Control area of a circular room with a tag?

[bill_gilliss]

When preparing initial bubble diagrams to understand the relative sizes and adjacencies of a project's program, I like to use circles so I don't even begin to start thinking of them as architectural spaces. I create the bubbles using Rooms with circular Room Separator boundaries and placing the standard room tag to show the Name and Area fields. I do this in a separate model from the actual architectural model so the bubble rooms do not get confused with the actual ones. This all works great in the bubble diagrams and in schedules, color-coding by department and sorting by level.

However, to get the area of each circle to match the desired area, I have to select the room boundary, select the temporary radius dimension, and then enter kind of a cumbersome formula for the radius each time:  =sqrt(desired_area/pi())  This is not so bad as a one-off, but after 40 or 50 of them, it gets tedious.

Is there a way to pick the tag, or a field in Properties, enter the desired area, and have Revit adjust the radius accordingly? I'd prefer not to use Dynamo, because I want to pass the solution on to my first-year students, and Dynamo just isn't in the syllabus.

[ToanDN]

With a circle family, yes. With rooms, no.

[bill_gilliss]

Well, the scheduling and color scheme options turn out to be hugely useful, but I'd appreciate a lesson in how to do it with plain old circles.

[ToanDN · Accepted solution]

Create a generic family. Draw a circle. Add a radial dimension and guve it parameter named R. Add another instance parameter, Area type, name it Area. Enter =sqrt(Area/pi()) in the formula box of R. Load it in project. Now uou can enter the area and the circle will resize. If you want to use Rooms then draw the boundary by pick lines and lock to the circle family.

[_Vijay]

in this case, I will instance parameter for radius and adjust the radius accordingly. And use a detailed family will automatically adjust according to the scale. if need manual for generic annotation family.

[Alfredo_Medina]

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@_Vijay wrote:

...And use a detailed family will automatically adjust according to the scale. ...

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A detailed family will automatically adjust according to the scale? What do you mean?

[bill_gilliss]

Yes! This does it. I created the family as described, then created the rooms with Room Separator lines. I then hid the Separator lines in the view so that it was easier to pick the family without tabbing.