Can you make Rooms calculate occupancy like areas?

[MichaelTierney739]

I work in an office where my coworkers despise using the area tool. I am too stubborn to give up the benefit of using the area tool to do the occupancy load calculations. This leaves me wondering if I can make rooms to do the calculations for me like the areas did before. If it just can't be done, I am fine with that answer, but I don't mind learning how & doing the work if it is possible. My goal is to maximize the coordination of all these office projects. 

For context, I am self-taught on so much of Revit enough to be James Bond level dangerous, & I am trying to fill the shoes of a BIM manager for a small firm. Any help would be appreciated, because I have yet to find in depth information on the editing of room or area parameters since these are systems families. Thanks!

[Alfredo_Medina · Accepted solution]

It is possible to make room tags or area tags calculate occupancies, but rooms is not the proper element to use for doing life safety plans. Areas is the proper element to use. Why? because occupancies are grouped by type, such as "Business", and because the boundary of an area can go over multiple rooms. For example, if you have 4 offices, one next to each other, it does not make sense for a life safety plan to show each office with a room tag. What makes sense is to cover the area of the four offices with one area tag designated as "Business". The building inspector does not care about the four offices, but about the "Business" area.

[MichaelTierney739]

I wholeheartedly agree, but that isn't going to happen in this setting. Now I am trying to settle for second best which is getting the rooms to do the calculations since they insist on using it wrong. I have found the key schedule that drives the calculations for the area & have edited the parameters to be available for rooms also, since I posted the question to the forum. Now I just have to finish without breaking anything. Problem is now I can't find the "Space Function" Parameter in the project parameters list to add it to rooms. I feel like I am getting close, so if nothing else, thank you for the encouragement!

[ToanDN · Accepted solution]

Of course you can do Occupancy Calculations and Plans with rooms and key schedule.

[MichaelTierney739]

Thank you @ToanDN & @Alfredo_Medina for your help & moral support. I Figured it out, & despite the fact that we are still not using Areas, it will probably get them to dip their toes into this way of doing things. Now I can start creating the whole key schedule that I will need to go into our template... One step at a time, right?