Cannot fix get rooms visible - tried VG/Object Styles/Cut Depth

[jj7868]

Hello,

I'm working my second project and I'm running into the same issue that I was never able to solve.

I'm using Revit tutorials and they go from Area Plans to having Rooms annotated. There is no in between that shows how you can go from the Area Plan boundaries to having room and room boundaries tagged. 

I am guessing maybe I should have had my rooms mapped out first. That is what I was trying to do but the tutorials like I said are ordered teaching area plan first and rooms are just by themselves in a different, separate stand alone module so I'm confused.

For troubleshooting I changed the VG Overrides to show Area Bases, Areas, Rooms, Room Tags. I changed this back and forth in object styles. I've turned off the template. I restarted Revit. Nothing. For a moment I had a random room tag. I deleted it and now I can't see them again. I don't believe I did anything with the aforementioned settings before this happened. 

My objective is to not have to map the area plan all over again if I don't have to and to use those boundary lines to make rooms. Or to at least see the rooms in a floor plan - I can't even redraw them at this point if I want to. 

Please help me. Sharing the file.

[GaryOrrMBI · Accepted solution]

First you need to understand the difference between Areas and Rooms. Sometimes the tutorials are not enough and a little reading and navigating the sections of the help files will fill in some of the gaps.

Areas only exist in Area Plans. You can have different types of area plans that can be used for different methods of calculation. Areas are defined by Area boundaries, which can only exist in Area Plans. This allows for grouping of multiple rooms within an area (a tenant space for example, or multiple offices grouped for occupancy calculations).

Rooms are more like model objects, Once created they exist in all plans, elevations, sections, etc. Rooms are normally bounded by physical objects such as walls, floors, roofs, ceilings, columns, etc. There are also "Room Boundry" lines that can be created to sub-divide a large room into multiple rooms (a dining room and a living room in an open floor plan with no demising wall between them for example).

The two element types are completely different, are used for completely different purposes, and one can't be used to define the other.

In your model you have created Area plans, defined area boundaries, and created areas within those boundaries.

You do not have any rooms created. that is a similar process, just using a different tool: Rooms.

Upon adding a room boundary and creating a couple of rooms in your basement floor plan it would seem that your Limit Offset (height) for rooms is set to 2'-0", this would have them below the cut plane of the plan and would keep them from being visible. You also have your Visual Style set to "Wireframe" which will let you see the Rooms "reference" lines but not the interior fill or any color fill that you may want to define.

Try creating room boundaries (and/or additional walls) and then placing rooms in the floor plans, but watch the properties and set the Limit offset to something like 8'-0" above the associated level. Change the Visual Style to "Hidden Line" if you want to see interior or color fills.

-G

[jj7868]

Thank you Gary. Your guidance fixed my problem. And thank you for the thorough breakdown. It was the 'Offset' function when I'm placing Room components - I made it higher. Thank you!