I can think of various way to achieve what you are asking for just analysing the geometry, but that might be complex and would certainly generate different results than the 'official' Revit UI ones.

Actually, on second thoughts, retrieving the gross floor area programmatically seems like a very simple task.

First, determine the top or bottom face of the floor slab:

http://thebuildingcoder.typepad.com/blog/2008/10/slab-boundary.html

Next, calculate its area:

http://thebuildingcoder.typepad.com/blog/2008/12/2d-polygon-areas-and-outer-loop.html

For the net area, determine the bottom faces of all the walls that you wish to subtract:

http://thebuildingcoder.typepad.com/blog/2009/08/bottom-face-of-a-wall.html

Then subtract them.

But, as said, I would explore the officially supported UI possibilities fully before resorting to pure geometrical analysis.

Cheers,

Jeremy

[Anonymous]

Thank you Jeremy,

I agree with you, that I would rather not calculate it.  For the Gross area (outside of wall) there aren't too many options on how it is calculated, but for the Rentable/Usable (inside of wall) there are a number of options.  So, I guess my question becomes more of...  How would I retrieve that area using the API? 

If there is an alternate of using an Area Plan, I would like to know about it.

If I need to require the user to select an Area Plan I can do that, but given the selected Area Plan, how do I retrieve the area value using the API?  (from the UI, I can see it in a label)

Thanks again,

-Ed

[jeremytammik · Accepted solution]

Dear Ed,

Aha, you can see it in a label. That is good news. The next step is to use RevitLookup, determine what element that label belongs to, and which property or parameter value it is stored in. Then you can retrieve it programmatically.

Cheers,

Jeremy

[soheila.bigdeli]

Hi,

I have kind of the same problem. However, I would like to get the total floor area for enclosed part of the building. i.e. balconies or decks to be excluded.

My first thought was to exclude the floors which are not fully bounded by elements like ceiling and walls, which I couldn't manage it.

Then I switched to second option, to get the outmost walls of the building and then calculating the area enclosed by the walls. Which I still need to think more how to apply it. 

Does anyone have an idea of how to retrieve total floor area for enclosed part of the building? or any suggestion how to apply my thoughts.

Best Regards,

Soheila

[jeremytammik]

Revit does support creating rooms in enclosed regions:

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-api-forum/enclosed-region-using-room-separator/m-p/6600192

Can that help?