Changing area scheme for an existing area plan

[Anonymous]

We have been trying to utilize Revit from the beginning of the design process, which is why our projects are heavy with design options and multiple area schemes (since design options do not allow for area boundaries to be included). 

After going through design reviews we have scenarios where the selected options are: Level 1 - Area Scheme 1; Level 2 - Area Scheme 3; Level 3 - Area Scheme 2, etc., which forces us to recreate area plans for multiple levels with a single/same area scheme. It's a lot of copying/pasting and cleaning up - needless to say it's not very efficient. Wouldn't it be nice if we could somehow change the area scheme for an existing area plan...or possibly merge multiple area schemes into one?

Does anyone know of any good solution or work around for this problem? This comes up on almost every projects over and over again.

Thanks!

[Alfredo_Medina]

Welcome to the forum.

It's not quite clear how you are using area schemes. It seems that you are using them instead of color schemes and instead of design options? If you could "change the area scheme for an existing are plan" as the title of your post says, what would be the expected result? The layout of the floor plan would change? or the distribution of the colors in the layout, or the colors of each zone? 

[Anonymous]

Hi Alfredo and thank you; I have been following this forum for a while but have not contributed much; will try to change it now. 

Our teams like to use area plans with color schemes assigned to them in the conceptual phase of the projects for very quick program studies. They use area boundary lines instead of interior walls - pretty much like a bubble diagram. Then they tag everything with an area tag so they can have a very quick color program diagram with areas; design options are used sparingly on top for additional information, such as core configuration, etc. Typically we would have 4-5 program options per floor per project; so to answer your question, the color "blocks" would change size and configuration between different area plan options for each floor.

The teams would love to use design options for everything to avoid extra work and confusion, however area boundary lines cannot be created in DO so we have resorted to doing it this way. Once the design gets approved, the selected diagrammatic area plans are then filled with architectural model elements. We mostly work on multi-unit residential projects so we like to stick to area plans so we could use both areas and rooms during documentation.

If you can think of a better way of doing this, I am all ears. This method works for us for the most part, until we get into a situation that I described before with replicating selected area plans to be within a single area scheme. We don't have much information in those yet so it ends up not being a huge deal; however we are all for increasing workflow efficiency. So we would love not to do redundant work.

Thanks much!

[Alfredo_Medina]

@Anonymous

Thank you for the additional information. At some point, you made a bad choice: using Areas for this space planning exercise instead of Rooms. Unfortunately, Area Plans and Design Options don't work together in Revit. They are not related. On the other hand, rooms work perfectly fine with Design Options and schedules (you can apply the Design Option to the schedule). Create your rooms with room separation lines. Then, create rooms, and apply a color schemes to the view. If you want to group portions of the floor plan by color, you can use the "Department" parameter of the room, or any other custom parameter of your choice. You can easily switch the same view to show a different option and a different color scheme. The visual effect will be the same as coloring some areas, with the big difference that now your Design Options do work.

[Anonymous]

@Alfredo_Medina

Thank you for your input. I think you have a point... I don't think it was a bad choice entirely for us to be using area plans: since we work on multi unit residential buildings we use areas and rooms in the same plan interchangeably to provide different information. We typically use areas for overall unit areas and rooms for each room within a unit. That is the primary reason that we document in area plans as floor plans only allow us to use rooms and not areas. 

For conceptual phase however, I can see us benefitting from using rooms and floor plans. As you have mentioned, we could start integrating rooms in our design options; we could also achieve colored sections much easier. The only place where I can see this system not working is when you have scenarios where you really need to keep track of both larger programmatic areas and as well as rooms. Let's say, you have a typical residential floor plan with units and you want a simple area breakdown for each unit but you also want a simple area breakdown for each room within a unit. With an area plan it was possible, which is why we used it in the first place; but how would you deal with that problem in a floor plan? I would hate to be drawing filled regions and making sure the dummy tags are up-to speed. Very curious if you have a suggestion; I am curious to give floor plans/rooms another shot. 

[Alfredo_Medina]

Yes, Area Plans have a value, but why I meant by "bad choice" is that, knowing that Area Plans and Design Options don't work together, it's not a good choice to use area plans to do options during schematic design. It would be good, yes, but this is a limitation of the software.

In regards to your question, if you use Rooms, you can manage all that with parameters and schedules, using Filters and Sorting and Grouping options in the schedules. You can get the total area of all the rooms that belong to "Unit A", for example, while still getting the individual areas of each room. Also, you can use the same parameters for creating different color schemes. 

[Anonymous]

Unfortunately our bosses like to see area information for units as well as rooms displayed graphically on the plan in form of a tag, not only via a schedule. 

Thanks for taking the time to respond. 

[Alfredo_Medina]

@Anonymous

Yes, but what blocks you from doing big rooms in a view or design option, to represent the units, while you are working on schematic design and design options?

[Anonymous]

Nothing, except I want the big "room" that's the unit (or currently an area) to contain small rooms (such as bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, etc) and I want to be able to display the overall area of the unit as well as areas for each room within that unit on a single plan at once. Does that make sense? I wish a had a screen shot to share. 

[andrea.kikuchi · Accepted solution]

Hi @Anonymous, 

There may be a solution which follows from tagging a filled region for the overall area of the room that doesn't involve updating a "dummy" tag for everything. If you have access to Dynamo you can create a script that will push the area info from a shared parameter into a tag. There is a great post by TheRevitKid.com which shows the script which you may find helpful. 

If my post answers your question, please click the "Accept as Solution" button. This helps everyone find answers more quickly!